Hello Dr Peterson,

I feel stuck and would greatly appreciate your insight. I want to divorce and have for years and yet, I feel guilty for doing so.

My question for you: When is divorce actually a good idea?

I’ve scoured everything I can around the internet and in person... asking people whether or not they would divorce in my case. Everyone tells me yes- leave him. That’s only because they see me as the victim and they don’t have a long term vision. Plus... people don’t seem to have any inclination to forgive their spouses these days for betrayal. Still...

It’s a conundrum for me because I feel completely and totally checked out of the marriage yet logically I know that marriage is a good idea.

I appreciate your videos on the subject. Divorce is costly, and it interrupts your life narrative, greatly affects the children (mine are old enough to feel all of it - middle school age), and there’s a great chance I won’t find anyone better (if almost 70% of people divorce from second marriages).

I believe in marriage theoretically. I’d prefer not to divorce. It’s better to have two heads than one and it’s better to have a sense of commitment as your northern star to help weather the storms.

I just don’t want to be married to this guy anymore. Even though he says he’ll change and we can work through things together. (I certainly would need to change as well).

I think in my case, there has been a fair bit of emotional and psychological abuse. (Course he doesn’t think so). Also, I say “I think” because the communities and conversations online about this are wrapped up tightly in closed loops and it seems everyone and their cat has been abused. For example, the only way to handle a Narcissist is to leave him/her.

In my case... I might agree with that particular action as I haven’t proven capable of standing up for myself with him. Once you said (I’m paraphrasing) that people with those tendencies will abuse their partner to no end... and maybe their partner deserves it because they never grew teeth. They let someone walk all over them. That’s where I find myself now. Needing to grow teeth.

My own contributions to my situation are such that I’ve forgone much of my own desires, lived with betrayal after betrayal, and have wanted to die. I’ve lived for years in anger and resentment, just totally lost and desperately trying to please as a way to get him to change. I realize the folly of my ways now. I ended up just watching my self respect wither away instead of standing up for myself. This came to a climax when one day I woke up and was no longer afraid of the pain involved in killing myself or the risk that I might not die through my efforts but just severely hurt myself. Also... the pain my children would experience no longer stopped me because I was convinced at that point that they’d be better off without me.

Short story, I got help. Changed some things - mostly tried to change the way I saw myself and realized that the words I had been telling myself were in his voice.

My husband argues for the marriage with your same arguments... and that it’s better to work on our marriage than to try our luck with someone new. We haven’t “tried” everything... etc

But I personally have tried ... as much as I knew how at the time. Maybe could have gotten more help though. He’s thought our marriage wasn’t so bad... so he never wanted to get third party help. Now he does because he sees I’m serious about leaving.

However, as I said I’m physically done with it. I feel like I’ve already mourned it and moved on. But he says if one of my main problems with the marriage is that I can’t be who I want to be with him, why don’t I just grow some teeth with him instead of leaving?

All these logical arguments to stay... but the feeling in my chest and the tightness in my body says no. Plus the nagging thought that I might end up ruining things for my kids.

My problem is that I’m having a hard time moving through this dissonance decisively.

I’d be very interested in your thoughts on divorce in general and what you might tell a loved in a similar case to mine.

Many thanks.

Warm regards,

E