Ep. 44 Three Ways Justifying Your Divorce Decision Messes With Your Clarity

In this episode of The Divorce Decision Podcast, I talk about a common struggle people face when they’re trying to decide whether to stay in a marriage or leave: the pressure to justify their decision to other people.

I explain why that pressure can be so damaging to your clarity, especially when family or friends want answers, have opinions, or expect your choice to make sense to them. 

I also share two situations where this tends to hit hardest: when you’ve kept your marriage problems private, and when something major like infidelity or addiction is involved and everyone suddenly has strong opinions about what you should do. 

I break down how over-explaining can create self-doubt, cause you to exaggerate or minimize what is really happening in the relationship, and keep you from making an honest, grounded decision. I also talk about why it matters to stay clear-eyed about your own patterns and your role in the marriage, whether you stay or leave. Finally, I share practical, neutral ways to respond when people ask why you’re staying or why you’re leaving, so you can answer with honesty without feeling like you have to defend your life. 

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Transcript

Kari Hoskins (00:01.048)

Hey there everyone, welcome back to the show. So if you have been following along for any amount of time, you probably recognized that or noticed I should say that the name of this podcast has indeed changed to the Divorce Decision Podcast. I just really briefly wanted to share with you why I made the decision to change the name. And basically it's because this entire time my purpose has been to help

couples who are really struggling in their relationships. And that is still obviously the theme here. But I really wanted this podcast to reflect more accurately the people that I'm working with. Okay. So I primarily work with people who are in long-term marriages and they are now questioning divorce, which is an incredibly difficult and painful

thing to be contemplating especially for people who have been married for a decade or more. And so really my hope here is to give you a resource for those of you that are starting to fantasize about what it would look like to leave your marriage, those that are sincerely and seriously contemplating it, or if divorce has already been like put out there on the table where

both you and your spouse are aware that this is a question that's being asked. So we're gonna be talking about a lot of issues that people have when they're struggling in their marriages and making these types of decisions. So please, if you have a family member or a friend who you know is really struggling in their marriage and potentially contemplating divorce, please share this podcast with them because really my goal here is just to help

as many of you as possible. So let's jump into today's topic. I wanted to talk to you about something that comes up for a lot of you when you are trying to decide whether or not to stay in your marriage or to leave. And it's the pressure to justify your decision to other people or to explain yourself to other people.

Kari Hoskins (02:24.876)

And so what I wanna do is I just wanna talk to you very briefly about how justifying your choice or which way you're leaning can really mess with your clarity. And one of my goals as a coach is to help people make a decision from authenticity and clarity. And this definitely gets in the way of that. And I'm also going to share with you at the end kind of how to respond when people ask you,

about your decision or ask you about what's going on because I want to help you respond in a way that doesn't make you feel like you have to justify yourself. And that's a little bit more neutral. So those are the couple of things that I'm going be covering today. And what I really find and what I'm finding with my clients is that once people know what's going on, it can really start to feel like you owe them an explanation. Like,

You need to convince them that your choice or the way that you're leaning is valid. It's almost like you have to make your reasons make sense to them. I know that I felt a lot of pressure when I started telling people in my first marriage that we had decided to go ahead and separate and get a divorce. And that was really, really challenging for me because I always felt like I had to justify myself.

And so there are really two scenarios that I see where people feel a lot of pressure. The first one is when you've done a really great job of keeping your marriage problems private, which I don't necessarily think is a bad thing at all. But then what happens is people are caught off guard and then they ask all of these freaking questions. know like in, that's what happened to my first marriage, but then also like we, my husband and I, we have some friends

on the outside, everything looked great. And then everyone was shocked in our friend group when we found out that they were actually getting a divorce. Everyone's like, whoa, whoa, what happened? Right? They seem so happy. And I was just like telling my husband, I'm like, see, this is just another example of how you don't know what other people are going through. You don't know what happens behind closed doors and the issues that people have. you know, deciding to separate or divorce,

Kari Hoskins (04:50.539)

doesn't mean that one person is bad and the other person is good. Especially in this case, like both of these people are amazing people. They just had some stuff that they couldn't continue to get through or work through. The other scenario really that I see people feeling like they need to justify is when there's been something big happen, like, and big in public, like an infidelity or an addiction issue or some other like,

big major event and suddenly everyone seems to have an opinion about what the heck you should do. Okay. I'm actually dealing with it right now with this, with two of the couples that I'm working with, their spouses have both had affairs and, these particular people, obviously they're choosing to stay in the marriage right now and we're trying to work through it and they're trying to make a decision.

of whether or not they want to stay in their marriage. And they're getting a lot of pushback and a lot of flack from their family members and from their friends. They're like, why don't you just leave? If it were me, I would just leave. And so we've spent quite a bit of time coaching just around not having to justify their decision to stay and see if they can work it out. Okay. So this idea of having to explain yourself and justify yourself,

works both ways, whether you're thinking about leaving or thinking about staying. And so how does justifying or like over, I'm going to call over explaining yourself mess with your clarity. Well, one of the first reasons why is it can create a sense of like self doubt. You start to second guess what you're experiencing. You start to second guess that choice that you're leaning towards. And every time

you feel like you have to explain yourself or justify yourself to someone, you're suddenly like telling yourself that your decision isn't valid unless other people approve of it, okay? But let me tell you that they haven't walked a mile in your shoes and people have opinions about everything. And just because they experience something similar to you still does not mean

Kari Hoskins (07:11.288)

that they're in the same place as you, either way, leaving or staying. And so I just don't want to see you start to second guess and question yourself. Another reason why it kind of messes with your clarity is because over-justifying can actually pull you away from the truth, okay? When you feel pressured to explain yourself, why you're staying or why you're thinking about leaving, we tend to either exaggerate

what's going on or minimize it to make it sound like you're justified either way in your decision. So for people who are leaning towards leaving, they have a tendency or you would have a tendency to make things sound worse than they actually are. And the reason why people exaggerate is because you kind of feel like if you make it sound really, really bad, then you have enough reason, you have enough proof, you have enough justification, which gives you permission

and makes you feel okay in your decision to leave. And for those of you that are considering staying, you might do the opposite. You might minimize and downplay how serious things are because maybe you feel conflicted about staying or you feel embarrassed or judged for what you're continuing to tolerate in your marriage. Okay? And so this is harmful because it means that you're no longer being honest about your experience.

And if you're not being honest about what you're going through, it makes it harder for you to make a legitimate choice that is grounded and honest and conscientious. Okay. And the second part of this is that once you start exaggerating or minimizing, you can really lose sight of your part of this relationship. Of course, it's not your, you know, you're, not at fault for everything, but neither is your partner. And when you exaggerate or you minimize,

you lose sight of your patterns, of your avoidance, of your reactivity, of your silence, of your choices. And if you don't get honest about your part, you really risk dragging all of the same unresolved crap into the future with you, either into the future of your current marriage or the future of a new relationship down the road if you choose to leave. Okay? And,

Kari Hoskins (09:38.915)

That's just really bad because either way, whether you stay or whether you go, really the hope is that you will go on to have a healthier future relationship, okay? Another reason why this really, why justifying can really mess with your clarity is because it can lead you to minimizing the complexity of your relationship. I want you to think about that for a second. It can lead you to minimizing the complexity

of your relationship. I want you to think about all the stuff you're going through. It's not simple. Even if you don't have like big dramatic problems and I think, and this is really what I mean by this point is that people who don't, aren't going through big things of like betrayal or addiction problems or like some like really big dramatic thing.

They feel like they have to justify because they don't have like some big typical problems that other people would approve of. Okay. But if you're in a marriage that is lonely, is chronically painful and disconnected and emotionally unstable or emotionally unsustainable, you might feel tempted to justify yourself because something ultra dramatic or traumatic isn't happening. Okay.

But just because something like really dramatic isn't happening doesn't mean it's not painful and complex. Okay. Take loneliness. For example, I have been through a marriage where I felt completely emotionally abandoned and it wasn't like some big, huge, over the top dramatic thing that I felt like that in my world. it was so freaking lonely and it had a really, really big significant impact on my life.

but it didn't seem like enough, like being lonely didn't seem like enough to justify leaving, right? And let me tell you, I have husbands and wives that come to these sessions and they are so broken and there hasn't been anything huge over the top dramatic like a big betrayal. I mean, in some cases there have, but in a lot of the cases there aren't. I literally had a client

Kari Hoskins (12:00.714)

say, look, my husband doesn't abuse me. He's never cheated on me. He's not an addict. And I feel guilty for wanting to leave because I want a more fulfilling marriage. And they tried, you guys, they gave it all they had for a good solid three months. And he just was not into it. And she finally made the decision that she wanted more for her life. And it just broke my heart to watch her.

like work through that guilt. So don't allow yourself to get sucked into the minimizing the complexity of your relationship and what you're going through. Okay? The truth is, is that relationships and these decisions are messy and they are nuanced and they are deeply personal and trying to justify yourself minimizes that. Okay?

which again means that you're not making a decision from true clarity. Okay. So I always tell people, right, that the pressure to explain your decision is so hard because it takes an already painful, private and complicated process and turns it into something that you feel like you have to defend. Okay. So how can you respond when someone just starts asking you questions?

and you want to be polite. Like my thing is I always wanted to be polite and that sucked me into feeling like I had to defend myself. And so what I really suggest that you do is tell people, I tell people to respond in a general way, a very neutral way using the words we and I. Okay, we and I statements.

So let's talk about your decision to divorce. If people are questioning your decision to leave or if you're leaning toward leaving, okay, you can say something like, you know, there are some deep issues between us that we just aren't able to work through. Or you can say something like, we just don't bring out the best in each other anymore. Or something along the lines of, we don't want the same things anymore. Okay, nobody has to be the villain and nobody has to be the victim. Okay?

Kari Hoskins (14:19.734)

If people are questioning your reasons to stay, we aren't ready to give up yet. We're still working through some things. I'm not clear that leaving is the right decision for me right now. I'm staying because some important things are finally being addressed, right? Again, no one is a victim. No one is a hero and no one is a villain. Okay. So I suggest you

either picking one or two of the ones that I just gave you and practice saying them or come up with your own, all right? And practice, practice, practice. You wanna practice saying them because a lot of times we're caught off guard and that's when we start to ramble and defend and justify ourselves. So the more you can practice, the easier it's going to be for you to respond in a natural kind of like non-pulsed way. And it'll just kind of roll off your tongue.

So if you are struggling with this question of whether to stay in your marriage or move forward with divorce and you want some help making that decision, please, I invite you to reach out to me. I have a complimentary consultation call and you can check out all my stuff, including how to book the complimentary call on my website, is kahoskins.com.

There's also a link in the show notes. And of course, if you maybe want some help figuring out a way to neutrally answer people when they ask you that question, please feel free to follow me on social media. You can find me on all the socials at it's Kari, K-A-R-I, Hoskins, H-O-S-K-I-N-S.com, or no, I'm sorry, not.com, coaching. And that's on Facebook and Instagram.

And also on YouTube and you can shoot me a message and I'd be more than happy to brainstorm some ways that you can answer the question that Really feels authentic and honest for you. Okay, my friends. That is what I have for you today. I will talk to you next week