Helping couples discover the why behind the what in their marriage with Chris and Beth Bruno and Tracy Johnson of ReStory Counseling.
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Welcome to the Thrive Marriage Lab with Restory Counseling, where we help you explore the why behind the what. Because guess what? We believe that your marriage is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be explored and enjoyed. We believe that the more you explore and know your story, the deeper your marriage connection will be. This podcast is now the audio version of our new YouTube channel, Thrive Marriage Lab.
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where each week you can expect us to help you cultivate connection and belonging without the fixing and tips and common things you often hear in the marriage space. So find us on YouTube or listen in.
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Now I have walked with several couples through a therapeutic separation through the course of my life as a therapist. And I have had some people who have just loved it. They've done some really good work. They have found one another. They've done some personal work. They've done some marriage work and they have been able to come back together. And I would say by large, a lot of people who go through a therapeutic separation come out the other end with a deeper and more rich marriage relationship. And there are some.
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there are some who actually end their therapeutic separation realizing that it didn't work. It didn't come to the place where they are able to, like I said, find one another again or come back into the marriage where they feel safe enough to be in each other's presence. There are some, and you guys, that's okay. And so today in this video, I want to talk about what happens when a therapeutic separation doesn't work. Welcome to the Thrive Marriage Lab.
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My name is Chris Bruno and I'm a licensed professional counselor and the founder of ReStory Counseling. And together with my wife Beth and our colleague Tracy Johnson, we post videos to help you understand the why behind the what. Because we believe that when you explore and know your story, the deeper your marriage connection will be. So you've walked through a therapeutic separation. It has been a good chunk of time. And in the last video I talked about like at max, like looking at...
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six months or so, it's been a good chunk of time. And through that process, you've discerned that a couple things may have happened. Maybe you have been unable to get past some of the things that you need to get past, some of the hurts that you've experienced in your marriage relationship, you know, at the hand of your spouse. Maybe there are some other dynamics that are happening in your marriage, like an addiction, maybe some other kind of...
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emotional connection to another person, maybe an emotional affair, sexual affair, those kinds of things that, that you've, you just are not able to kind of address. Maybe you notice also, you're discerning that the spouse has not been able to address those things, that they're not doing the deep work that they need to do in order to come to the other side of their addiction or they've not done the deep work to recognize how impactful that situate, that infidelity, that whatever it is,
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may have had on you. So you're kind of discerning through time that even with the space of the therapeutic separation, especially because of the space of that separation, it's just not working. And maybe it's not working for you. You've not been able to make the progress that you need to make. Maybe it's not working for your spouse. They've been not able to make the progress that they need to make. And you kind of come to the point of saying, I just can't do this anymore. I just can't
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If that is you, if you come to the end of a therapeutic separation, here are a couple of things that I want you to know. Coming to the end is actually a good thing. You know, there's a book out there. It is called Necessary Endings. I would highly recommend for you to read that. If you're coming to the end of a therapeutic separation and you're like, ah, this is just not working, read that book, Necessary Endings, because
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You know, just as a beginning is a really important thing on to set the trajectory of something, ending something and ending it well is actually just as important as the beginning. And so some endings are actually necessary. Some endings are actually healthy endings where you've come to the place of saying, hey, I cannot deal with your addiction. If you're not gonna address it, it will not be part of my life. It will not be something that I will hold.
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anymore on your behalf. And so therefore, we're gonna need to step into another kind of relationship moving forward. So maybe that is you and a necessary ending is what we're looking at. Another thing to be thinking about is, maybe just there's too much distance that has occurred between you. Maybe there is some irreconcilable differences that are not an addiction or an infidelity or something like that. They're just...
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I just really come to the place of saying, I don't love this person. And I wanna hold like there is a covenant that is between you and your spouse that you have spoken to them. And at the same time, if that covenant has been broken long before, if there's not that like, I am in this for you, I am on your behalf, I am with you through the rest of your life, like those kinds of things, that breakage of the covenant has long since passed.
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and now you're just living in the context of relationship with a broken covenant, then you can't actually continue a deep marriage relationship anyway. And so you come to the end of this therapeutic separation. I want you to hold a couple of things. One is well done. Well done on trying. Well done on saying, Hey, we're going to do something with intention in order to see if we can move towards healing. And if the answer is no, we can't. At this point, you know,
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We can't. You know that that is, you've done what you can do. Without going through the therapeutic separation process, you wouldn't know, you wouldn't know. If you just jumped right into separation or jumped right into divorce, you wouldn't know. And at least you have given your best shot to say, hey, we're gonna do the work that we need to do. And if we come out the other end and go, this actually is not, this is not where we're gonna be able to stay, then well done. And I want you to know that doing that work
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Even if the marriage doesn't survive the therapeutic separation, what has happened for you? What have you come to know about yourself? What have you come to know about your story? What healing have you found in your life that is still worth it? That is still worth the journey that you have been on. And, and for your spouse too, like what have they come to know about themselves? How have they healed? What are some places that they've discovered in their life and in their story that, that now, even if the marriage is going to part,
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that both of you now are more healthy individuals for the rest of your lives. That has been worth it. And I wanna say that if you're coming to that point where you're recognizing, hey, the therapeutic separation didn't work to heal the marriage, can you still honor one another for giving it a shot? Can you still honor one another for, hey, I've seen some growth in you and I've seen some growth in me. And that growth is actually worth some of the journey that we've been on as hard.
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as it has been, it's been worth it. And so we come to this place of ending with one another in honor, in generosity, in a place of love, in a place of release. And that is a very different place than if you had been, one to six months ago, just jumped right into a divorce place or into a separation. You've at least done some good, good work over the course of these months. And that deserves.
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honor. That deserves your naming and honoring with one another. If you do come to the place of this therapeutic separation doesn't work, I want to come back to now what? Now what? Can you still, even if it hasn't worked, still come to one another with the kind of honor that you did at the beginning to clarify with one another, here is how we would like to end.
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the generosity of heart, the generosity of spirit, the generosity of love towards one another to say, hey, this is, you know, rather than stepping into a contentious divorce, can we enter into the next season of our separating of our marriage, can we step into it with the same kind of grace that we stepped into this therapeutic separation with? Can we drop a document just between the two of us? Maybe you're helped by a marriage therapist in the process, but just some kind of understanding of here's
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Here's how we would like to kindly bring an end to this marriage relationship. And again, I wanna refer you back to the Necessary Endings book. That is so, so good to help you think through how would you actually like to bring this relationship to an end. I will also say that as the marriage relationship started with a ritual, there should probably be a mutual ritual that happens in order to finalize some things.
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And you can make whatever of that that you will. It can be something formal, it can be something informal, but there needs to be some space where the two of you recognize, hey, what we have created together now is needing to end, and we're gonna do so with the same kind of intentionality of how we began, to bring it somehow to a formal end. Now, of course, no couple, when they first say yes to one another, when they first walk down the aisle,
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imagine that they're going to end up in a place where they're parting ways. No couple actually imagined that. And unfortunately, a lot of couples find themselves there. And one thing that I would like to say is that if you do find yourself there, I would warn you against two things. One is the self-contempt that you might be experiencing, both the shame and the self-contempt of, ah,
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What's wrong with me? I couldn't make this marriage work. What's wrong with me? Am I not desirable enough? What's wrong with me? Am I not valuable enough? What's wrong with me that he or she doesn't love me enough? I think that having that self-contempt and that shame by ending up in this place is actually going to be counterproductive for you to move forward through the next season of your life. So be aware of that self-contempt, that self-shame. And then...
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Part and parcel with that is the other centered contempt, that it's all their fault, that they did the wrong things, that they were this way, that they couldn't or wouldn't or didn't do X, Y, Z, and that it's all their fault. And recognize that if you hold contempt for another person, then the reverberation of that contempt is gonna come back towards you as well, just in the kind of spiritual, emotional space. So recognize that.
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vilifying your spouse is not gonna be helpful in the long run. It's actually gonna be harmful for you, for the children, for the proceedings coming forth, right? What is gonna happen there? Can you not step into a place of contempt and instead go, okay, I guess this is where we find ourselves. I guess this is where we are. And you might still need some healing along the way, for sure, after the separation or after the divorce happens.
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But make sure that you're doing some work for yourself to not step in to that place of self-contempt or other centered contempt, because that's just gonna disrupt the healing process moving forward. So you guys, hopefully this playlist about therapeutic separation has been helpful. I hope that you found some goodness in it. I hope it's actually made you think about some ways that you can step into a therapeutic separation if that is what is necessary. It is not always what is necessary.
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but it can be a helpful tool before you step into a formalized separation or even towards divorce. You guys, thank you. Looking forward to seeing you in the next video.
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next week.