Sometimes the most correct thing to do is to stay in a different way. And sometimes the most correct

thing to do is to leave. But a lot of times we can't yet get clear about what the right choice is

because of the way that we are in the marriage. We often know we are a part of the problem on some cellular

level, but we're having a hard time figuring out, do I change my behavior or do I just let this

thing go?

Welcome to conversations with Dr. Jennifer, a collection of interviews on the topics of relationships,

sexuality, spirituality, and more, all featuring Dr. Finlayson-Fife. So I want to talk about, you know, the decision to leave a marriage and also the corollary, which is the decision to step into a marriage more completely. And being married is not the same thing as stepping into a marriage.

A lot of people leave their marriage without ever physically leaving.

So first of all, I just want to think, like a lot of us make choices in our lives,

and we make those choices in a way that allows us to imagine that we can escape

full responsibility for those choices. So we do things that we hold

in our minds other people responsible for, right? This includes divorce. Often, you know, it's out of

my victimhood, my resentment. We can make our spouse crazy enough that they eventually leave us and we get a

divorce that way. Right. A lot of times we're trying to escape responsibility and a lot of

us get married in the same way, right? So we get married under the safety, quote unquote,

of the idea that God wanted us to do it or the prophet wanted us to do it or my mother or my young women's

leader or whoever it was thought it was the right thing to do.

And another version of this, I think it's a lot of us, most of us I think, get married

with the idea that marriage is going to give us something, love, security, a place in society, the guarantee of people around us that need us and love us.

So I think a lot of times we make these very consequential choices but are looking for ways to escape the full weight or the magnitude of our responsibility and the implications of those choices.

And this is very human and it's actually quite understandable because we're usually making

choices with limited amounts of information and yet responsible for the consequences of

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