by sarah tolmie
Reader Question: “I have been deeply unhappy in my marriage for a long while and it has recently built up inside me so big that I can’t hold it in anymore. I have weighed up a list of pros and cons in my head and all that is keeping me there is the children. My husband is a good guy. I love him but I am now not in love with him. There are so many things that have been left unsaid for so long. Little things that now are huge things. I’m afraid I am going to hurt him so badly but I don’t think I can stay. I’ve heard of ‘conscious uncoupling’. How can I suggest we do this?”
Dearly Beloved
My heart breaks when I hear your story. It is the story of so many good couples with a promising life and love ahead of them. Everything suggests a good life can be possible, and yet, the relationship, when faced with stress, challenge, change and crisis moments, hasn’t performed well and couples didn’t do timely and right repair and recovery; and they didn’t evolve a set of skills, wisdoms and knowledges into the relational system to ensure it’s robustness.
Most of us don’t get explicitly taught healthy relationship skills – we learn from our family of origin relationship survival techniques. Expressing “love” – giving, receiving and maintaining healthy love over a lifetime – needs high relationship skill. Without intentional skill and discipline to maintain relational wellbeing, even the deepest of loves can lead to drift, disengagement, disconnection and dissatisfaction. The ‘love energy’ can literally run out and the relationship can become unsustainable for one or both parties.
When I hear “we love each other but we’re not in love with each other”, what I really hear as a relationship therapist is: “we love each other, but we have not been participating in being loving and skilfully loving”. This is a modern tragedy I see play out in my practice room regularly.
In our desire to avoid hurt we create even bigger ones.
What is hard to say, but true, is that the ones we love will hurt us. They will disappoint us, break our trust and ‘make us’ feel all sorts of big hard negative feelings. Relationships are growing endeavours – they are not meant to ‘make us happy’ – that is the natural byproduct of taking accountability for both relationship and personal health and wellbeing.
Relationships are meant to continue to grow us and evolve us and better us. They can even help to heal us, because this is the other hard thing to say, but it is true, all our stuff, all our wounds, traumas, frailties and shadows are worked out through and in the relational field. Our partner can either be our healing partner (and we can be for them) or we can become the agents of each other’s re–suffering.
Our responsibility and commitment in relationship is to acknowledge feelings and wrongs and problems and attend to them. It’s up to both parties to address issues, take accountability, apologise and atone and make amend then adapt and action new skills to ensure it doesn’t happen again. And maybe that means you must both learn the skills if you don’t have them.
I wish someone skilled my husband and I in the early years of our marriage, and especially before kids, with the knowledge of healthy and thriving relationship practices and mindset. It might have saved us a lot of pain. I wish all couples could know 2 key things:
Before you even have children, know you already have a child – it is your relationship. It is a living, breathing, growing, changing entity that needs attention, nourishing, play, pleasure, safety, shelter and love. This would ensure you don’t sideline and de–prioritise the relationship when kids come along.
Get skilled in a healthy approach to ‘managing conflict’. In the Gottman Couples approach, managing conflict is not actually ‘doing conflict’. Unhealthy and unskilled conflict is done by – attack, avoidance and accommodating (and building resentment). A healthier mindset and skillset approach of ‘managing conflict’ is about acknowledging and accepting each other’s differences and negotiating with understanding and empathy, with a ‘we’ mindset, to maximise both individual and relationship wellbeing. We must be able to share feelings and give feedback in a loving, safe, respectful and productive way. When you manage conflict well – it transforms into the muscle and connective tissue of relationship. Conflict becomes Connection. By suffering in silence, or avoiding conflict, or doing conflict badly – we only create resentment, blame and hard feelings that stick, fester and push us apart.
You are about to make a solo “ME” decision for a together “WE” problem. Yes, you have made a pros and cons list – but from a terrible place of disengagement and isolation. Yes, you can leave the relationship – but you are making the decision from a terrible place of pain, resentment and maybe blame. It is very hard, if not impossible, to solve a relationship problem alone. No wonder this approach inevitably leads many to consider leaving as being the only solution.
Up to now your partner has been given no agency, participation and choice in determining the outcome. It doesn’t sound like there has been any real and productive or skilled conversations about your stuck and hard feelings or any deep listening to each other. I can only imagine he will be blindsided. He will not be as far down the track of separation as you (if on that track at all) and he will not be in a same/same place to even consider ‘conscious uncoupling’. Conscious uncoupling is when a couple arrive together at a mutual decision that a relationship has reached completion and they both want to exit – with shared accountability, grace, respect and friendship intact. There is no mutuality assured here yet – there is no shared accountability – if anything, your approach sounds like ‘unconscious’ uncoupling.
Many couples find their way into my therapy practice in this predicament. My best advice is to seek professional help so you can have these first, hard conversations with support, safety and guidance. Slow everything down. Just stop and hold position from going any further apart – if only to allow him to catch up. It is like you are two trains going in different directions. Your train is about to take off. What you need to do is stop your train at the station, and both get off your separate trains and find each other on the centre platform.
Whether you end up staying together, or separating, you still will be in lifelong relationship – as parents. You will still need to do your healing. Start that on the right track. You both deserve that care.
Much love, Sarah x
Sarah Tolmie – Life & Love: Sarah is a marriage therapist, life & love and relationship coach, end–of–life consultant, an independent and bespoke funeral director and holistic celebrant. She provides holistic care, mentoring, guidance, healing and transformation for individuals, couples and families at their most important times of life & love – at end–of–life, in love & relationship, and in ritual and celebration. Sarah has a relationship online course for couples called “Creating a Miracle Marriage”; a wellbeing course, called “How do you feel?”; and a free resource and video series for families facing dying, death and grief called “Landscapes of Life & Love and Loss”. To find out more, visit www.sarahtolmie.com.au and www.lifeandlove.teachable.com