{"id":25,"date":"2010-05-01T08:28:06","date_gmt":"2010-05-01T15:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shaublaw.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/when-is-it-time-to-let-go\/"},"modified":"2010-12-12T09:20:32","modified_gmt":"2010-12-12T16:20:32","slug":"when-is-it-time-to-let-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/when-is-it-time-to-let-go\/","title":{"rendered":"When Is It Time to Let Go?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I attended a wonderful conference on brief therapy a couple of years ago and concentrated on the folks who were presenting about marital\/couples therapy. Thus inspired, I had dinner with an old friend and his second wife (also, now, a dear friend). Their union was very connected and sweet, and definitely had benefited from years of work. (They say a good marriage is work and whoever \u201cthey\u201d are, you\u2019d best believe them.) I had listened to my friend describe his first marriage and a mismatch which had produced his beloved daughter. The way he described the relationship, I had to come away with the belief that it was a good thing he had gotten divorce. So over dinner, I regaled him with my new-found commitment to the idea that any marriage can be saved and that divorce is an avoidable trauma \u2013 necessary only in cases of abuse (emotional, physical, sexual). My dear friend looked at me like I was nuts. He assured me that his first marriage would have resulted in years of despair for (probably) his wife and (certainly) for him. They were young. They were mis-matched.
\nIn my years of helping people disentangle from painful marriages, I know very well that for one partner, the time comes that their emotional commitment to the marriage is simply gone. At some point there is no reviving a person\u2019s commitment to a marriage. That person knows that the marriage is over in their heart. It is a very painful truth.
\nWhile it is definitely possible to stop this erosion of emotional commitment to a marriage before that line is crossed \u2013 once that last step is taken my observation from years of working with divorcing people is \u2013 there\u2019s not going back. Sadly \u2013 wrenchingly \u2013 it\u2019s over. There comes a time when our energies need to shift from holding onto a marriage that has emotionally ended for one person to recovering emotionally from the grief and loss of this transition and finding a new path that will, over time, bring fulfillment and love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I attended a wonderful conference on brief therapy a couple of years ago and concentrated on the folks who were presenting about marital\/couples therapy. Thus inspired, I had dinner with an old friend and his second wife (also, now, a dear friend). Their union was very connected and sweet, and definitely had benefited from years Continue reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[42,5],"tags":[13,8,43],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions\/27"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}