Stay or leave – finding your way to a decision

The state before the decision

Most couples who come with this question are not in an acute crisis. They are in a state that has already lasted a long time: not bad enough to leave, not good enough to stay.

This state is more wearing than a crisis. A crisis has an end. The limbo has none, and it costs energy every day – for the weighing up, for the not saying it, for keeping up a normality that neither of you quite believes in any more.

That is why the decision does not come first. The first task is to end the limbo – in one direction or the other.

Why the decision does not come by itself

It is expected to be made under the wrong conditions. Most people wait for certainty: for a feeling that is unambiguous, or for an event that takes the decision off their hands.

Both rarely come. In long relationships, feelings are almost never unambiguous. And the event that takes the decision off your hands is usually one you would never have wished for.

Added to that: many people are not deciding about the relationship as it is, but about the relationship as it has become. After years in exhaustion mode, the comparison is missing. The question "Do I still want this?" is hard to answer when for three years neither of you has had the chance to be anything else.

What clarification means

Not that I tell you what is right. I cannot and may not do that. Clarification means making the decision under better conditions than before.

Three things belong to it.

First: taking one more fair look at the relationship. Not the last six months, but the whole of it. What carried it, what got lost, and at what point. Many couples can name a moment when something tipped – and that at that point there was something concrete that was never talked about.

Second: testing whether change is possible. Sometimes the question is not "stay or leave" but "leave, or something other than this". Whether that something else is possible only becomes apparent once you have tried it. For this we agree on a manageable period with concrete changes.

Third: looking at your own part. Whoever leaves a relationship without having understood their own share takes it with them into the next one. That is not a threat, but a recurring observation.

When the two of you are at different points

The most common case: one person has already inwardly closed the door, the other is fighting. This constellation is difficult because it is unequal – but it can be worked on.

Honesty about where you stand matters. Anyone who only keeps coming to the sessions in order to be able to say afterwards that they tried everything should say so. That is painful for the other person, but far less destructive than months of hope that has no foundation.

If the decision is a separation

Then the couples therapy has not failed. A clarified separation, decided calmly, is a good outcome – especially when there are children.

The point then is that the separation proceeds fairly: that both sides have understood what happened, that reproaches do not become a permanent state, and that you can talk to each other as parents even though you are no longer together as a couple.

In my experience, the manner of the separation decides more about the years ahead than the separation itself.

If the decision is to stay

Then ideally it is not staying out of exhaustion, but a decision with substance: we are staying, and to make that possible we are changing the following. Staying without change leads back into the same limbo, usually within a year.

Many couples later describe this moment as the real new beginning – not because everything was easy afterwards, but because for the first time in a long while both of them chose deliberately.

How you can tell that something is shifting

By the fact that you are thinking in time frames again. No one who is stuck in limbo makes plans. A direction has emerged as soon as one of you starts talking about next summer – together or apart.

Four questions that help

These questions replace no decision. But they make visible what you are actually thinking about.

What do you assume will never change? And does that assumption hold, or is it the result of many failed attempts?

What would you miss? Not what would be practically difficult, but what you would genuinely miss. The answer often comes faster than people are comfortable with.

When you look back in five years – what do you want to have tried? Most people answer this question with surprising clarity, even though they cannot answer the question about the present.

What is actually holding you? Affection, shared history, the children, the house, the fear of being alone, concern for the other person. All reasons are allowed. It helps them to be known.

On the time frame

This work does not need a long period, but it does need an agreed one. We often set six to eight sessions at first and then review together where you stand. With this question, an open end would be counterproductive – it prolongs the very limbo that is meant to be ended.