Dear Roe,
I have been in a relationship with my husband for more than 10 years and we have children. I have gradually come to realise that I no longer love him, or even like him very much. There are some aspects to his personality, like his insecurity, low self-esteem and hypersensitivity to criticism that I think I never truly saw until recently, even though they were always there. I think I would be happier out of this relationship, and I am not afraid of being single, or a single parent. However, If I leave him, it will absolutely destroy him, and I can’t see him ever recovering. He is a good person and he hasn’t done anything wrong. I just don’t think I could do it to him. It would have a devastating impact on our children. And it would have other negative consequences, such as on our finances, my relationship with his family, and my standing within the community. I have tried talking to him many times (although not as bluntly as I’m doing here). We have tried counselling, but I had to drag him to it against his will, and he didn’t really engage with it. I have also suggested he might benefit from taking an antidepressant, but he is totally against the idea and judges people who take them. I am very unhappy the ways things are and I don’t know what’s the best thing to do.
Allow me to dive right in with some truths that should not be considered radical, but too often are:
You are allowed to leave a relationship that isn’t abusive or chaotic or dangerous, but is simply no longer right for you. You are allowed to choose aliveness, yourself, the possibility of more, over relentless work and a sense of duty. You are allowed to stop putting all your energy into saving a person who will not save themselves, and refuses to recognise that the effort is drowning you.
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You fear leaving will destroy your husband. But staying is destroying you. He is responsible for his own healing. If he unravels after you go, that’s not because you left – it’s because he refused to do the work before you did. You’ve been managing his insecurity, walking on eggshells, making yourself smaller to keep the peace. That isn’t partnership. That’s survival. The idea that a woman should stay because a man might fall apart without her? That is not love. That is martyrdom dressed up as responsibility, and you have a responsibility to yourself and your children to show that women don’t have to martyr themselves for men.
[ I asked my husband for a divorce – everyone thinks I made a mistake. Did I?Opens in new window ]
A researcher named Ellie Anderson recently coined the term “hermeneutic labour” to describe an imbalance of emotional work and care in straight relationships, and a form of work women often end up doing for male partners. It refers to the cognitive and emotional work women often do to understand, interpret and manage both their own and male partners’ feelings. You’ve been doing that work alone: interpreting his moods, softening your truths, organising therapy, suggesting medication, trying to fix what he won’t even acknowledge. He isn’t picking up the work. He’s not caring for himself, for you, or the relationship. That’s not a reflection of his goodness – it’s a reflection of what he’s not been taught to do.
Men are not socialised within a patriarchal society to be attuned to their emotions and express their needs, so women in partnership with men often spend a lot of time compensating for this lack of emotional self-awareness, regulation, articulation and treatment by obsessing over and addressing their partners’ emotional needs. This is what you have been doing with your husband. You are doing all the work to not only address his needs, but to address your relationship’s needs – and he is not even picking up the work you have started. He is not taking care of himself, he is not taking care of you, and he is not taking care of your relationship. That is deeply sad. I mean that genuinely – I believe you that he is a good man, and I think there a lot of good men who are not taught how to care for themselves, for others, for their partners, and it’s causing all of us a lot of damage.
But you cannot do his work for him. You cannot keep a relationship alive alone. And you cannot care for yourself, your children, and your husband without receiving any care and support back. The reason you can easily imagine yourself single is because you already are. You have a husband, but not a partner. Your husband is another person you have to take care of and do unreciprocated work for. Studies have shown that after a separation or divorce, straight women report being happier and remaining single, while straight men report being unhappier – and then they remarry much quicker. Much of this is to do with dynamics you’re describing, where married women not only do more domestic work and childcare but do more of this hermeneutical labour which, when one-sided, is draining and exhausting and unsustainable for women, who need love and care and support back – not more work.
You are a mother. You will always have work to do. You need space in your life where you get to focus on yourself, where you feel cared for and supported, where you feel like your needs are met. You deserve to either have a partner who helps you with that – or you deserve the space, time and mental energy to do it for yourself. Which means either your husband needs to step up and be a partner, or you need to leave.
Yes, leaving will affect your kids. But so will staying. Children notice everything: the imbalance, the silences, the emotional labour. What are you teaching them about love, gender roles, and how they should act in the world and in relationships? What will they learn if you show them that love means women overfunctioning and sacrificing while a man avoids emotional awareness and responsibility?
As for your husband, if you leave, he will either start taking care of himself, or he’ll find someone else to care for him, or he will not learn. None of those options are you doing anything to him – they are his actions, his responses, his choices. But right now, you’re enabling him. You staying in this dynamic is not giving him any impetus to change. You leaving, or telling him that this dynamic is now untenable and you may leave, offers him a choice to change or not. Give him the option to change and grow. But do not take on the responsibility of his choices. It is not yours, and never was.
If you leave, you can leave kindly and respectfully. You can figure out what is best for your children and work towards that. You can find them a great therapist, you can get your own therapist, your husband can find his own too. None of you have to walk through this change alone – but you cannot continue to live in this marriage alone. You cannot keep lighting yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.
You matter too. Say it to yourself, whenever you waver.
