If Your Partner Has Threatened to Divorce You

I get a fair number of calls from people whose partners have threatened to divorce or leave them unless they go into therapy and make serious changes. Typically, the caller hadn’t been interested in psychotherapy before. That’s an indication of how disturbing the loss of their partner can feel for some people. It can provoke a visceral, indescribable fear about something unbearable happening, and it forces them to consider extreme measures—even in people you would have considered strong, independent and confident.

But the situation may lead to an inadequate question. It’s not simply, “How can I save my marriage?” It’s just as important to ask, “Do I want to change?”

Joan Compares Divorce and Change

Imagine Joan. Her husband James has said that he just can’t go on anymore with the way things are. He loves her—he sees her qualities—but she’s become so scornful and nitpicking he just can’t take it anymore. If he forgets to fill the gas tank in the car, doesn’t wipe off the water around the sink after using it, or doesn’t cook the rice perfectly, she interprets it to mean that because he isn’t more careful he doesn’t love her. She lambasts him as if he were a child, when really, he’s just not as fastidious as she is.

She still reminds him about the time seven years ago when he bought plane tickets for the wrong day.

The constant pressure to get it all just right has made him feel like a prisoner in his own home. It doesn’t help that she doesn’t make time for them to hang out. Between pickleball, book club, spin class and cleaning, she’s never still for more than 3 minutes.  She has no tolerance for television, and less than none for the shows he watches.

She knew things weren’t good, but she didn’t think he’d threaten to leave her. She feels she’s in the right. It feels to her like he’s asking her to lower her standards. Isn’t it more reasonable to be clean, organized and active than sloppy, chaotic and lazy?

She’s open to the idea of compromise, but staying busy and staying perfect are just who she is. She gets restless and anxious if she doesn’t move and clean. She can’t explain it, and she’s not sure she can change. Or whether she wants to. She’s not certain that James would actually leave her, but life would feel very empty without him. And scary.

And, what if she’s as critical and rigid as he says she is?

She will have to decide not only whether she wants to try to save the marriage, but also whether she wants to change.

The Four Fates

There are four possible outcomes at this point:

1. The threat from the partner serves as a wake-up call. The partner calling for therapy takes the work seriously, and the threat and the therapy help the relationship survive and even get better.

2. It’s too late, and even genuine work in therapy can’t save the relationship.

3. The caller has no interest in change. They just hope to placate their partner by going to therapy for a few months. The relationship neither improves or survives.

4. The caller has no interest in change and doesn’t take the work seriously, but the threatening partner can’t follow through with the threat because of their fears or circumstances. They stay together but the relationship is unfulfilling and even painful.

You can’t control what your partner expects from you in terms of change. But you can control—to some degree—how much you change, and whether you’re willing to be vulnerable enough to drop some of your old ways of coping.

Is it all your fault? Probably not. But if you don’t take at least some responsibility it will be your fault.

Motivation Counts: Do You Want to Change, or Just Prevent a Divorce?

You’re probably just wishing I’d get to the point and tell you how to keep your partner from leaving you. That’s the problem. If you’re just checking off the box, it won’t last. If your partner feels so strongly that they’re threatening to divorce you, a superficial “life hack” ain’t gonna do it.

You will need to decide if you want to simply change some symptomatic behavior to placate your partner, or whether you’re really interested in cultivating your personality in a healthier direction—whether the marriage survives or not.

Whether the relationship improves, ends or merely survives, the radical move to try therapy can lead to change that’s in your interest, change you might not have considered before.

It’s possible that the behavior your partner asked you to change is a problem not just for them, but for you as well.

This is similar to the attitude change that addicts need to adopt when getting sober: you’re much more likely to succeed if you change primarily for yourself, not for the people around you.

Let’s see how changing some things about yourself might actually be in your own interest.

Critical? Controlling? Depressed?

Because I treat and write about obsessive and compulsive personalities, OCPD, perfectionists, and Type A personalities, a lot of the calls I get are from people whose partner says they are too controlling, serious, judgmental, frugal and workaholic. Sure, the less responsible type gets threatened with divorce as well, but there’s plenty of writing out there already about chaotic, slouching partners who have affairs, so, I’ll focus on the obsessive and compulsive cases here.

You probably don’t aim your criticism and control solely at your partner. You probably aim it at others, and, most significantly, yourself—whether anyone else knows it or not. You may aim criticism at your partner for fear that if they aren’t perfect, you won’t be able to be perfect.

You may not allow yourself affection, fun, mistakes, leisure or spontaneity. Many people don’t consciously miss those things because they get their partner to live them out for them. They enjoy it vicariously even if they rage against it. This may be one reason you fear losing your partner: they bring life to your more inhibited emotional existence.

Allowing yourself to be looser, less controlling, and to just live a little, may have felt too uncomfortable.

At least so far.

And are you happy with the way you are living?

What Does it Mean to Change Yourself?

But changing does not mean trying to be someone other than who you are. It means removing the overlay of defensive control that prevents you from using your meticulous disposition in a way that works for you and those around you.  The deeper urges to be detailed, goal-driven, and conscientious are all very healthy inclinations, and you can hold on to those to some extent.

But the defensive control of other people that many obsessive-compulsive people adopt because they feel the need to have things a certain way keeps them from using these skills in healthy ways. In other words, it’s one thing to have high standards for yourself, it’s a whole ‘nother ball of worms to insist on them for other people.

(For instance, yes, I just mixed metaphors, that business about a ball of worms. Can you let me get away with it?)

None of us grows up with a perfect childhood, and most of us develop some strategy for dealing with the imperfections. Maybe it was setting very high standards in order to pre-empt criticism. Maybe it was planning things out to the smallest detail to prevent disasters. Maybe it was working incredibly hard to prove that you had worth. Maybe it was doing your best to control everything and everyone so that you felt safe in an unsafe world.

It was brilliant at the time. Not anymore.

I’m suggesting that the change you may decide to make does not require you to be inauthentic, but just to remove your armor, the defenses you built up to survive, such as excessive planning, rigid perfectionism, extreme control, and overworking, and to use those traits in more skillful, less defensive, ways. Ways that don’t oppress other people.

What Would You Want to Change?

Successful therapy entails having some sense of what your goals are. These goals can change over time, but the more specific you can be when starting, the more a therapist will be able to help you. Here are a few questions to stimulate your thinking:

• How do you feel about the way you’re living? What would make it more satisfying and fulfilling?

• What’s most important to you? A perfectly organized kitchen? A partner that dresses exactly the way you want them to dress? Being on time all the time? Or your relationship?

• Do you understand what purpose your criticism of others has served for you?

• Might you yourself benefit from the changes your partner asks of you, such as not working so late, not being overly frugal, not always insisting that you’re “right,” or not being so controlling?

• Has your focus on your partner’s shortcomings distracted you from the changes you need to make for yourself?

• Has your focus on your partner’s behavior distracted you from your own anxiety?

• Has your need to see yourself as a good person made it hard for you to be open to feedback?

Moving Forward

If you do decide that you do want to change, let your partner know. Consider it an exploration of whether the relationship could work if each of you are in a better place personally.

Think in terms of whether the relationship is a good enough fit. Chuck the blame.

We all bring difficult histories to relationships, and the relationship may need to expand to accommodate those. On both sides. That might mean being less critical of your partner. And yourself.

It’s not unusual to want to push back with blame and counter-accusations when we feel criticized. But a good first step is listening and being open to feedback. This means waiting to hear them out before you explain yourself. In fact, before you do explain yourself, repeat back to your partner what they’ve said so that they know (and you know!) that you’ve understood what they’ve said.

And to get in your best place personally, aim your perfectionistic tendencies at new targets: Cultivate the capacity to let go. Relinquish the role of policeman and prophet. Learn to go for good enough.

And remember, this is for you.

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One previous post that I would suggest as essential in considering change for yourself is Understanding the Four Types of Compulsive Personality to Achieve Balance.

And if you do want to change, my book, The Healthy Compulsive: Healing Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder and Taking the Wheel of the Driven Personality serves as a comprehensive guide to optimizing the compulsive personality.