The thought keeps you up at night. You lie there staring at the ceiling while your partner sleeps beside you, and you wonder if this is really how the rest of your life will look. Maybe you’ve been thinking about it for months, or maybe the idea just recently crept in after yet another argument that felt different from the ones before.
Marriage is supposed to be forever, but sometimes forever feels impossible. You’re exhausted from trying, from fighting, from pretending everything is fine. Your friends tell you every relationship has ups and downs, and you know that’s true, but something feels broken in a way you can’t quite name.
Before you make one of the biggest decisions of your life, you need clarity. Real, honest, uncomfortable clarity about what you’re feeling and why you’re feeling it. These questions aren’t meant to push you in any direction—they’re here to help you see your situation with clear eyes.
Questions to Ask Yourself before Divorce
The decision to end a marriage deserves careful thought and brutal honesty with yourself. Here are twenty essential questions that will help you examine your relationship, your feelings, and your future with the seriousness this moment demands.
1. Have I Actually Said Out Loud What’s Wrong?
You might think your partner knows exactly what’s bothering you. After all, you’ve been dropping hints for months, getting quiet when they do that thing that drives you crazy, or pulling away when they reach for you. But hints aren’t communication.
Have you sat down and said the actual words? “I feel disconnected from you.” “I’m unhappy with how we handle money.” “I don’t feel respected when you dismiss my concerns.” Many marriages end because people assume their partner should just know what’s wrong. Your spouse can’t read your mind. They might be completely unaware that you’re this unhappy or that specific behaviors are pushing you away.
Before you consider divorce, try real honesty. Not the sanitized version where you soften everything to avoid conflict. The raw, uncomfortable truth about what you’re feeling. You’d be surprised how many relationships can shift when both people finally understand what they’re actually dealing with.
2. Am I Confusing a Bad Season with a Bad Marriage?
Life has this way of piling on stress all at once. You lose a parent, face a health scare, deal with work pressure, and struggle with financial strain—all while trying to maintain a relationship. Sometimes what feels like a failing marriage is really just two people drowning under circumstances that would strain any partnership.
Research shows that relationship satisfaction naturally fluctuates over time. A study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that marital happiness typically dips during periods of major stress but often rebounds once the crisis passes. Think about what’s happening in your life right now beyond your marriage. Are you dealing with illness, grief, career upheaval, or young children who are draining every ounce of your energy?
Bad seasons pass. Bad marriages are patterns that persist regardless of external circumstances. Permit yourself to distinguish between the two.
3. What Would I Tell My Best Friend in This Situation?
Step outside yourself for a moment. If your closest friend came to you describing your exact relationship, what would you honestly tell them? Would you encourage them to work on it, or would you help them pack?
We’re often kinder and more objective with others than we are with ourselves. We see their situations clearly because we’re not tangled up in the daily emotions and history. This mental exercise can cut through your confusion and show you what you actually think about your marriage when you remove yourself from the center of it.
Write down what you’d say to that friend. Be specific. Be honest. Then read it back and let those words sink in.
4. Is This About My Partner or About Me?
Sometimes the person we’re really angry at is ourselves. You might be furious at your spouse for not meeting your needs, but have you been meeting your own? Are you frustrated with them for not making you happy, when maybe happiness is something you need to build from the inside?
This isn’t about letting your partner off the hook for genuine problems. If they’re cruel, neglectful, or abusive, that’s on them. But if your main complaint is that they’re not making your life exciting or fulfilling enough, you might be placing an impossible burden on one person. No partner can be your entire source of joy, purpose, and satisfaction.
Check in with yourself honestly. Are you running from relationship problems or running from things inside yourself that you haven’t wanted to face?
5. Have We Actually Tried to Fix This?
Saying you’ve tried isn’t the same as actually trying. Going to two therapy sessions and deciding it doesn’t work isn’t trying. Having the same argument fifty times without changing your approach isn’t trying either.
Real effort looks like reading books about relationship communication, attending a marriage workshop, seeing a couples therapist for several months, learning about your partner’s attachment style, or genuinely implementing new behaviors even when they feel awkward at first. It means both of you showing up willing to be uncomfortable, to hear hard feedback, and to change ingrained patterns.
If you haven’t truly invested in saving your marriage, you’ll likely carry regret with you after divorce. That nagging question of “what if” can haunt you for years. Make sure you’ve given this relationship everything you’ve got before you walk away.
6. What Do I Think Will Change After Divorce?
Close your eyes and picture your life six months after the divorce is final. What does a typical Tuesday look like? Be specific and realistic.
Many people imagine divorce as a liberation where suddenly they’re happy, free, and unburdened. They forget about the loneliness of an empty apartment, the financial strain of splitting households, the exhaustion of co-parenting logistics, and the reality that they’re still themselves with all their same habits and issues. Divorce solves some problems but creates new ones.
This isn’t meant to scare you into staying. It’s meant to make sure you’re entering this with clear expectations about what divorce actually delivers.
7. Am I in Love with Someone Else?
Be honest. Really honest. Is there someone at work you’ve been texting a little too often? Someone from your past who recently reconnected with you on social media? An emotional connection that’s making your marriage feel even more empty by comparison?
Affairs—emotional or physical—cloud your judgment. Your brain chemistry literally changes when you’re in the throes of a new attraction. The dopamine rush makes everything with that person feel perfect while making your spouse seem worse by comparison. This is science, not romance.
If you’re involved with someone else, you can’t accurately assess your marriage. You need to either end the affair and give your marriage a genuine chance or acknowledge that you’ve already checked out and move forward with that awareness.
8. What Am I Modeling for My Children?
If you have kids, they’re watching everything. They’re learning about relationships, conflict resolution, commitment, and self-respect from watching you and your spouse interact. What lessons are they absorbing?
Here’s where it gets complicated. Sometimes staying in a miserable marriage teaches kids that they should tolerate unhappiness. But sometimes leaving too quickly teaches them to bail when things get hard. There’s no simple answer here.
Studies show that children of divorce often fare better than children raised in high-conflict homes. But they also show that children whose parents work through difficulties and improve their marriage learn valuable lessons about perseverance and growth. What matters most is what you’re showing them about handling life’s challenges.
9. Can I Afford This Decision?
Money is uncomfortable to talk about, but it’s also a reality. Divorce typically costs between $15,000 and $30,000 when you factor in legal fees, mediators, and setting up separate households. Child support, alimony, divided retirement accounts, split equity—the financial impact is substantial and long-lasting.
Run the actual numbers. What would your budget look like living alone? Could you afford your current home, or would you need to move? What about health insurance, car payments, and credit card debt? Can you support yourself on your income alone?
Financial stress won’t make you happier than marital stress if you’re unprepared for it. This doesn’t mean money should be the deciding factor, but it should be part of your honest assessment.
10. Have I Changed My Own Behavior?
It’s easy to list everything your partner does wrong. It’s harder to look at your own contributions to the relationship’s problems. Have you been defensive, critical, withdrawn, or controlling? Do you shut down during conflict or escalate unnecessarily?
Relationships are systems. Both people feed into the patterns that develop. Even if you’re convinced your spouse is 80% of the problem, your 20% still matters. If you haven’t worked on your own issues, you’ll likely recreate similar problems in future relationships.
Before deciding your partner is impossible to live with, make sure you’ve become the best version of yourself to live with. Change your part of the dynamic and see what shifts.
11. What Does My Gut Actually Say?
Strip away everyone else’s opinions for a minute. Forget what your mother thinks, what your friends are saying, what your therapist suggested, and what you think you should feel. Get quiet with yourself. What do you actually feel in your bones?
Your gut has been absorbing information longer than your conscious mind has been analyzing it. Underneath all the rationalizing and overthinking, there’s usually a clear sense of knowing. Maybe it’s saying “fight for this.” Maybe it’s saying “you already know you’re done.” Maybe it’s saying “not yet, but soon.”
Trust yourself enough to listen. You know more than you think you do.
12. Is There Abuse I’m Minimizing?
Sometimes we downplay serious problems because acknowledging them means we have to act. Abuse isn’t always dramatic. It doesn’t always leave bruises or break bones. Emotional abuse, financial control, constant criticism, intimidation, isolating you from friends and family, gaslighting—these are all real forms of abuse that erode your sense of self.
If you’re afraid of your partner’s reactions, if you constantly walk on eggshells, if they control your money or movements, if they routinely demean you in front of others, if they punish you with silence or rage—this isn’t normal relationship conflict. This is abuse, and it typically escalates over time.
You deserve safety. You deserve respect. If your relationship lacks these fundamentals, the question isn’t whether to leave but how to leave safely.
13. Am I Being Fair in My Assessment?
Relationships look different from the inside than the outside. When you’re unhappy, you tend to filter everything through that lens. Your partner’s neutral comment sounds like criticism. Their attempt to help feels like control. Their silence becomes evidence of not caring.
Try this exercise: Write down five specific things your spouse has done in the past month that were kind, thoughtful, or helpful. If you can’t think of five, you’re either in serious trouble or you’re so focused on the negative that you’ve stopped noticing the positive. Both situations need addressing, but they’re different problems.
Fair assessment means acknowledging both what’s broken and what’s still working. It means recognizing effort even when the results aren’t perfect. It means giving credit where it’s due while still being honest about what’s not acceptable.
14. What Would Forgiveness Look Like?
Maybe your spouse had an affair. Maybe they said something unforgivable in anger. Maybe they let you down when you needed them most. Whatever happened, can you actually forgive it, or will you carry this resentment forever?
Forgiveness doesn’t mean what they did was okay. It means you’re choosing to release the poison of holding onto it. Some betrayals can be worked through when both people commit to the hard work of rebuilding trust. Others leave damage too deep to repair.
Only you know which category your situation falls into. But if you can’t imagine ever truly forgiving what’s happened, staying married will just mean years of punishing your partner for their past mistakes. That’s not a marriage anymore—it’s a sentence.
15. Do We Still Have Shared Goals?
When you got married, you probably had similar visions for your life. You wanted the same things—kids or no kids, city or suburbs, career-focused or family-focused, adventurous or stable. But people change, and sometimes they grow in different directions.
Maybe you want to travel the world, and they want to put down roots. Maybe you’re ready for kids, and they’ve decided they never want them. Maybe you’ve become religious, and they’re moving away from faith. Maybe your retirement dreams look nothing alike.
Some differences can coexist in a marriage. Others are fundamental incompatibilities that create constant friction. Take stock of where you’re both headed. Are you still walking the same path, or have your roads diverged so completely that staying together means one of you has to abandon their dreams?
16. Am I Repeating Family Patterns?
Look at your parents’ marriage. Look at how your grandparents related to each other. What you saw growing up taught you what marriage is supposed to look like, for better or worse. Are you recreating those patterns, or are you desperately trying not to?
If you grew up watching your mother tolerate your father’s drinking, you might be tolerating your own spouse’s destructive behavior without realizing it feels normal to you. If your parents divorced bitterly, you might bolt at the first sign of serious conflict because you’re terrified of repeating their mistakes. If your family never showed affection, you might struggle to recognize that your spouse’s emotional distance is a problem, not just how marriages work.
Understanding your template for relationships helps you see whether you’re reacting to your history or responding to your actual present situation.
17. Have I Romanticized Being Single?
Your married friends who are single post pictures of brunches, solo trips, and nights out that look incredibly appealing when you’re home arguing about whose turn it is to take out the trash. But you’re seeing the highlight reel, not the full picture.
Single life has real benefits—autonomy, simplicity, the excitement of new possibilities. It also has drawbacks—loneliness, dating exhaustion, coming home to an empty house every night, building a new life from scratch in middle age. Neither married life nor single life is inherently better. They’re just different packages of trade-offs.
Make sure you’re not chasing a fantasy version of single life that doesn’t exist. Freedom comes with its own challenges, and grass always looks greener when you’re standing in drought conditions.
18. What Am I Afraid Of?
Sometimes we stay because we’re afraid to leave. Sometimes we leave because we’re afraid to stay. Fear is a terrible decision-maker, but it’s worth examining what you’re actually scared of.
Afraid of being alone? Afraid of financial instability? Afraid of failing at marriage? Afraid your ex will find someone else and be happy while you’re still struggling? Afraid of what people will think? Afraid you’re making the biggest mistake of your life by staying or by going?
Name your fears out loud. Write them down. Look at them honestly. Some fears are warning you about real dangers. Others are just the voice of anxiety trying to keep you from changing anything. Learn to tell the difference.
19. Can I Picture Us Happy Again?
This is maybe the most telling question of all. Close your eyes and try to imagine you and your spouse genuinely happy together five years from now. Not just tolerating each other or coexisting peacefully, but actually in love, connected, and glad to be married.
If you can picture it clearly, if you can feel what that would be like and you want to fight for that future, your marriage probably has something worth saving. The vision might require significant changes and hard work, but at least you can see a path forward.
But if you try to picture it and the image won’t come, if the idea of being married to this person for five more years makes your chest tighten with dread, your heart might already know what your head hasn’t accepted yet.
20. Will I Regret This Either Way?
Here’s the truth: there’s no guaranteed right answer. Whether you stay or leave, there will be hard days ahead. Whether you stay or leave, you’ll sometimes wonder if you made the right choice. That’s just part of making major life decisions.
The question isn’t whether you’ll have regrets—you probably will either way. The question is which regrets you can live with more peacefully. Will you regret not trying harder to save your marriage, or will you regret wasting more years in an unhappy situation? Will you regret the disruption to your family, or will you regret modeling an unfulfilling relationship for your children?
There’s no easy answer. But sitting with this question honestly can help you understand which path, with all its imperfections, feels more aligned with who you are and what you need.
Wrapping Up
These questions aren’t here to tell you what to do. They’re here to help you think clearly about what you already know deep down. Marriage is complicated, divorce is painful, and staying unhappily married is its own kind of suffering.
Whatever you decide, make it from a place of clarity rather than desperation or fear. Take your time with these questions. Write out your answers. Talk to someone you trust. Get professional help if you need it. This decision deserves your full attention and honest reflection.
Your life is yours to build. Make sure you’re building it intentionally, not just reacting to whatever feels overwhelming in this moment. Trust yourself, be honest with yourself, and permit yourself to choose what’s right for you.