One wants a divorce and the other does not: what to do

The hardest position there is

Being the one who does not want it to end is among the hardest positions in a marriage, and it has an added difficulty: almost everything that comes naturally makes it worse.

Pursuing, insisting, discussing it daily, promising enormous changes, calling their family, crying in front of the children. All understandable. All counterproductive.

This page does not promise you can prevent it. What it can do is keep you from spending your one opportunity doing exactly what closes it.

Why pursuing pushes them away

The central mechanism of this situation.

Someone deciding to leave usually feels suffocated, and pursuit confirms exactly that: that there is no space, that they cannot say what they think without a scene, that the only way to breathe is to go.

Every forced conversation, every message demanding an answer, every attempt to hold on through guilt, pushes a little further in the opposite direction.

And something counterintuitive happens often: many people reconsider when they stop feeling pressured. Not always, and not as a manipulation technique, but because only then can they think without defending themselves.

What makes it worse

• Insisting daily. It turns every day into a confirmation.
• Promising large changes. They sound like desperation and nobody believes them.
• Involving family and friends. It creates shame and closes doors.
• Using the children, even indirectly.
• Monitoring, checking phones, tracking movements.
• Threatening to harm yourself. It turns sorrow into fear faster than anything.
• Giving in on everything. Disappearing as a person is attractive to nobody.

What sometimes works

Stopping the pursuit. Not as a calculated strategy, but genuinely. The hardest item on this list and the one that most changes the ground.

Asking for one concrete, bounded thing. Not an open-ended chance, which is impossible to grant because it has no shape. Something like: three months with couples therapy, and if you feel the same after, I will not stand in the way.

A request with a date and content can be answered. A general one gets dodged.

Working on your own part without displaying it. Changes made to retain someone convince nobody, because they read as a campaign. Real changes get noticed without being announced.

Listening without defending yourself. The hardest and the rarest. When someone can say why they want to leave without every sentence being disputed, they sometimes say things they have never said.

Keeping your life going. Eating, sleeping, working, seeing people. It is not indifference: it is the only thing that will let you stand up whatever the outcome.

The question that has to be asked

Direct, once, without a scene:

Is there someone else?

It changes everything. If there is a third person, you are not in a conversation about the relationship: you are in an entirely different situation, and no effort of yours will resolve while that stays open.

And however much it hurts, you deserve to make your decisions with complete information.

The practical part nobody wants to look at

Even if you hope it does not happen, clarity helps. It is not giving up: it is not being left unprotected.

• Where each of you sleeps meanwhile.
• How accounts and shared expenses get handled.
• What gets said to the children, agreed between you and without details.
• Documents, income, debts: knowing what exists.
• An informational legal consultation, which commits you to nothing.

Looking at it accelerates nothing. Not looking can leave you in a bad position if it does happen.

The children

They cannot be the argument. Asking someone to stay for the children usually produces exactly the home you were trying to avoid.

And they cannot be messengers, allies or witnesses to the conversations. What they see these months is what they will remember of this period, far more than the outcome.

Looking after yourself meanwhile

This is grief, even though nothing has happened yet.

Your sleep, appetite and concentration will go. You will move from anger to hope in the same day. That is normal and does not mean you are unstable.

Find one trusted person and, if you can, professional support. Going through this alone is worse for your health than almost anyone estimates.

And if thoughts of harming yourself appear, that is urgent and does not wait: immediate help.

For this week

One thing only, and it is the hardest on the page:

Stop pursuing for seven days. Without announcing it, without saying it as a reproach, without turning it into a test.

And if you are going to ask for something, make it one concrete thing with a date, said once and not repeated the next day.

What the research says

Four conflict patterns predict deterioration far better than how often a couple argues: criticism of character, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Of the four, contempt carries the most weight.

John GottmanThe Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

What it does not prove:These are patterns observed in laboratory research on specific populations. They describe statistical risk, not destiny: many couples show them and correct them.

Emotionally Focused Therapy describes a cycle that repeats in most distressed couples: one pursues and protests, the other shuts down and withdraws, and each move triggers the other. Working on the cycle, rather than the topic, is what changes the pattern.

Sue JohnsonHold Me Tight · Emotionally Focused Therapy

What it does not prove:EFT has clinical trial support, but it is a treatment delivered by trained professionals. Recognizing the cycle at home helps; it is not the same as doing therapy.

Forgiveness can be worked as a stepwise process, not only as a sudden decision. The REACH model breaks it into recalling the hurt, empathizing, offering forgiveness as an altruistic gift, committing to it, and holding it when the memory returns.

Everett WorthingtonModelo REACH de perdón

What it does not prove:Forgiving does not oblige reconciling or re-exposing yourself. In abusive situations, forgiveness research must never be used to pressure anyone into staying.

Negative events weigh more than positive ones of equivalent intensity. Applied to couples, a hurtful comment leaves a deeper mark than a kind gesture of the same size, which is why repair has to be disproportionate to the damage.

Roy Baumeister y colaboradoresBad Is Stronger Than Good (2001)

What it does not prove:It is a general psychological principle, not an exact measure of how many gestures offset one hurt. Nobody should be keeping that count.

Relationship research is mostly correlational and conducted on specific populations. It describes group tendencies; it does not predict what will happen in any particular marriage, including yours.

What the Bible says

Psalm 34:18

God’s nearness is affirmed precisely toward the brokenhearted. It is not a promise that the problem disappears: it is a statement about where God is while it lasts.

It is for the week when there is nothing to solve yet and it simply has to be crossed.

Proverbs 15:1

How you answer changes the temperature of a conversation: a gentle answer defuses anger and a harsh word ignites it. Content matters, and tone decides whether it lands.

Before deciding whether you are right, decide the tone you will use. The second determines whether the first is any use.

1 Corinthians 7:10-16

The passage asks people not to separate and then explicitly contemplates the case of a spouse who leaves: the one who remains is not bound, because they were called to peace. It is a text that upholds the bond while recognizing that not everything depends on one person.

It lifts the burden of single-handedly holding up a union the other party has already abandoned.

Beware of misuse:The phrase about not being bound gets clipped in both directions: some use it to justify any breakup and others deny it to retain someone. Neither reading respects that the text itself names peace as a criterion.