I’ve wanted to leave my husband for years, so why can’t I just go?

Dear Roe,

I'm afraid to break up with my husband. We have been together all my adult life. We have not had a good marriage and we have been unable to communicate about our relationship in a calm and meaningful way. I babble and get upset; he stonewalls, gets angry or changes the subject. Nothing gets resolved. Due to his past abusive behaviour and infidelity, neither of which he is willing to discuss or acknowledge caused any hurt or harm, I have had enough. I probably had enough 15 years ago, but something always pulls me back in. Now I am determined, but terrified to step over the cliff edge. I don't know what I am so afraid of. Why can't I just tell him I am done? Surely what lies ahead can't be any worse than what I feel now, so what's holding me back?

An inescapable reality of life is that often, two things can be true at the same time. Every reason you have to end your marriage is valid. You are unfulfilled and unhappy. He has not made amends for the hurt and betrayal he has inflicted on you. Your communication is not getting better. You are not living the life you want. All these things are true. At the same time, the reasons you are hesitant to leave are all understandable. You will be uprooting your entire life. You will be ending a long-term relationship that you have been committed to for decades. You will be setting out into the unknown. You understand the hardship you are facing right now in your marriage; it is difficult but familiar, unlike the unfamiliar world that will be waiting for you when you leave, and that unfamiliarity is scary in a different way. All these things can be true, too.

What I feel from your question is an underlying belief that if you are scared to leave, you shouldn’t, that if there’s part of you still holding on to this relationship, then maybe it means there’s something worth holding on to. But what if you stopped thinking about your emotions as fear, and started thinking about them as grief? Grief is something we feel that lets us acknowledge and accept the love we have felt, the hurt, the commitment, the time, the familiarity. Grief allows us to mourn, to accept that we are growing through a time of loss. And grief prompts us to mark this time of transformation – and to begin to envision a new life, a new form of existing, a new future.

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You married someone that you loved and wanted it to be a lifelong relationship that was loving, fulfilling, faithful and evolving. This is not what happened. Leaving your marriage would be accepting this loss, accepting the years you have spent trying to make it work, accepting that you cannot make it work. Accepting this would be starting the grief process. What’s difficult now is that part of you is still clinging on to the hope that something may shift, that your husband may change, that he might be the person you wanted him to be, that you won’t have to go through the process of leaving, of grieving, of starting over.

This is understandable. But what would it mean to shift your hope from this marriage to the rest of your life? Start thinking about everything you want from life, from your relationships, from yourself. Who do you want to be, and what do you want your life to be? Because you need to know that you deserve better than a marriage that makes you unhappy, and a husband who has hurt you deeply and never acknowledged that. Even being alone will be better than being with someone who diminishes your self, and your life.

I promise you, there will come a time when you will no longer feel as lonely and sad and as inextricably linked to this person; when your life feels hopeful, where you only embrace relationships – romantic and otherwise – where you feel respected and loved and nurtured; when your husband is not the centre of your universe, but a memory, with no power to hurt you anymore. There will come a time when you thank your lucky stars you were brave enough to leave, to grieve, and to move on, because your life is so much brighter now, more fulfilling, more hopeful. You have to believe in this future, invest in this future, and get yourself there.

You may have to get yourself there, but you don’t have to go it alone. Get yourself a therapist now, today, and start talking about what you want your life to be, your understandable fears about leaving your marriage, and building up the strength to do it. Tell your friends and family and support system how unhappy you have been, that you’re thinking of leaving, and that you’ll need their support. And have a conversation with a solicitor about money, property and what comes next. Doing this will give you a clearer sense of what you need to do next.

You also mention that your husband has been abusive in the past, so do not discount your own safety in your planning, as abusive people can often escalate their behaviour when victims try to leave. Having people who know that you’re leaving and having somewhere to go or a friend to stay with could be important, as could having some money saved and important documents stored in a safe place. Thinking about these realities could feel overwhelming, but beginning to consider them now, before you leave, will help formulate your thought processes, instead of having everything in a large, nebulous unknown.

Then, when you are ready, go. End the relationship as respectfully but as firmly as you can. Tell your husband you are leaving your marriage so that you can both can finally start living the lives you deserve – lives that are happy and hopeful and evolving, not stagnating in patterns that no longer serve you, a relationship that no longer fulfils you. You will be able to do this because in the ways that matter, both of you have already left this relationship. He is not trying to change or do anything new to fix the issues that are here. You are no longer emotionally growing here, and your hope has dwindled. The time for trying and negotiating and bargaining has been and gone. So leave.

Grieve for the good times, the hope you had, the time you have spent in this relationship. Remind yourself that you tried and forgive yourself for sometimes missing the familiarity of the relationship. Remind yourself that he made choices in how to treat you, he chose to hurt you and not apologise, he chose not to make the effort to step up and break the unhelpful patterns in this relationship. Feel your anger and your sadness and your disappointment, grieve – and then breathe. Congratulate yourself on being brave enough to break a pattern, to leave something that did not serve you, to take your first step towards a more rewarding future.

Roe McDermott is a writer, Fulbright scholar and Next Generation award winner with an MA in sexuality studies from San Francisco State University. If you have a problem or query you would like her to answer, you can submit it anonymously at irishtimes.com/dearroe