How do you know when it’s time to leave your marriage. For those of you who have gone through divorce, what triggered you actually doing something about it and do you have any regrets?

My son was seven when I got divorced, and I think one of the triggering factors was the shift in my perspective away from the narrative that I have been telling myself that I was “destroying my family“ and“ ruining my kids life by breaking us up“ to a realization of what I really wanted to model for my son of what a healthy relationship looks like. I realized I never wanted my son to stay in a toxic relationship whether that’s as a highschooler or college or young adult or adult or whatever . I would never want him to stay in a bad relationship or “feel trapped”, so why am I? It was truly about what am I modeling to him? Am I modeling “staying together for the sake of the kid“ and being miserable or am I modeling caring for my own heart and my own self-worth and my own happiness. That’s what I’d want for him, I’d never want him to stay in something that was miserable, because he felt some sort of sense of obligation or guilt. Hes now 11 and is thriving, had a good relationship with my exes girlfriend and her kids in subsequent years after the divorce, and has a great relationship with my boyfriend now. I remember framing for him when I was starting to date and get serious that families look all sorts of different ways and in situations like ours how lucky he is to have even that many more people who love him

Getting back to the triggering event, I remember talking to my therapist at the time about how I felt like there was not one actual event to justify divorcing him, like him cheating on me or him driving a bankrupt or him getting physical and I felt like without something huge like that But I didn’t really have a “reason“ and through lots of conversations with my therapist about this line of thinking, I really came to understand what she was telling me that my happiness is a legitimate, fundamental, perfectly valid reason to get out of what was very toxic emotionally manipulative relationship. So I think really coming to understand that my own happiness was something that was OK for me to strive for and to want, and realizing what am I modeling for my son and how do I want him to think relationships look like we’re really the two things that tipped me over the edge. As for regret…Through all of the difficulties of negotiating divorce agreements, the look on my kiddos face when on the day we told him, I have not had one tiny sliver, not even a thread or a tiny inkling of regret…ever.

Unless your partner is an asshole, abusive, a cheater or a degenerate, i think discontent is inevitable and marriage is worth fighting for. Work it out as much as you can and when you really can’t figure it out together anymore, then consider it then.!

Have clear non-negotiables: abuse (physical, mental, verbal), cheating, addiction…. Then figure out if the unhappiness comes from that or just lack of connection

Try marriage therapy. We got low enough that I demanded therapy or for him to leave. Now that we're working with a therapist, she's helping us through a lot of our disconnects. (Had he not cared enough to try therapy with me, that would probably be the end....if he could cause so many problems and not care enough to try to fix any of them, then he'd have irreparably broken our marriage vows.)

Following. Could have asked this myself.

It was two things for me… 1. when my father said “you don’t have to live like this.” And 2. when I was willing to walk away from everything monetarily because the house and stuff wasn’t worth staying. Both sound extreme looking back but in the moment it didn’t seem like it. No regrets now. Btw - the day after my dad said that, told hubby wanted a separation. He packed a bag and left. It was easier getting him out than I thought it would be.

If your best friend/parent/child/sibling was in the same situation, what would you tell them to do?

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