Breaking Up to Stay Together : Sometimes Separating Can Help Save Troubled Marriage

By now, most of their friends are probably assuming their marriage is over.

The shock waves began to move through Julie’s affluent social circle when it became clear that she wasn’t coming home from what appeared at first to be an extended business trip.

Seven months have gone by and Julie’s husband, Ben, has stopped saying it’s a business trip. She’s settled into a small apartment and a new job more than 1,000 miles away, and he is going on with his life in Orange County.

It looks like they’re going separate ways, but they still see each other and talk by phone frequently. And in her desk drawer, Julie keeps a one-way plane ticket to California. She’s hopeful that one day she’ll use it to return to her marriage of nearly 30 years. But first she wants to make sure the relationship she goes home to will be very different from the one she left.

For Julie and Ben, who prefer to remain anonymous, spending time apart may be the only way to get back together.

Marital separations are always painful and often permanent, but therapists say they can be therapeutic if both partners are willing to work at it.

Louis Stoetzer, a therapist who is executive director of the Adult Childrens Center in Orange, says the prevailing assumption that a marital separation is the beginning of the end prevents many couples from even considering it. And those who do separate are likely to keep silent instead of giving friends a chance to offer much-needed emotional support.

Stoetzer, who gives workshops on “Creative Marital Separation,” observed during a recent talk: “When you think of the idea of separation, you think of a terribly negative experience. You know you’re going down that nasty road to divorce court because once you take the first step, it’s a path of no return. But that’s an erroneous notion. A lot of folks do it and come back together again and live pretty much happily ever after.”

Stoetzer says two-thirds of the couples he helps through separations end up getting back together because they are highly motivated to build a better relationship.

He says a third party is often needed to help couples communicate. Those who initiate do-it-yourself separations must guard against reuniting too soon, he cautions.

If they reconcile on the basis of promises like “I’ll never do that again” without confronting their deepest conflicts, they may soon slip back into the old patterns that drove them apart.

On the other hand, Stoetzer says: “When a couple is able to plan and carry out a separation, it gives them a feeling of strength that they may not have felt in their marriage for a long, long time. It gives couples a sense of healthy control over what’s going on.

“It not only allows them to put their best foot forward with each other, but it gives them an opportunity to grow as people, perhaps in ways they were not able to do in the marriage.”

Joan P. LaMontagne, a psychologist who practices in Mission Viejo and Irvine, agrees that a separation can be a healthy step for some couples who are committed to saving their marriage.

“Sometimes you’re so close in a marriage that you don’t have a sense of your own boundaries as a person. You get mired in the other’s needs,” she says.

When both partners are working toward reconciliation, a carefully planned separation can give them the distance they need to see what’s missing in their marriage and redefine their relationship, she adds.

However, she cautions, there is always a risk that one partner will decide he or she doesn’t want to return to the relationship.

Michelle and Scott took that risk 16 years ago--and it paid off.

Five years after they married, Michelle, who asked for anonymity, became infatuated with another man.

It hadn’t become a “full-blown affair,” but she felt enormous guilt and decided that she needed time away from her husband because “I couldn’t stand being in two camps.”

Scott’s reaction surprised and warmed her. He didn’t let go, but he didn’t cling, either.

He told her that he loved her and wanted to spend his life with her--and he helped her move.

And after she was settled in her apartment, it was Scott who occupied her thoughts on lonely nights.

“The real surprise to me was how my feelings for the person I was having an affair with diminished when I was free to have that relationship. The bottom fell out of it,” she says.

She soon ended the affair, began dating Scott and started working with a therapist who helped her see that she was struggling more with her own identity than her marriage.

Michelle explains: “I’d always been a good girl with good grades who did just what my parents wanted. I kept thinking, ‘Is that all there is?’ And part of me had to run away. I needed to do something for myself.”

The separation enabled her to approach her marriage with a stronger sense of who she was and what she wanted. And, she says, it forced her and Scott to work on the gaps in communication that had caused them to drift apart.

“It helped because we were able to put the marriage on the table and look at it instead of just rolling along,” Michelle reflects. “It blew everything up, and we had to consciously put the pieces back together.”

Michelle and Scott were reunited after a six-month separation, and they’ve now been married nearly 21 years.

Michelle is still amazed that they were able to put the affair and the separation behind them and start over. About three years ago, while they were in a noisy restaurant with their two children, she reached for Scott’s hand and said: “Thank you for having faith in our relationship when I wanted to throw it away.”

She still feared he might harbor resentment, but he said, “No, thank you for choosing me again.”

Julie and Ben aren’t ready to make that choice. Not yet.

But Julie, who talked openly about their separation during a lengthy phone interview, says they hope to be reunited by the end of the year. They’re both in therapy, working on changes in themselves that they hope will make a difference in their relationship.

Julie says they’ve been seeing marriage counselors off and on for years. They married young, and she set aside her career to raise the children. While she was feeling unfulfilled, he was pouring his energy into a successful career--at the expense of his relationships, she says. And she now recognizes that she contributed to their problems by not challenging him when he put his job before his family.

On the surface, they supported each other and rarely fought.

But, Julie says, “we were talking around each other all those years. There was no real honesty.”

When the kids moved away, Julie looked around at her beautiful home and comfortable life and realized that she had it all--but it wasn’t what she wanted.

She announced that she was leaving nine months before she planned to go.

“It was very well orchestrated,” she says.

Ben was “unhappy but not surprised. There was no way he could be shocked. Things had gotten really bad. I was being horrible to him. I couldn’t stand myself anymore.”

They agreed to stay in close contact but also to date others.

Julie found that easier to do than Ben, but the excitement of getting to now other men wore off quickly.

“I’m having a great time, but I’m not happy,” she says. “It’s fun to be wined and dined, but is it real? I don’t think this is what I really want.”

Julie believes that she and Ben will appreciate each other more if they choose to be together after dating others.

“We’ve always been good friends, but I’d like him to be less of a friend and more of a husband,” she says. “He’s started buying me French underwear, so we’re heading in the right direction.”

Since the start of their separation, Ben has supported her both emotionally and financially--and he’s made rapid progress in therapy, Julie says.

“He’s come through 10 years worth of therapy in a matter of months because his back is against the wall. He wants me back, and he realizes things have to be significantly different. He’s working very hard.”

Julie says she is well aware of the risks involved in a separation: “I’m willing to accept the consequences of finding out who I really am, so I have no fear.”

She hopes that she will find out that she belongs with her husband. But she would rather live alone than settle for an unhappy marriage.

“We’re not getting back together for a good marriage. We’re only getting back together for a terrific marriage,” she says.