Ep. 57: The Missing Map For Couples Considering Divorce

If you've been asking yourself, "Should I stay or should I leave?" over and over again, this episode is for you.

Many people spend four to five years contemplating divorce before making a decision. The problem isn't that you can't make up your mind—it's that you're trying to answer one question without realizing you're actually moving through a process.

In this kickoff episode of my six-part series, I introduce The Six Stages of the Divorce Decision—the framework I use to help people understand where they are, why generic marriage advice often misses the mark, and what to focus on based on the stage they're in.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why feeling torn doesn't necessarily mean you're confused—it may mean you're in transition.
• How understanding your stage can bring clarity and direction.
• Why the advice that's helpful in one stage can be completely wrong in another.
• A brief overview of all six stages, from A Knowing to Decision Point.

This series isn't about convincing you to stay in your marriage or leave it. My goal is to help you understand what's happening beneath the surface so you can make the decision you'll regret the least—and move forward with greater confidence, clarity, and peace.

If you haven't already, take the Should We Get a Divorce? quiz at kahoskins.com to discover which stage you're in. Then join me next week as we take a deeper dive into Stage One: A Knowing.

Should We Get A Divorce Quiz: https://kari-hoskins-coaching-llc.kit.com/9e533cdd68

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Transcript

Kari Hoskins (00:00.782)
Hey there everyone, welcome back. Hey there everyone, welcome back to the Divorce Decision Podcast. I'm your host, Kari Hoskins, and today we're going to get started on a short series on the six stages of the divorce decision. I'm gonna start that again.

Hey there everyone, welcome back to the divorce decision podcast. Let's try it again one more time.

Kari Hoskins (00:29.87)
Hey there everyone, welcome back to the Divorce Decision Podcast. I'm your host, Kari Hoskins, and today we're going to start a short series on the six stages of the divorce decision. Now, if you've been listening for a while, I know you've heard me mention the quiz before on the podcast, and also I've referred to the stages, but I want to spend a little bit of time really digging into what each of these stages are.

And help you understand how identifying which stage you're in can be really helpful for you. So if you don't know what stage you're at, I strongly encourage you to go take that quiz should we get a divorce. You can find that at kahoskins.com and I also put the link to the quiz in the show notes. So go do that directly after listening to this episode. So my goal really for you today is just to help you understand.

Why these stages matter and how they can be helpful for you. I'm also going to give you a very, very brief overview, just a little sneak peek of each of the six stages that we're going to be exploring in more depth in this series. So when you are struggling in your marriage and you reach the point where you're questioning whether or not you want to stay or go, it is really easy to get stuck in thought loops. Your mind

Just like keeps circling that same question. Do I want to stay? Should I stay? What will happen to the kids? Do I want to leave? Should I leave? What's gonna happen to the kids? What's my family gonna say? You're gonna loop and ruminate over and over and over again on these same questions. And many people spend years in this place before they finally like make an ultimate decision to either get help to repair their marriage or get help.

Navigating a separation. In fact, research consistently shows that people often spend four to five years contemplating divorce before ever making a decision in either direction. Okay? But here's really what I want you guys to know. They're not actually wrestling with one question. What's really happening is you're moving through a series of stages, you're moving through a process.

Kari Hoskins (02:54.37)
You're moving through a series of emotional and psychological stages that gradually shift the way that you think, the way you feel, and the way you see your marriage.

Kari Hoskins (03:09.324)
And that's the key word. Gradually. When your marriage ultimately heals or ends in divorce, it gradually happens over time. For most people, now obviously that's not all cases, but most for most people that's their experience. And once you like understand what these stages are, you're going to be able to recognize where you are, why you feel stuck, and what your next step might be. Okay. So

every single stage moves you somewhere. And I'm just gonna pause there.

Kari Hoskins (03:54.255)
So when you don't realize that you're in a process, it can really feel like an emotional roller coaster, right? So one day you're convinced that you're leaving, the next day you have a nice dinner, you laugh, you're pleasant to each other, and you think, maybe things are getting better. And then the next day something else happens, maybe another fight or some passive aggressive comment, and suddenly you're back right back to where you started.

And this is one of the reasons why understanding where you're at is important. Okay. So knowing your stage really changes what you focus on. The things that you need to be thinking about in stage one and contemplating is very, very different than in stage five.

Kari Hoskins (04:47.874)
Someone who's just beginning to realize something is wrong doesn't need to be thinking about an exit plan. Okay. If you are literally in stage one, you should be thinking about much different things, okay? And someone who's already spent years asking for change doesn't need another therapist or coach or counselor or podcast just telling them to communicate better. Okay. Different stage, different questions, different goals.

And I think this is why people get so frustrated when generic like marriage advice doesn't help. You guys, it's not necessarily bad advice. It's just the wrong advice for where you are at. Okay. And I do want to give you a friendly reminder. These stages are not about convincing you to stay or go. Okay. This is the part that I genuinely care about the most. These stages are not about a countdown to divorce. They're not about a countdown to turning your marriage around.

They're not a prediction. People can move forward through them, people can stay where they are for a long time. And sometimes people will go like from stage five to stage four back to stage three. Okay, so you can even move backwards through them, right? The stages don't tell you what your decision should be, they simply help you understand what's happening inside of you so that you can make a decision more intentionally, right? Now, my goal always

Isn't necessarily to help your save your marriage or leave it. It's to help you make a decision that you're going to regret the least and then help you either rebuild your marriage or end it and heal from it in a healthy way. Okay, so let's go ahead and just do a very brief overview of each stage. So stage number one is called a knowing. And this is just where you know that something feels off, okay? And you can't necessarily put your finger on it.

Maybe you can, a lot of people can't. You can't always explain it. You just know that your marriage doesn't look like what you thought it was gonna look like. It doesn't feel the way you thought it was gonna feel. maybe you're comparing your marriage to your friends' marriage, and yours looks much different than theirs, okay? So in this stage, the unease of your marriage and where it's at is primarily kept to yourself. Your husband or your wife might suspect that you're not happy, but that's kind of the extent of it, okay?

Kari Hoskins (07:13.592)
But then you get into stage two, which is called truth telling. And this is where you stop hinting about your unhappiness, your discontentedness, and you finally say it out loud. You have that conversation, a real one, where you tell your spouse how serious this has become. And if you're doing it the right way, in air quotes, you share what needs to change or what you really want to change or what you hope is going to change. And then together you brainstorm ways to make it better.

And then, my friends, yes, sit back and you wait. That's what most people do. And this moves you into stage three. Stage three is what I call the testing stage. This is where you're waiting to see if your spouse is going to start trying. Okay? You're waiting to see if they're going to actually follow through with the things that they said they were going to. And hopefully you do too, right? So hopefully it's not just them, it's the both of you making changes.

But really the entire point of stage three is watching, observing, and you're starting to ask questions like, can these changes last? Are they capable and willing of change? Can I trust them to do what they say they're going to do? This stage is really tends to be marked by both like a hopefulness, but also skepticism for a lot of people.

And stage three is often where couples will first reach out to get help, either from a counselor, a therapist, or a coach. And I sincerely believe that this is one of those stages that has the biggest predictor of what happens for the future of your marriage. Because how you handle things in this stage three will either help you and your relationship find equilibrium again, or it kind of fast tracks you.

Into the fracture stage, which is stage four. And I think this is probably one of the most detrimental and most difficult stages to be at. This is the stage that a lot of people get stuck in. So stage four is what we call the fracture. And this is where the resentment really starts changing the way that you see your spouse. The resentment comes because stage three, the testing, didn't so go so great, okay.

Kari Hoskins (09:37.219)
You're not really happy with the changes that were made, or maybe not enough changes were made, maybe there was no follow-through, right? And now you're no longer just frustrated, you're becoming emotionally exhausted and resentful. And this is really where your marriage begins to feel heavy, you start keeping score, and your unhappiness just starts to take on a whole nother level, okay? And in my experience.

A spouse can stay in this stage for literally years before they arrive at the crossroads, which is stage five. So the crossroads is where you are no longer like questioning your unhappiness. You're not even wondering, is it ever gonna go away? Now you're wondering how much longer can I put up with this? You're wondering, what am I going to do about it? And this is where you begin imagining two different futures, one together.

And one apart. You begin to fantasize more seriously about separation. And for a lot of people, this is again where they reach out for help. for like the second time around, if they didn't do it that first time in stage three three. This time it's clear, however, that this is almost like the last chance for the marriage, and what happens in this stage definitely can make or break your relationship. Okay, there will be a point in stage five.

where you recognize that you either want to fight for your marriage and turn it around with everything you've got, or that divorce is where you want to go. Okay? Because what will happen is, and this is one of the ways that I know that someone has made a decision for divorce, is that divorce ideation in this stage turns into divorce planning. Okay. But either way, once you know, you've moved into the final stage, which is stage six.

decision point. And this is really about certainty. You have enough clarity about what you want. You have enough clarity about what you're hoping your next steps are going to be, whether that again is rebuilding your marriage or ending it with peace instead of panic. Okay? Now that was seriously you guys a very cursory overview of each of the stages in this process.

Kari Hoskins (12:04.662)
And again, how quickly you move through these stages really depends on a million different factors. Okay. I've literally worked with people who were in stage four for over a decade before we started working together. And they either will go right back into testing quickly or they move into stage five very, very quickly. It really just kind of depends. Others, they've been, you know, in the beginning stages of stage three, and then they almost like skip stage four and they go straight to stage five.

Okay, so it really just kind of depends on your circumstances, your relationship history, your marriage history, how long you've been together, like a whole bunch of different things. Okay. But over the next six episodes, what I'm going to do is I am going to slow this process down and talk to you one stage at a time so you can really get an idea of what each stage looks like. I'm going to talk to you about

what a lot of people get wrong in each stage and give you some mistakes that I hope you will avoid. Okay. Or I guess I should say I'm gonna point out some of the biggest mistakes so that you can avoid them. And then of course I'm gonna be giving you things to consider and think about in each stage. So really my hope is that by the end of this series you're going to stop spinning in confusion about what you should do.

And you're going to start asking, where am I in this process? And you're going to start asking much more helpful questions, okay? Because when you know where you are, it's a whole lot easier to figure out where you are going. So before next week, please go take that quiz at kahoskins.com and make sure to come back here next week for stage number one, unknowing. I'll see you then.