Category: Commitment & Teamwork

My “Keep” Manifesto

Alright everyone, let’s get real.

If you’re here, it’s because you’re feeling the weight of a partner leaning out of your relationship. 

If that’s happening, and you’re not ready to give up…

This is going to be worth the 5 minutes it’s going to take you to read.

I was watching HopeScope the other day with my two daughters. (She’s a funny YouTuber who buys mystery boxes from TikTok and films her reactions as she opens them.)

My favorite part is that she has no idea what’s inside until she opens the box.

It got me thinking that the future of your marriage is exactly the same.

And that’s especially true for couples in a really rough place…

… where one partner is leaning into their marriage and the other is leaning out.

The biggest mistake anyone can make is deciding their marriage is over before they’ve actually explored every possibility for it.

I’d argue that if they’re willing to open their mind, then this may just help you pull them back into your relationship.

When someone is leaning out, they’re struggling with commitment ambivalence. 

And if that’s the case, you (as the leaning-in spouse) need the kind of language that’ll help you really understand what’s going on, and more importantly, how to approach them as the leaning-out spouse.

So let’s get into it.

The first thing you need to do when you see the train leaving the station is slow it down.

You do that with language.

I obviously don’t know your situation. And every marriage is different. 

But I do know this: the biggest decisions of your life shouldn’t be made from the narrowest emotional perspective.

And that’s why the first question isn’t “Why are they leaving?”

The first question is, “What problem are they trying to solve?”

The language you use at this moment matters more than you probably realize.

If you engage with them by attempting to process emotions or understanding why your connection has decayed, you run two risks:

1. You’ll connect your spouse to the thing they don’t want: the pain of why you’re not connected
2. You’ll stay stuck talking about that pain for 52 weeks without circling back to what’s going to move the needle and repair what’s broken.

Neither of those stop the runaway train.

And that’s not what I teach.

You need language that slows the train down.

You have to understand—and this is especially true for those of you wanting a new language to communicate with your spouse—that when someone is truly contemplating leaving a relationship, the very first thing they’re trying to do is end the pain.

When they express a desire to leave, here’s what they’re thinking:

Leaving the relationship is the only solution worth attempting.

Why?

Because your spouse isn’t trying to leave you.

They’re trying to leave the pain.

And if you’ve been carrying the weight of trying to save your marriage alone, I know how lonely that feels.

In therapy, we talk about attempted solutions.

Why do people do the things they do in life? 

Because those are attempted solutions that will let them escape the pain they’re in.

Everything we do is an attempted solution to solve some problem we’re experiencing.

Let’s say I need to fix my car. 

One attempted solution is, “I don’t want to fix it. I’m going to sell it, take the money, and buy a new car.”

That’s an attempted solution. But it’s not always the best solution.

And if you’re the one who’s pulling away from your marriage, it’s really important to understand this because you don’t want to be making a life-changing decision without seeing it for what it is.

Let’s say you throw in the towel on your relationship.

I’ve seen this.

I worked with a client—someone very successful in his career—and his wife threw in the towel. She didn’t want to rekindle the relationship.

He wanted to try.

She didn’t.

Today, he’s remarried.

She’s still alone.

I often wonder if she would’ve made the same decision had she believed there were other solutions worth trying.

If you’re the one leaning out and one reading this, you’ve got to understand that your decision to lean out—or even end the relationship—is simply an attempted solution.

It’s in your best interest to ask,

“Would I be open to talking about my decision, if there were other solutions we could attempt?”

If you’re the one leaning in and reading this, understand that they’ll only answer ‘yes’ to that question if they believe that exploring other solutions could be the best thing for themselves.

Most leaning-out spouses think, “I want the pain to stop because my relationship is all bad.”

The thing is, no relationship is all bad. 

But since they’re feeling that way, they don’t see that. 

They only think, “I’m in pain and the only way to end that pain is to end the relationship.”

What they don’t understand is that there are multiple steps before you actually throw in the towel.

So, just because they’re feeling pain, what other solutions could we attempt?

How could we stem the bleeding?

How could we stop the pain long enough for them to discover whether there’s still a little bit of gas left in the tank to repair the relationship?

I want you to remind them—using these exact words—that if they throw in the towel today, they may eventually regret that decision.

Tell them, “I don’t want us to live with regrets.”

“So what do you propose instead?” they may ask.

That’s when you pitch them the idea of zooming out and taking a 30,000-foot view of your relationship.

Simply ask them, “Wouldn’t it be in both of our best interests if we could get an unemotional, unbiased view of our relationship?”

This is the whole goal of the conversation you’re going to have with them at this point: 

Take an inventory of what is good, not just what’s painful.

Because no relationship is 100% painful all the time. Even those that hurt still contain moments worth protecting.

At this point, I want you to use this analogy with them:

Imagine that our relationship is a train.

The conductor has fallen asleep.

His foot is pressing harder and harder on the accelerator.

The train is speeding up, racing toward the edge of a cliff…

“Wouldn’t it be in both of our best interests if we got an unbiased look at our marriage?” 

Then pause a moment before continuing.

“Can I ask you something? If leaving is one solution… would you be willing to spend one hour making sure it isn’t the only one?”

Your only goal is to get them to pause on making a decision about the relationship–be that to leave, to separate, or ask for space.

Your main focus when your partner first brings up the idea of separation is to stop them from acting on their attempted solution.

How?

Let me give you more language to use with them…

Would you ever take your car to a mechanic and say, “Just start pulling parts out and replacing them?”

Of course not.

No mechanic starts replacing parts before running diagnostics.

The same thing is true of your relationship.

There are going to be painful parts. But there’s also going to be a lot of good.

If the two of you don’t take that 30,000-foot view—especially if one of you is leaning out hard—you run the risk of making an attempted solution based purely on emotion.

Usually, overly negative emotion.

No one should want to make major life decisions from an overly negative OR positive emotional state.

When you’re making an attempted solution, you want to confidence.

You want a clear, level head so you can decide what your relationship actually needs.

Every relationship knows hurt–mine included

But every marriage still has some good in it.

And it’s worth pointing that out.

Why?

Because, at the very least, it may have them thinking twice and hitting pause before making a life-changing decision.

And remember HopeScope?

She has no idea what’s in those boxes until she opens them.

The future of your marriage works exactly the same way.

Don’t decide what’s inside before you’ve opened it.

Your spouse may still leave.

Or they may not.

But before either of you makes the biggest decision of your life…

Make sure you’re ending the marriage because it’s truly over.

Not because you’re desperate for the pain to stop.

In solutions and strength,
Jonathan

P.S. If this resonated with you, I’d love to give you the exact Marital Inventory I use to help couples see more than just the pain in their marriage. I created it to help you step back, take an honest look at what’s working, what’s hurting, and what still might be worth fighting for.

Normally it’s a $250 program.

Right now, I want to give it to you absolutely free.

My upcoming book Choosing Us is coming out November 3rd. When you preorder it, you’ll get The Marital Inventory today along with $2,250 of other bonuses. These aren’t going to last forever. So if you want them, use this link and preorder Choosing Us today.

This is how quickly it can turn your life around.

A few months ago, a man in my Chosen & Cherished Club sent me a message.

He told me he had moved out because the marriage had become toxic. There was trauma there, the resentment ran really deep, and neither of them saw a way through it.

But then he found my DIY program, he and his wife started it, and something magical happened: after a few weeks, his wife asked him to move back in.

And he sent me a message, crediting this unexpected 180 to what they’d learned in the program, and thanking me for saving his marriage.

I hesitate to take that much credit because, as any therapist will tell you, it’s the client who has to actually do the work.

But I can’t lie: it definitely brings me joy and fuels my heavy workload when I hear stories like this.

But one thing he said in particular really stood out to me, because it confirmed so perfectly the mistake I see couples – and other therapists – make, time and time again…

And that’s the impulse that they need space in order to figure things out.

But space is usually just the first slip down what becomes a very slippery slope to the end of a relationship.

As he put it, “I think the ‘moving out’ space almost destroyed our marriage and any hope…I think if we had heard of you prior to me moving out it might have not happened. I think for repair it’s important that I am home.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, hits the nail on the head.

You don’t need space in order to figure things out or make it better.

So many couples assume that some space and distance will bring them clarity.

And sure, occasionally it does.

But more often than not, it just makes things worse, and the relationship gets harder to repair.

What you actually need is a different S-word: safety.

You need to feel safe enough to tell the truth. To be vulnerable.

To set aside resentment for a few minutes, drop the defenses, and start connecting.

Only by starting with that connection can you truly work on repair.

Now, some couples are really great at self-study, and some save their relationship just from watching my reels.

But if you’re having trouble doing that on your own, then it might be time to see how I can help.

The best place to start is with a Clarity Call. I’ll take a few minutes to understand what’s going on for you, and help you identify the biggest obstacles standing between you and the marriage you want.

Then, if I believe I can help, I’ll show you what that path could look like.

These calls are best suited for couples who are serious about repair, willing to look at their own role in the problem, and ready to stop repeating the same conversations over and over again.

If that sounds like you, click here to book a Clarity Call.

I’d love to help you create a marriage where you both feel chosen and cherished.