Should You Mend or End A Toxic Marriage

In this heart-stirring episode of "Mend or End," we dive deep into the crossroads of decision that many find themselves standing at, teetering on the edge of staying in or leaving an unhealthy marriage. Karen's journey is one that resonates with the silent battles many face: the weight of religious or marital commitments that bind, the daunting financial fears of navigating life solo, and the complex web of fears surrounding the well-being and future of their children. It's a narrative wrapped in the struggle between the hope of change and the reality of delusion, between the known hardships and the foreign, overwhelming prospects of divorce.

Karen's solo episode is not just a story; it's an exploration of the internal conflicts that plague those considering the immense step of ending a relationship. It addresses the all-too-common fear of being unable to make it alone and the paralyzing effect of having been bullied into a state of self-distrust. Furthermore, it confronts the intricacies of parental concerns—from the fear of hurting the kids with conflict, losing precious time with them, to the financial anxieties tied to their future education. Through Karen's eyes, we explore how the quest for personal health and well-being could indeed be the ultimate form of protection and support for one's children, challenging the listener to weigh the pros and cons of mend or end.

Journey Beyond Divorce Resources mentioned in this episode:

• If you’re unsure how you would categorize your marriage, take our Relationship Quiz.
• If you’ve been on the fence - Grab a Should I Mend or End FREE Coaching Call with Karen McMahon!
• If You have already decided and need support moving forward, check out Divorce 101.

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Listen to the Podcast here

Should You Mend or End A Toxic Marriage

Welcome back to another episode. For this episode, we’re talking about should you mend or end your marriage living in dysfunctional, toxic, or abusive marriages? I’m hoping to help build a bridge. Many of us who are in these difficult marriages stay so long. Now, there’s no judgment in this conversation. People stay for a lot of different reasons but those of you who are uncomfortable, who feel like you’ve been sitting on the fence for a long time or you’re stuck and you don’t want to leave. You want to mend then you don’t know if it’s possible or how to begin or you want to end and you’re just scared to death of divorce and everything that ending entails. This episode is for you.

Personal Story & The Start Of The Journey

I have a free gift at the end of the episode for you. Let me start with my story. Maybe you’ve heard it before. My divorce took three and a half years, but if we go prior to that, it was my daughter’s two-year birthday. It was in December 30th, 2000. There was an enormous blow up. It was our one physical altercation and it began my process. I already knew that things were bad because I was at the end of my rope. I was triggered, reactive, and unhappy. This particular event caused me to go into therapy.

I went into therapy for a while and worked on myself then I left and other issues came up. I went into marriage counseling then I went into a different marriage counseling and then things got worse. I went back into therapy again or maybe I was in therapy through some of this. If we say that January 2001 was like the beginning point for me, my divorce was complete in October 2006. What happened between January 2001 was all this therapy and marriage counseling. In November 2002, I hired an attorney, but then I immediately put it on pause within a month or two because my spouse wanted to work on it and make it work.

We did a little bit more. We did a retro vibe program and we did a little bit more marriage counseling. It just was going no place. I was only in a marriage for around ten years. For those of you who are in a marriage for 20 years, 30 years, or 35 years, this decision, can I mend, should I mend, or should I end, is huge. A lot of things come up. I want to talk about a lot of the different issues that I hear about what comes up when you’re making this decision. I want to normalize the fact that if you just feel like, “I have been sitting on the fence for so long.” I get it. Many people would get it and it’s very normal.

Overcoming Obstacles In Deciding To Stay Or Leave A Marriage

The more chaotic and dysfunctional or abusive or toxic the marriage, the more we lose ourselves and the harder it is to make this incredibly big decision. What do you need? That’s what I want to address in this episode. I’m just going to run through a bunch of them. It may be that you have religious beliefs or cultural beliefs where it’s like one side say, “Until death do I part. I have to stay.” I was raised Roman Catholic, and I certainly felt like I couldn’t do something that was going to go against my God. That was one of my many obstacles to overcome.

The more chaotic, dysfunctional, abusive, or toxic the marriage, the more we lose ourselves, making it harder to make this incredibly big decision.

You may feel because of cultural reasons. Nobody in my family, in my neighborhood, in my church or my synagogue or whatever my house of worship is, this is not something that I know about. That’s going to cause its own friction and that’s good to know. I would say, as you’re reading this, if you can write down what resonates with you because the clearer you can get on what are the obstacles that I’m facing to move from this position that I’m in that is uncomfortable. Begin that list. It may be that you have a cultural belief or a religious belief around the commitment. We can look at that.

The second thing is, you may feel like I can change him or her. I know that talking enough and recommending enough. I was certainly there, “Let’s go to marriage counseling. Let me point out your flaws. Let me ask you to please change these things.” That might be. You might feel like I believe that they can change. You may know that you too have to change, which I will tell you, you do. That might be you. That might be like, “I can change them,” and then we want to talk about that. We want to talk about what is changing you look like and how do you invite your spouse into doing some personal growth work and doing some work on the relationship to shift and change so that it’s more pleasing across the board.

We can talk about that. In my free gift, that’s where you’re going to get an incredible amount of value. It could be financial fear as with so many of us. I was a working mom. I wasn’t a stay-at-home mom and still the question was, can I make it on my own? Can I work full-time and be a single parent of grade school kids and keep a roof over my head and food on the table or is this just better than crashing and burning on my own?

That’s a very real, scary, and understandable question to ask. There’s so many fears. I’m going to start with that financial fear, but it could just be fear. It could just be that I have been bullied, belittled and berated for so long that I don’t trust myself. I have a tremendous amount of self-doubt and a real lack of confidence that even if logically I could figure out what the right thing to do is. I’m just too scared to do it. That might be you and that makes sense. It could be uncertainty that I don’t know anything about divorce. All I know it’s a big scary foreign land. I don’t know how the legal works. I don’t know my finances. I’m scared about the kids. I’m going to get into that in a minute.

It may be just this huge uncertainty that you have in which case we can look at that like how do you then address that so that you gain clarity so that you can move forward. With all of these questions, it’s like, what’s the problem? How do I get clear on a single path to a solution and then get myself into action? When I was on the fence which felt like forever. I feel like I was holding my whole family’s future on pause because I couldn’t make a decision. That has its own weight and pressure. This is you. Keep that list of what is it that’s keeping me stuck.

It may be fear around the kids and I’ve got 3 or 4 of them. One is, I’ll hurt the kids. It’s going to damage the kids. They say don’t divorce. Divorce is damaging. I can’t do that to my children. We want to look at, let’s look at what they’re living in. Are they living in a household where they’re getting healthy messaging about intimate love, how to deal with conflict and how to communicate well? Is there something else that they’re getting? Could they maybe even be a little bit hurt by what’s currently going? Is the possibility of ending maybe even better for them?

That’s a big question to ask. Another one around the kids is I can’t leave. I want to leave, but I can’t leave because then they’ll be with the high conflict parent X percentage of the time. I won’t be able to protect them. They’re either young or mom or dad is disordered or has anger management or can be abusive. It may be, I have to stay to protect the kids. We can look at that because there’s a lot of different sides to that statement.

If you’re trying to protect your kids from somebody that they need to learn how to navigate, that might be another angle for us to look at together. Again, the free gift at the end is where you can dive in and make some progress on these questions. Another kid fear is, I won’t be able to protect them. If I leave, then they’re alone with that other parent and I’m not going to be able to protect them.

They’re with the other parent and so it’s just better if I stay or I’m going to stay because my spouse makes a nice living and I’m a stay-at-home parent or I’m the lesser money spouse. I want my kids to go to a good college. I want them to have a good life. Maybe I know that this marriage is never going to last long term, but I am willing to soldier on and get them to point where they’ve gotten their college education.

From Stuck To Clear: Find Your Path Forward

I hear that a lot, too. Again, there’s no judgment. There’s no right and wrong. Your choice is only you can make. My desire is that you get crystal clear on what’s keeping you stuck, what you need for clarity, a plan of action and the beginning of moving forward in whatever direction that looks like. Another fear around the children is, I just cannot imagine not waking up with my kids every day. I can’t lose time with them. I can’t even think about not seeing them 50% of the time. It’s decimating to me.

The choice is yours alone. Make sure you gain clarity on what's keeping you stuck, identify what you need, and create a plan to move forward in whatever direction that may be.

We can look at that and we can look at how qualitative your time with them is and how chaotic you might be or how overwhelmed you might be. We can look at quality versus quantity. Not to push you in a direction but just so that you’re looking at all sides of the issue and then you can more clearly make your decision. There’s many more. In fact, I would love to hear what your other obstacles are that I’m not mentioning because there are so many of them.

My desire is to build a bridge to help build a bridge for you from where you are to where you want to be. You can’t build the bridge until you know what the obstacles are, how long the bridge has to be, how sturdy the bridge has to be, and what else the bridge has to include. If you want to mend, let’s first talk to those who are like, “I’m pretty certain I want to mend.” Even if it’s not realistic, even if other loved ones have said it’s not realistic. If you want to mend, then start there. Don’t listen to anybody else.

You may need that one last time to try to mend so that should you go forward toward ending, you don’t have regret. I’ve tried everything. I’ve turned over every stone. I get that. I did that myself. There’s no judgment here. The question is, what do you need? If you want to mend, go into it on ice wide open. If mending involves telling him or her all the ways they’re wrong and all the things that they have to do differently. We can even address that in healthy and productive way.

The other part of mending that is brilliant is, what did you bring to the table? Where are you needing to grow? While you’re trying to mend your marriage, one of the most important things is to mend yourself. If you work on finding yourself confidence, your voice, your areas where you need to curb your conflict, and where you need to show up differently in disagreement rather than being conflict diverse or look at your people pleasing or your co-dependents or your inability to set up hold boundaries where you’re tendency to get react. Whatever that is for you, that’s part of the mending.

If you’re thinking it would be so much more comfortable for me to start trying to mend, let’s look at what you need and get you started on that front. If you want to end but you continually or paralyzed by the fears that I mentioned or ones that I didn’t. I want help you and it’s scary. Divorce is probably the biggest transition any of us have a go through. It’s financial and it’s this legal process that involves the kids, our social circles, losing in laws, separating friends, and a hundred other things. It’s scary and makes sense.

Divorce is likely the biggest transition anyone can go through. It involves financial changes, a legal process, the impact on kids, our social circles, losing in-laws, separating from friends, and countless other challenges.

If you’re feeling like, “If I had a fast forward button, Karen, and I could just pop on to the other side of the divorce and be divorced. I do it on a dime or I’d at least be more apt to head in that direction.” That’s great to know because then we can work with you in how to get there. This is what I’m doing. You’ve probably heard me talking about my Divorce 101 program. That’s for people who have decided. My question to myself is, what is the bridge for all of you who are unhappy but you haven’t yet decided and you don’t know how to decide?

I want to make sure that I create a resource that’s an ideal bridge for people on the fence who aren’t ready to decide but one move in that direction. Here’s what I’m offering. I am offering a free one-hour coaching call with me to the first ten people who reach out. This is going to help you get clear on how to begin to move forward. It’s going to give you the clarity and the baby steps to get out of paralysis and into action. It’s going to help me get clear on how to help you. This isn’t a pitch. This is just a full powerful coaching conversation to help with your clarity and your next steps.

I guarantee you, you will walk away with new perspectives and action plan that you’re excited about and a way to get unstuck and move forward. I have a couple of resources for you and that’ll be one of them. I didn’t mention this before. The first one is, if you are unsure, if you’re reading and you like, “Maybe it’s me. Maybe my marriage isn’t dysfunctional or toxic or abusive.” Go to JBDDivorceSupport.com. In the homepage, right up top is our Relationship Quiz. It’ll take you five minutes to do and you will immediately see which category that you fall in to. If you’re not sure how you would categorize your marriage, start there.

Secondly, if you’ve been on the fence, I want you to grab a Should I Mend or Should I End free coaching call with me. This is a $500 investment and you are getting it completely free. Go to JBDDivorceSupport.com/MendOrEnd. I’m only taking ten people. The first ten people to sign up and there’s a questionnaire that you fill as you book your time, will get this call for free.

To wrap up, I want to say that being on the fence makes all the sense in the world. Being afraid is completely normal. Saying stuff doesn’t serve you. It doesn’t serve you, your spouse, or your children. I encourage you to take the quiz. Grab one of those first ten mender and free coaching calls. Let’s get you out of paralysis and into momentum moving in a direction of your desire. I look forward to hearing from you. Go to the website JBDDivorce.com.

Important Links

• Relationship Health Quiz
• Should I Mend or End FREE Coaching Call
• Divorce 101
• Journey Beyond Divorce
• JBDDivorceSupport.com/MendOrEnd