When Should a Married Couple Separate?

Facilitation – The spouse who wants to leave desires separation to make it easier to pursue a relationship with someone else or a lifestyle that the current marriage prohibits.

Fear – The spouse who seeks to leave does so because he/she fears for the emotional, physical, or spiritual safety of self or children.

If your spouse wants to separate from you because of fear of you, you would do well to find out what you do to cause that fear and then do everything possible to change your behavior to remove that fear. Otherwise, it may well be that your spouse must leave for safety’s sake.

If your spouse wants to leave and you know that the reason isn’t fear or fatigue, then there is a likelihood that it is to facilitate his/her embracing a lifestyle that isn’t good or godly. (Be very careful here not to ascribe facilitation as the reason when the truth is that you refuse to face the reality that your spouse is afraid of you or is fatigued by all the pain in your relationship.) I generally advise a person whose mate wants to leave for facilitation to fight strenuously against the separation. So should friends, family, and church members. When someone wants to leave a marriage so that he or she may abandon responsibility and righteousness for self-gratification or a new relationship, everyone who knows the person who wants to leave should place every barrier possible in his/her way. Will that anger the person wanting out? Sure. But anger may be overcome much more easily than divorce and remarriage.

While understandable for spouses to want to leave because of fatigue, it nearly always is the wrong thing to do, as explained earlier. Instead, find an effective counselor, visit your pastor, or see our web site at www.marriagehelper.com. Don’t run from a painful relationship or you may never do the things that may heal it. If you think it beyond repair, be aware that our success rates for couples in crisis – we love to get the ones that everyone else has given up on – is three out of every four couples who spend a weekend with us.

As Vince Lombardi said, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” Don’t let it do it to you. Don’t run. Fight. And by so doing save your marriage and make a wonderful future together, no matter how bad things are now. We see it happen thousands of times a year. Make sure that you see it at least once – in your own marriage.

Joe Beam founded Marriage Helper, an organization that provides marriage help to hurting couples.

Original publication date: October 5, 2007

This conversation is as real as it gets. If you want to protect your marriage from infidelity or are in the middle of trying to rebuild trust after an affair, this episode is for you. In this episode of Rebuilding Us, Shaun and Dana tell their story of what caused them to be unfaithful in their marriage, what they learned, and what safety nets they've put in place to keep another affair from happening. Christian couples are not immune to adultery, unfortunately. Most marriages have little to no boundaries, so it's no wonder couples find themselves cheating on their spouses against their good intentions. Listen in to learn more!