Can Temporary Separation Save a Marriage?
Separation done the right way can save a marriage
Separation can save marriages if done the right way. You wouldn’t do your own surgery, and you shouldn’t manage your own marriage crisis. Photo: Shutterstock/Alphavector
Done the right way, separation can save marriages. Haphazard separations, with no time frame or guidance from an experienced family therapist, and a couple ends up playing Russian Roulette with their family. I know for a fact that couples end up divorced who shouldn’t have, and my career is dedicated to preventing that from happening. To that end, I’ve managed many separations over the years and created a plan for how to do it mindfully and with a purpose. It’s called a Managed Separation Agreement and is designed specifically so a struggling couple has the best chance for success. I define success as healthy reconciliation, where kinks have been worked out, root issues dealt with, healing and understanding have taken place, and things are forever different and positive moving forward. The more I’ve used it, the more I’ve tweaked and refined it, to the point that it may offer couples who separate the perfect next option before throwing in the towel. Still, I don’t want people to use it if they don’t need it, and there are certain things that must be going on for it to be appropriate.
Why should a couple separate, anyway? I’ve had couples come in wanting to separate who shouldn’t and couples who needed to separate who wouldn’t. My number one goal every time is to diagnose the marriage issues, stabilize whatever marriage crisis is going on, and decide if separation is appropriate in their situation. We also want to stop couples from doing even more damage to their marriages than already exists, which is likely to happen with two people who are emotionally freaking out and relying on what friends, family members, and non-therapist-endorsed Internet searches tell them to do. Separation is a big step. It is serious business, and if we decide to go that route, it will be done for the right reasons, in the right way, and it will be one of the hardest things a couple has ever done.
The dynamics of a couple who need to separate.
When a couple is in crisis, there is almost always one person who is leaning out of the marriage while the other spouse is desperately leaning in. The unhappy spouse has made an announcement of their unhappiness or wish to divorce, or they have been caught communicating romantically with a third party, and the crisis begins. Because we are mammals, both parties feel a life threat once the cat of marriage upheaval is out of the bag, their sympathetic nervous systems activate, and they go into a fight-flight or freeze response. This is where craziness and damage to the family are likely to happen. The Leaning-out spouse is in flight, wanting to get as far away from the marriage as possible, and the Leaning-In spouse wants to fight — using every tactic they can think of to lure their disgruntled partner back into the marriage.
The leaning-in spouse is almost always the one who contacts me. They found me on one of their dozens or hundreds of obsessive Internet searches and sometimes think they have found the Messiah of Marriage Crisis. I am not. Just like a trauma surgeon dealing with a gunshot victim, a dying patient has been delivered to them, and whether they can be saved or not depends on a lot of things, and there are no guarantees. After years of abuse or neglect of their love, maybe even on both sides, the leaning-in person has suddenly awakened from their previous complacency and become motivated. They tell the Leaning-out spouse they will do anything to fix the marriage, except for one thing — separation. Meanwhile, their own instinct tells them to start doing all the things they have not been doing, and so they pursue their disillusioned partner with wild abandon … pleas, promises, flowers, cards, sex, all to no avail. Every attempt at wooing and seduction is viewed with disgust by a leaning-out spouse; at this moment, it’s too little too late, but that could change.
“Becky, I know we just met, but my wife already doesn’t like you,” says a husband at the beginning of our first couples therapy and marriage crisis session.
“Really? What did I do?”
“You are a proponent of separation,” the wife responds. “I don’t like or want separation. I don’t want you to recommend it.”
“What are you afraid of?” I ask.
“Separation leads to divorce,” she says. “I don’t want to divorce.”
“What if it’s your best option to save your marriage?” I ask.
“I don’t care, I won’t do it,” she says. “I don’t believe in it.”
Separation is a bit of a touchy subject but does not lead to divorce by itself. We use it as a Hail Mary pass into the end zone for marriages that will die if we don’t implement managed time apart. Marriages in crisis arrive in my office in dire shape, often with layers of hurt and damage, and something drastic must be done to stop the bleeding and downward spiral. The immediate end goal is to take divorce off the table, at least temporarily, survey the marriage dynamics, see if we can get both partners motivated to work on the marriage at the same time, and get back to well-needed marriage counseling.
Legal separation versus therapist-managed separation.
Separation is a trial divorce. Doesn’t it make sense that you might want to taste a single life and be alone before actually doing it? I’m not talking about dating others while separated; that’s not an option in my managed separations. I am talking about seeing what it’s like to be on your own, not in a partnership. If you look for ways to separate online, you’ll be inundated with boilerplate legal documents created by lawyers. When laypeople buy these documents for over a hundred bucks, they take a look and freak out. The documents are confusing, have no bias toward saving or ending a marriage, and just mention things like finances and custody. They are meant to be filed with a county clerk’s office, which I recommend against unless the couple desires a permanent separation and no divorce for the foreseeable future. I first created my document in Texas, where I went to graduate school, and there was no legal separation. A couple in Texas must formally file for divorce to get temporary orders equivalent to legal separation in other states. This was overkill and scary for the couples I worked with, their names would end up in the newspaper, making it public, so I came up with something that made more sense. A non-binding, short-term plan, designed to create motivation in the Leaning-out partner to want to work on the marriage, with a timeline, details about dating (others or each other), therapy, custody, holidays, vacations, will they send text messages to each other throughout, how to deal with the children, extended family and friends, and more. To me, it’s the best idea for a marriage requiring a well-needed marriage separation intervention, all meant to shake up a family’s dysfunctional system enough to save it in the end.
Criteria for a Managed Separation.
Certain things have to be going on in a marriage for me to advise a period of separation.
1. The Leaning-out partner must have zero or close to zero motivation to work on the marriage and is stuck in ambivalence.
2. The Leaning-out partner must feel an overwhelming urgency to get away from their spouse.
3. The marriage is headed straight to divorce if nothing is done to slow down the process.
Or … both spouses are unhappy but not motivated to work on the marriage. This is not a marriage crisis, per se, but is a therapeutic separation intervention to get couples out of their stuck-ness. Believe it or not, sometimes we miss the person who annoys us so much, especially when they aren’t around, and we’re not allowed to have access to them. We may well realize all the things they do to enhance our lives, and that we don’t want to live without them. Some people need the perspective of not having something they take for granted in order to realize their value.
When it doesn’t work
If only people didn’t cheat. Cheating is the bane of every marriage therapist’s professional life, and the reason I hate it so much is that it is gut-wrenchingly painful to the clients themselves; surely it is one of the most painful things there is, and it is certain that after an affair is revealed, for better or worse, things will never be the same. And, cheaters lie, minimize, and gaslight. This is a recipe for getting nowhere. As Dr. Phil always said, “If you don’t tell me the truth, I can’t help you,” and that is the truth. Lies make everything worse, and so if telling the truth is the first step in the healing process, it’s hard to get to that place when an unfaithful spouse stops covering up what a rotten egg they’ve been acting like. Even cheaters who are normally truthful will lie like a rug when having an affair, and they insult a therapist’s intelligence with the ridiculous things they say, like, “Okay, I did it, but only one time,” or “It was emotional, never physical.” I hope before I retire, we’ll see a new phenomenon where cheaters come clean. “I cheated with my co-worker. It was physical, and we met often. It was over a period of two years, I was infatuated with her, but not anymore. I wish I hadn’t done it, it was so stupid.” With a comment like that, we might get somewhere and on toward the necessary steps to dealing with real issues that caused the cheating in the first place, but transparency and cheating don’t mix in this day and age, and if the couple doesn’t file divorce papers, they’ll be left with a lot of questions unanswered and a damaged marriage that limps along rather than thrives.
In a marriage crisis, all too often, the Leaning-out partner was at a certain level of unhappiness in the marriage, but not wanting to leave, when they met someone and became vulnerable to a romantic or sexual relationship. The affair begins, the Leaning-out partner gets bitten by lust and infatuation chemicals, and suddenly, in their obsessive state, they turn their back on the marriage, instigating a marriage crisis. The Leaning-in partner will be confused and blindsided. When the subject of physical separation comes up, cheaters are more than happy to entertain the idea of living in separate places, but for the reason of having open access to their drug, not to wake up a depressed and dying relationship. I tell couples where an affair is suspected but not yet revealed, “If you separate in order to have access to your affair partner, a managed separation will not work, and you will be wasting everyone’s time and your money.” The other factor is, if the Leaning-in partner finds out later they were duped into a separation so their spouse could enjoy sexual playtime with someone else, well, hell hath no fury.
In the end … does separation save marriages?
Yes, separation done for the right reasons and in the right way can and does save marriages that otherwise would have ended in divorce. It must have a time limit of no longer than six months. The couple must get individual therapy throughout, and meet with a Marriage and Family Therapist to oversee it every one to two weeks. They must follow the guidelines provided in a Managed Separation Agreement, such as the one I created, or work out an informal agreement and guidelines designed to create change with your therapist. Although certain details may be negotiated, I don’t want couples messing with it too much. It’s meant to be difficult because I want the person who is leaning toward divorce to feel uncomfortable enough that they start seeing things in a new way, to find their way back to hopefulness where they may become motivated to work on the marriage. I’m a big believer in using separation as an intervention under the right circumstances.
No separation will be successful if done willy-nilly, and without addressing the issues that caused the couple to become disillusioned in the first place. We need things like separation to stun couples out of complacency, to create a new perspective, positive changes, personal growth, healing, a willingness to be better at marriage, and an understanding of the time it takes to do it right. After years of marriage, things can be different than they were before. People can change and grow. A spouse who wasn’t can become a best friend. The real purpose of marriage is to enhance one another’s lives. You can do this from a new vantage point, and I sincerely hope you do.
Becky Whetstone, Ph.D., is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Arkansas and Texas* and is known as America’s Marriage Crisis Manager®. She is a former features writer and columnist for the San Antonio Express-News and has worked with thousands of couples to save their marriages. She can work with you, too, as a life coach. She is also co-host of the Call Your Mother Relationship Show on YouTube and has a private practice in Little Rock, Arkansas, as a life coach via Zoom. To contact her check out www.DoctorBecky.com and www.MarriageCrisisManager.com. Don’t forget to follow her on Medium so you don’t miss a thing!
*For licensure verification find Becky Whetstone Cheairs.
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