Ep. 47 5 Options For A Marriage In Limbo

Should you stay married, separate, or get divorced? Most people think the divorce decision has only two options: stay or leave. But the truth is, the decision is usually much more nuanced than that.

In this episode of The Divorce Decision Podcast, Kari Hoskins walks through five options people often have when they are questioning their marriage. Instead of rushing toward a black-and-white answer, this episode helps you think more clearly about which version of staying or leaving you may be choosing.

You’ll hear about the difference between staying and accepting the marriage as it is, staying while taking your happiness back into your own hands, staying to repair or rebuild the relationship, separating without divorcing yet, and choosing divorce when the marriage is no longer healthy, repairable, or wanted.

Kari also explains the difference between repairing a marriage and rebuilding one, why a therapeutic separation can be more helpful than a vague “I need space” separation, and why divorce is not always a failure, but it is a serious decision that deserves clarity, honesty, and care.

If you are silently wondering, “Should I stay or leave my marriage?” this episode will help you slow down, understand your real options, and think about your next step with more intention and less panic.

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Transcript

Kari Hoskins (00:00.802)
Hey there everyone, welcome back to the Divorce Decision Podcast. I'm your host, Kari Hoskins, and today I wanted to talk to you specifically about the divorce decision.

If you are like most people, you probably think about the decision to divorce or not is very like a binary. You probably think about it in black and white terms. Okay. It has two answers. Stay or go. In reality, the decision is way more nuanced than what most people realize. When you're quick like questioning or considering what you want to do about your marriage.

What you're really asking is, which version of staying or leaving am I choosing? So this is the question that I want you to kind of, I don't know, keep in the back of your mind. Which version of staying or leaving do I want to choose? So what I'm going to do today is just give you a very general and broad overview of five different options that you actually have when considering whether to stay in your marriage,

or leave it.

Okay, now am in the future going to be doing an entire episode on each one of these options so that I can talk about it in more depth. But to stay 20 minutes or under, which is my goal, really what I'm gonna do is just give you a down and dirty overview, okay? So option number one, you have the option to stay in your marriage and accept it as it is. Now I am not talking about staying, doing nothing, and then just complaining to everyone about

Kari Hoskins (01:44.068)
it every day. Okay there is a difference between passively staying in an unhappy or dissatisfying marriage and consciously choosing to stay after you've tried, after you've tried to make changes. Okay so this option is not I'm going to complain forever and do nothing.

It's more like we've done the work. We've had the conversations. We've tried to create change. And now I'm accepting that this marriage may never become what I hoped it would be. That is a very different kind of staying. For a lot of people, I kind of think that this becomes a form of quiet resignation, right? You stop pushing for change. You stop bringing up the same stuff over and over again. You may simply decide that the cost of divorce is too high.

maybe emotionally, financially, spiritually, relationally, maybe because of family, whatever it is, right? It's just not worth it. Okay? Now does not mean that you're necessarily thrilled with the marriage if you choose it. It doesn't mean that the marriage is suddenly fulfilling. It just means that you are making a conscious decision with intention, with your eyes open, right? So this is definitely one of the decisions that I thought

Warranted an example. I worked with a couple who had been married for just over 35 years They got married right before they both turned 20. Okay? The husband was questioning the marriage and contemplating divorce. He wanted more. He wanted more from the marriage He wanted more vulnerability more emotional intimacy. He wanted more affection He just wanted more from their life and the wife simply did not she was very happy with the way things were

were. She was very content with status quo. She had her house, she had her friends, she had her routine, everything was in order. To her way of thinking it was copacetic, right? She was quite fulfilled, but she did agree to her credit to come and work with me. And I should say work with us because we did couple sessions. And after months of sessions, this is what happened. They learned how to resolve their conflicts better. They learned how to communicate better.

Kari Hoskins (04:04.633)
And that's as far as it went. There was no interest in more vulnerability, more emotional or physical intimacy. There was no interest in spending more time together. Now, while he wasn't happy about it, he did want more. He also didn't want to blow up their lives. So he made the conscious decision to stay without anything changing. And when he made that decision to stay and accept the limits of their marriage, he stopped complaining.

So that's option number one. Option number two is to stay, but take your happiness back into your own hands. Now what makes this different from the first option is that when you take the second option, you are actively trying to find ways to become more fulfilled, more satisfied and happier in the marriage the way that it is. Okay.

So it's really acknowledging that you want more and learning how to create that for yourself outside of what your spouse is willing or able to give to you. Okay. So this kind of sounds like I'm not ready to leave or I don't want to leave, but I'm also no longer going to like make my entire emotional life and happiness dependent on whether or not my husband or wife can participate.

in the way that I want them to. Okay? I'm going to be honest. I tried this. This was the option that I tried for over seven years. This did not work for me personally because it was just too lonely for me. But for a lot of people out there, and you might be one of them, this is a great option for you. So this can include

Rebuilding friendships or building new friendships. Pursuing a purpose like finding something that you believe that you are called for. Okay, improving your health, strengthening your boundaries within your marriage. Getting individual support like going to therapy or going to coaching or counseling or whatever for yourself, right? Just making your life feel more fulfilled, satisfying and livable within again the limits

Kari Hoskins (06:31.775)
of the marriage right? But I want to add a warning okay? This can be healthy like a self responsibility and I think everyone should take responsibility for their own happiness okay?

Or it can become emotional divorce, which happens when you decide to say something like, screw it. I'm just going to live my life and they can just live, live theirs, right? Like he can do his thing and I'll do mine or, or she can do her thing and I'll do mine. Right. This is different from that. This is, I still want to have a marriage with my spouse. I still want to have a relationship. I still want to have communication and resolve conflict. I still want to have some.

form of intimacy with them.

And I know that I need XYZ to really be fulfilled and happy. And so I'm going to figure out how to do that because for whatever reason, my spouse really isn't able to meet me there. That's really what that looks like. So if you choose this, you're choosing it without holding a grudge. You choose it with the intention of being happy and not blaming your spouse. If you do it in that way, this can be very, very healthy.

with lots of couples that have chosen this, right? I'm thinking about one specific couple right now in my mind and this was her choice. After working together, it was very clear that again her husband did not have any interest in changing any part of himself or their relationship or their dynamic, but she loved him and she loved their life. Okay, there were just some things that were really dissatisfying to her. She could not bring herself to leave. So

Kari Hoskins (08:18.017)
she made the choice to stay and make herself happy within their marriage without resentment and without animosity towards her husband. So it was less of a resignation and more of a, know I can choose to leave, but I'm choosing to stay and make myself happy without expectations of anything deeper in our marriage. Okay, so that's option number two. Option number three, stay and make it better.

Okay, which is way more challenging than it actually sounds. So staying and making it better could include repairing or rebuilding your relationship.

So like I said, I'm just giving you a really quick overview of these, but let me explain very briefly the difference between repairing and rebuilding just so you have it in the back of your mind. I'm going to use a metaphor for this. So I want you to think of a brick house after a bad storm, right? So if a few bricks have come loose, maybe they've fallen off the wall, maybe some of them are cracked, but the foundation and the walls are still strong. You don't need to tear the whole house

down. You need to repair the specific damage. You replace the broken bricks. You strengthen the weak spots. That's repair. So repair in marriage can occur when the relationship still has enough responsiveness and commitment to each other. When it still has enough, when you still have enough like emotional access to each other and emotional connection with each other. When you still

still have enough desire to work on some very specific issues that are happening or have happened in the marriage. So repair might mean learning how to communicate differently.

Kari Hoskins (10:10.483)
apologize well. It may mean learning how to resolve conflict better, rebuild daily connection, maybe address some things that have like really hurt you in the past that that stuff was never dealt with or cleaned up, right? Or it might be, repair might look like changing habits at a creating distance, okay? So basically, repair can happen when your marriage needs a few tweaks, but the foundation is still strong enough for you to

to work with, okay? Now rebuilding, this is entirely different. Rebuilding happens when a tornado takes out the entire house, right? You cannot simply put a few bricks back in and have everything okay. Rebuilding is for those couples where something much deeper has eroded, when something much deeper has happened.

Maybe there's been a fracture in the trust. The friendship is gone. The emotional safety is gone. Maybe there's no more respect between the two spouses. Maybe there's no hope or you feel like there's no hope. Maybe you've lost the sense that you are a part of the same team. So rebuilding may involve healing betrayal, addressing long standing resentment, changing destructive communication

communication patterns and behavioral patterns within your marriage. It may look like rebuilding trust over time. It's basically creating a very different version of the marriage. Okay, so rebuilding means not just going back to the way things were with a few tweaks. It means if this marriage continues, it's going to be something completely different and completely new. Option four.

is to separate, how am I doing on time? Okay, I'm all right. Is to separate but not divorce yet. And so this would be what I would consider a trial separation or it's also called a therapeutic separation. So I guess I kind of need to define for you, a trial separation is literally when people are like, well, I just need some space.

Kari Hoskins (12:23.245)
Okay, that's, don't necessarily think I need some space, let's do a trial separation, isn't necessarily the most helpful or healthy way to go about it. I think a therapeutic separation is a much better way to go for multiple reasons, which I will talk about in the future. But a therapeutic separation is more structured. It's intentional where the couple lives apart for a specific set period of time.

And the purpose is not just to like slowly drift into divorce The purpose is to create space to lower the emotional intensity Within the relationship and decide more clearly what needs to be like what needs to happen moving forward, right? It's different from a vague. need space It has rules. It has goals and it has a game plan, right? And so this is a

really good option where there's a lot of conflict and where there's potentially a lot more going on underneath the surface where you quite literally need space and distance from each other.

Again, I'm gonna go through this again. I kinda like feel my brain going down the rabbit hole right now. I will go through the difference between the trial separation and the therapeutic separation in another episode so you can get an idea more clearly of what that means. But just know that separating and not yet divorcing is option number four. Okay, so option number five is to divorce. And this is the option where the couple decides that the marriage is no longer viable, healthy, repairable.

or wanted. Okay? I have to say...

Kari Hoskins (14:10.737)
that I do not personally view divorce as a failure. Now, I'm not an advocate of divorce necessarily. What I am is an advocate of healthy relationships. And what I want you to know is that sometimes divorce is the best option for some couples, right? Sometimes it's an honest acknowledgement that the relationship cannot become healthy enough for both people to stay, all right?

And I do believe that the divorce decision needs to be taken seriously because it's a decision that comes with a lot of emotional, financial, and family consequences. So this is definitely something that does need to be taken with a lot of seriousness. And not something that should be rushed into.

So those are some of your options. Okay, so let me review those options really fast for you. The first option was to stay and accept the marriage as it is. The second option is to stay, but take your happiness back into your own hands. Option three is to stay and make it better, which means either repairing or rebuilding depending on your situation. The option four is to separate, but not yet divorce.

and option five is to go ahead and divorce. So I hope that this has given you some...

food for thought when you are considering your own situation and your own marriage. So you guys look, if you have any questions about this, please, I mean this is important stuff, please feel free to shoot me a message on social media. You can find me at Kari Hoskins Coaching. That's K-A-R-I-H-O-S-K-I-N-S Coaching. Or visit.

Kari Hoskins (16:06.965)
kahoskins.com and you can connect with me there. have a form that you can fill out if you want to ask me a question and I also offer a free consultation call if you're interested in finding out or trying to figure out what working with me might look like. Okay, so you guys, if you found this helpful, would you please take a moment and leave me a review and of course share

this with someone in your life who might need some help as well. All right, my friends, I am Kari Hoskins and this is the Divorce Decision Podcast. I'll see you next time.