S3 E2: How It Ended: Are We Leaving Too Soon?

Gabriella Pomare: Welcome back to Before It Breaks with Gabriella Pomare. Now, last week we talked about before the affair: the silence, the secrecy, the emotional distance, and the things that can happen long before somebody actually crosses a line. And this week I want to look at what comes next. How it ended. And I don't necessarily mean the day somebody said, hey, I want a divorce. Because sometimes the relationship ends long before that conversation ever happens. Sometimes there's a clear moment. There was an affair. Someone found a message. Somebody walked out. There was a fight that changed everything. But sometimes there isn't one moment at all. Two people just slowly stop being a couple, and by the time one of them finally says, I don't think I want to do this anymore. The other person's standing there wondering when on earth that happened. And I think relationships ending in twenty twenty six is such an interesting conversation because the environment around relationships has changed enormously. We have more information than ever before. Within 30 seconds you can go online and have somebody explain your attachment style, your partner's attachment style, your childhood wounds, emotional labor, narcissism, boundaries, trauma, red flags, and whether you should leave. And some of that language is incredibly useful. It's helped people recognize dynamics that generations before us may simply have tolerated. But I also wonder whether sometimes we now have so much information that every hard season can start to look like evidence that we're with the wrong person. We also have access to other people in a way previous generations simply didn't. An old boyfriend is one Instagram message away. A work friendship can continue all night on WhatsApp. We can see hundreds of other relationships every day and compare the The messy reality of our own relationship with tiny polished pieces of someone else's. So I guess the question is: are we leaving too quickly now? Or were generations before us staying far too long? Are we expecting too much from one person, or are we finally expecting relationships to give us things that people should have always been able to expect? You know, respect. Emotional safety, intimacy, partnership. I don't think there's one easy answer. And maybe the more useful question is, how do we tell the difference between a hard season and a genuine disconnection? So let's jump into dear Gabriella. My husband left six months ago, and I still don't completely understand what happened. We were together for 14 years and we have two children. There was no affair that I know of, and we hardly ever fought. We were both busy, but I genuinely thought we were okay. And then one night he told me he didn't think he loved me anymore and said we had been disconnected for years. And I was completely shocked because I didn't think we were disconnected. I thought we were tired. How can two people be in the same marriage experience it so differently? And how do you know whether you're just going through a difficult period or whether your whole relationship is actually ending? Now, I think this is one of the hardest kinds of separation because there's nothing obvious to attach the ending to. And relationships absolutely do have hard seasons. You can have a baby and barely recognize each other for 12 months. Or you can lose a parent and build a business or have financial stress or care for children or deal with illness or just simply be completely exhausted. The relationship may not be getting the best of. Either of you. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the relationship's broken. For me, the difference is often less about how difficult life is and more about whether you can still find your way towards each other within that difficulty. You can be exhausted and still be connected. You can be angry and still be connected. You can have less intimacy than either of you might like, but still have a sense underneath it all that you matter to me. We matter, and I want us to be okay. Disconnection feels different. It's when curiosity disappears. I stop asking what's happening inside you because I think I already know. You stop telling me how you feel because you don't believe anything will change. And sometimes the absence of conflict can actually be misleading. You know, people will often say to me, but we never fought. And sometimes that means the relationship was peaceful. Sometimes it means somebody simply stopped bringing things up. They tried for years and nothing changed and eventually they became quiet. And that quiet can look like everything's fine right up until somebody leaves. So instead of always asking your partner, Are we okay? Maybe ask, is there anything between us that you've stopped trying to fix? Now I think that's a very different question. Okay, now message two, Dear Gabriella. My wife says she thinks she wants to leave. We're both 42. We've got three kids, and we've got incredibly demanding jobs. She says she feels numb about our marriage, but she also says she feels numb about almost everything. She barely sleeps, she doesn't see her friends anymore, and she says the only place she feels competent is at work. She keeps telling me that maybe leaving me will make her feel like herself again. Yeah, maybe she's right. But I keep wondering whether she wants to leave our marriage or whether she wants to leave the life that we've created. How how do you tell the difference? I love this one. And I think that it's such an important question. But I also want to be really careful here. Because sometimes someone says they want to leave and they know exactly what they mean. Telling them that they're just stressed can become just another way of refusing to hear them. But I also think when somebody says, I don't feel anything anymore. It's worth asking, do you not feel anything about the relationship? Or do you just not feel anything? Because our relationships don't exist separately from the rest of our lives. If you're burnt out, overwhelmed, disconnected from your friends, working constantly and carrying more than you can sustain, sometimes the relationship becomes the place where all of that dissatisfaction ends up landing. So you start thinking, something has to change. And the relationship's one of the biggest things in your life. So perhaps your mind goes there first. And work can be a huge emotional escape. At work, you might feel capable, valued, interesting, respected. You know, someone says, great job. Someone listens when you speak. And then when you walk in the front door and somebody just asks you whether you remembered milk, that contrast can become powerful. And gradually, I'm busy. Can also become a way of avoiding everything that feels really difficult at home. So before making an enormous decision, I do think it's worth asking, what am I actually trying to escape from? Is it the person? Is it the relationship? Or is it this version of my life? Because those are not necessarily the same thing. And the same goes for the idea of losing yourself. Sometimes people genuinely have lost themselves inside a relationship. But sometimes finding yourself again doesn't require just ending your relationship. Maybe it just means seeing your friends again. Maybe it means asking for help. Maybe it means changing how the mental load is divided. Maybe it means actually stopping work at seven o'clock. Or maybe it means rebuilding parts of your identity that have disappeared, you know, under parenting and work and responsibility. That's not always going to save the relationship. But before choosing a solution, it does help to understand which problem you're actually trying to solve. Now, there is another way that relationships end. And this one's often much quieter. Resentment. Now, resentment rarely arrives in one dramatic moment. It builds. It's the conversation that went nowhere, the thing that you asked for repeatedly, the apology that Never came. The feeling that you're carry than the other person, the fact that you no longer feel appreciated. And eventually resentment can turn into contempt. You hear it in the eye roll, the sarcasm. The of course you did. The joke about your partner in front of friends, it's not really a joke. You stop being angry about something that they did, and you start believing that there's something fundamentally wrong with who they are. And once that happens, curiosity starts disappearing. If they do something kind, you start questioning their motive. If they make a mistake, it confirms everything you already believe about them. When you already know who they are, why they did it, and why they'll never change. And that's an incredibly hard place from which to repair. Now, attachment patterns can also play into this. I mean, you often have one person who Feels distance and they move closer. You know, what's wrong? We need to talk. Why are you shutting me out? And the other person experiences that as pressure. So they move further away. I don't want to talk right now. Can you just leave this alone? The more one pursues, the more the other one withdraws. The more one withdraws, the more anxious the other becomes. And eventually both people think the other person's the problem. But underneath it, They may actually be asking exactly the same thing. Do I matter to you? So one person asks by moving closer, and the other protects themselves by moving away. And if you never recognize that pattern, you're gonna have the same argument for like 15 years with completely different subject matters. Money, sex, work, children, the in-laws. Yeah, the content changes, but the emotional argument underneath it stays exactly the same. And this is also why simply leaving a relationship doesn't always mean we leave our patterns behind. We often just take ourselves with us. So again, are we leaving too soon? I don't think that there is one answer. Some people do. They leave too soon. Some people stay far too long. Some relationships could have been repaired if two people had started having honest conversations much earlier. Other people spend years trying to repair something that only one person's actually participating in. And I think social media can make other lives look easier than they are, but I also think social media and access to information have helped people recognize things that they should never have had to tolerate. Both can be true. I think we also have to be careful though about confusing discomfort with dysfunction. Relationships are uncomfortable sometimes. Being told you've hurt your partner, yeah, it's uncomfortable. I mean, compromise can be uncomfortable. Repair is uncomfortable. Realizing that perhaps you're part of the problem is very uncomfortable. Not every difficult feeling means the relationship's wrong, but equally, staying is not automatically more noble than leaving. There are relationships where leaving is absolutely the healthiest decision. So perhaps before asking, should I stay? Or should I go, ask, is this a season or is it a pattern? When things settle down, do we find each other again? Is there still goodwill between us? Can we still be curious with one another? Are we both willing to change? Have I actually told my partner what I need? Am I leaving the relationship or am I trying to escape something else in my life? And maybe the hardest one. Have I already left emotionally and simply not told my partner yet? Because I think that can be one of the cruelest endings of all. Not leaving. Leaving silently six months before the other person knows the relationship is over. And there's another part of this that I don't think that we talk about often enough. Because it sounds a little bit less sophisticated than just attachment theory and emotional disconnection. You know, sometimes you just get the ick. And I know that sounds ridiculous when we're talking about a 10 or 15 year marriage, but hey, stay with me. Because I actually think there is something interesting in it. Have you ever had the experience where on paper, nothing enormous has changed? But suddenly you don't want your partner touching you, maybe in the same way, or you don't instinctively move towards them anymore. They lean over to kiss you and you find yourself turning your face slightly. Or they put their hand on you in bed and instead of feeling comforting, something in you almost, you know, recoils. And then you start to feel really terrible about it. Because this is someone you love, and I'm sure they are a wonderful person, and maybe they're a great parent. Maybe absolutely nothing dramatic has happened. So where did the feeling come from? I sometimes wonder whether our bodies can register that something's wrong in a relationship, you know, before our minds are prepared to admit it. And I don't mean that in some mystical your body always knows, leave immediately, kind of way. Because I think that that can become dangerous advice as well. Sometimes you're just exhausted. Sometimes you've had children crawling over you all day, and the last thing you want is another human being touching you. And sometimes stress destroys desire. You get it. Sometimes hormones change. Sometimes you've been together for 15 years and attraction. naturally moves through different periods. So getting the ick on Tuesday doesn't mean you should be calling a divorce lawyer on Wednesday. But if it stays, I think it's worth becoming curious about. Because sometimes I don't want you touching me is actually carrying a bigger conversation underneath it. Maybe I'm resentful with you. Maybe I don't feel emotionally safe with you. Maybe I've been asking you for something for three years and I've stopped Believing that you actually care. Maybe I feel like your mother rather than your partner. And maybe I carry so much of our life that by the time you reach for me, I don't experience it as intimacy. I experience it as one more person needing something from me. And that's a very different problem from simply we've lost the spark. And so this is where I think that the ick can be really interesting. Because sometimes people treat it like a verdict. I've got the ick. That's it. Attraction's gone. Relationship's over. But what if the ick's information rather than instruction? What if instead of immediately asking, does this mean I don't love you anymore? We asked, what happened between us that made my body start pulling away? Because sometimes attraction does come back when resentment's dealt with, you know, when somebody feels seen again or when the mental load changes, when two people start actually liking each other again. And sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you do all of that work and you realize that something fundamental really has changed. But at least then you're responding to what's actually happening rather than making an enormous decision based on a feeling that maybe you haven't yet really understood. And look. Maybe this is slightly controversial, but I also think we've become very quick to treat loss of desire as evidence of incompatibility. Yeah, sometimes it is. But sometimes you've just been married for twelve years. You are both exhausted, and you haven't had a proper conversation in six months. And the only time your partner touches you is when they want intimacy. Of course you're not exactly ripping each other's clothes off. That doesn't necessarily mean that That you chose the wrong person. It might just mean that the relationship's been starving for something that neither of you has been feeding. So again, perhaps the question isn't just do I still, I don't know, fancy you. Maybe it's what's happened between us that's changed the way that I'm experiencing you. Because sometimes the body might notice the distance before the mind has found the words for it. But noticing's only the beginning of the conversation. Not necessarily the end of the relationship. Now, today's don't do what I did is this. I spent nearly two years telling my friends that my marriage was over, before I properly told my husband how unhappy I actually was. And every time we argued, I told someone else. And every disappointment became more evidence in my mind that we shouldn't be together. And by the time I finally told him I wanted to leave, I'd already processed the end of my marriage with my friends and my sister and my therapist. But he hadn't processed none of it because he didn't know. Now, when he asked me to try counseling, I remember thinking it's too late. And looking back, of course it felt too late to me. I'd been leaving for like two years. For him, the conversation had only just started that night. I still think ending the marriage was the right decision, but I really wish I'd told him the truth earlier. I think that Is such an important distinction. Honesty doesn't guarantee that a relationship survives. Sometimes honesty is the thing that finally ends it. But at least both people are standing in the same reality. So I would love to hear your how it ended story. Was there a moment when you knew, or did you only realize afterwards that your relationship had been ending for months or for years? Or, don't know, did you wish you had left earlier? Do you wish you had tried harder before you left? Did you manage to repair something that you thought was completely broken? So you can submit a dear Gabriella or don't do what I did completely anonymously through the link to my website in the show notes, or send me a DM on Instagram at theGabriellaPomari. And come and join the conversation there as well. Tell me what you agreed with, what you didn't, what you want to hear more about. And what you want me to talk about next episode. I'll also be sharing much more soon about my new book Before It Breaks, which is coming in early 2027, and which takes these conversations about modern relationships, disconnection, repair, and separation so much further. But for today, maybe the question isn't simply whether your relationship is good or bad. Maybe it is. When things get hard, are we still trying to find our way back to each other? Or have we quietly started building lives that allow us to turn away? Think about it. I'm Gabriella Pomare and this is Before It Breaks. I'll see you next time.