Does Moving Out Save Your Marriage Or End It?

Does moving out save your marriage or is it the first step toward divorce? If you are desperate for peace and thinking about packing your bags, you need to watch this video first.

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Does separation save a marriage? According to research, 80% of couples who separate ultimately end up divorcing. While moving out provides temporary relief and peace, it often creates a "false positive" environment where living apart feels better than the hard work of fixing the relationship. Unless there is a safety issue, separation usually accelerates the end of a marriage rather than saving it.

In this video, Dr. Kimberly Beam Holmes shares both the research and her personal experience regarding marital separation. You’ll learn why the human brain craves separation to "avoid pain and seek gain," but why acting on that impulse usually backfires.

We cover:

The Statistic: Why 8 out of 10 separations fail to reconcile.

The Psychology of Peace: Why your brain resists going back to the marriage once you've had a taste of living alone.

Dr. Kimberly’s Story: How moving out twice early in her marriage didn't fix the problems, it only paused them.

Communication vs. Punishment: Are you moving out to "teach them a lesson"? We discuss why using your presence as a reward or punishment destroys trust.

⚠️ IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTE: If you are in a physically abusive situation or an emotionally unsafe environment where your physical health is at risk, your priority is safety. Please seek help immediately. Separation is necessary for safety, even if the goal isn't marriage restoration yet. You can call 800-799-7233 or text 'BEGIN' to 88788

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Dilemma: Will Moving Out Help
• 1:49 Research: Separation And Divorce Risk
• 3:05 Personal Story: Two Moves, No Fix
• 5:17 Boundaries: No Divorce Talk Or Leaving
• 6:47 Safety First: When To Get Out
• 7:42 Punishment Dynamics And No Contact
• 9:35 Communicating Without Control Or Anger
• 10:55 Free Guide And Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

I moved out twice and it nearly ended my marriage. So if you are thinking about moving out, but you're wondering, is this going to actually help me save my marriage, or could this be the last nail in the coffin that will end my marriage, then this video is for you. My name is Dr. Kimberly Beam Holmes, and throughout this video, I'm going to be sharing with you the research and the experience of people who have thought maybe I should move out as a way to help us get things back on track. And I'm going to share with you if that works, what works, and what you need to do. In a minute, I'm also going to give you a free resource that you can download that's going to help you do this even better. Here's the thing that you need to understand. When someone is thinking about moving out, like you are, when you're thinking about should I leave, you are wanting to do two things. You're wanting to avoid pain and you're wanting to seek gain. You're tired of the fighting. You're tired of constantly having missed schedules, never being on the same page. You're tired of disagreeing about every little thing. And you want to feel happy again. You want peace. Ultimately, you likely want to feel loved. This is your marriage. It is about love. You should want to feel that way. And it's okay for you to want to feel that way. But more than anything, right now, you are seeking peace. You just want time to think. You want time to have space so that you can think clearly and make the best decision. But here's the thing: when you make decisions out of an emotional response, wanting to seek peace, most of the time, those decisions end up working against you. Here's what I mean about that. We know from the research that 80% of couples who separate ultimately end up getting a divorce. Because, as we said before, once you leave that situation, that home life where you've already felt lonely, disconnected, angry, tumultuous, once you leave that and go to your own place, somewhere that's calm, somewhere that you walk in and you get to make your own decisions. You don't have to fight with someone day in and day out. It's really hard to want to go back to what you had. Even if you're trying to work on saving the marriage, maybe even you've been a part of counseling and you've been doing this counseling process called discernment counseling, where there's a guided separation with your therapist. But the downfall of that is once you take the couple out of the home that they live in together and they start feeling peace being separate, then your body begins to relate that peace with the fact that you are separated from that person. And so, of course, your body doesn't want to go back into the state where you were frantic and stressed and felt like no one loved you. Of course not. That's why there's an 80% chance or higher that that marriage, your marriage, would ultimately end up in divorce. Now, here's the thing. I told you at the beginning, I've moved out twice early on in our marriage. The first time, it was because my husband and I, we'd been married a year and a half at the time, and I ended up moving back. We were my husband was stationed in Korea. I lived there with him, but I ended up moving back to the States. Our first year and a half of marriage was difficult, but I was moving back to the States under the guise, so to say, of going to get my master's degree, ironically, in marriage and family therapy. And but honestly, he and I, when we talked about it years later, we we admitted to each other, we just wanted a break from each other. And you want to know something? It was nice. I got to do what I wanted. I got to make my own rules, my own schedule. We would talk on the phone every so often, but ultimately we both got to live the the totally separate lives, the lives that each of us wanted at the time. And then there came the point where he finally was moving back to the states. And guess what? Nothing was fixed that were the problems in our first year and a half of marriage, and everything was worse. In fact, all of the things I was scared of happening again happened. We didn't fix anything by being separated. It only amplified the problems that were there because they were never dealt with to begin with. And that led to just six months, even later than that, after we finally did move back in together, went to our next duty station. My husband was in the army and we got settled there. It led to a huge blow-up fight one weekend where once again I found myself getting in my car, packing my things, and saying to him, I love you, but I can't continue to live like this, and driving away. And you know what? It didn't fix anything. Me leaving didn't make anything better. You know what it did? It told my husband, I am not gonna be there for you through everything. You know those vows that we said, for better, for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part? Well, actually, maybe when things get hard, I'm just gonna leave. That is part of what continued to bring up these problems in our marriage. Thank God. We did finally make things work. We did not become the 80% statistic, we became the 20% statistic. But there were rules after that that we implemented in our marriage. Number one, we won't ever use the word divorce. We will never leave each other, and there's never going to be separation. Now, I do want to take a quick moment here and give you one key thing that I need to make sure that you hear. If you are in a physically unsafe situation where you are in an abusive relationship, then you absolutely need to get safe. If you are in a situation where the emotional abuse is so high that you are physically being affected by the abuse, you need to get safe. And there are resources, you will see them in the show notes and here on the screen that you need to call if you are not in a safe situation. Because the number one priority that we need to make sure is true when you are actually trying to save your marriage is that you are safe. But with that being said, assuming that you are in a situation where you are safe, then separating is actually going to work against your goal of wanting to save the marriage. Because in marriage, till death do us part, in sickness and in health, through the good and the bad, sometimes, oftentimes, we have to get through the bad together. And it's actually what strengthens the bond over time. We had a caller call into our live show today. We do our live shows every week on YouTube. You can look in the show notes and around our YouTube channel to find out even more about that. But we had a caller today who specifically said, I kicked my husband out. I kicked him out a couple of months ago because he wasn't there for me. He wasn't holding space for me emotionally. He wasn't being the husband that I needed. So I kicked him out. And then, even after he was kicked out, he came back, we tried to make it work, he left again. But ultimately what ended up happening was she had found out that he was having emotional affairs and that another one had started. And even after she found this out, they were already separated at this time, but they were talking on the phone and she said to him, How are you having an affair? Are you having an affair? She kept asking, wanting him to tell her the truth. And he finally did. He said, Yes. So she kept asking questions. She kept badgering. I know that might sound like a strong word, but she was wanting to know. And it's she should want to know the truth. But what happened next was the worst thing that could have happened. He continued to open up and tell her the truth. And at the end of it, she said to him, I'm no longer going to talk to you. This is the punishment I am giving you for being honest with me. Now, she did not say those final words that I just said, but that's exactly what her action said when she said that from this point forward, I'm going no contact with you. It was a punishment for him being honest. The question I want you to ask is: are you trying to punish your spouse by wanting to move out? Are you leaving because you're wanting them to chase you? Are you leaving because you're wanting to punish them for something that they've done and maybe something that they've actually been honest with you about? If you are using your presence as a reward or a punishment, let me tell you something. That is absolutely nowhere in the file or playbook of what a healthy and happy marriage looks like. Our presence to the other person, our presence and engagement and being there for the other person in our marriage is part of what we should do in a marriage. Now, listen, I know things are hard. You are experiencing hurt. Maybe you've been cheated on. Maybe you're the one who has been cheating. Maybe you felt controlled for so many years, you just don't even know what to do anymore. And you just can't keep on going. And this is the only thing that you know to do. What if you could just learn how to change the way that you're communicating? What if you could learn to actually start speaking in a way to your spouse that isn't pushing them away by trying to control them or being angry with them at all the time or them feeling like they can never be good enough for you, or trying to pull the truth out of them. And then when they do, you blow up in their face. What if there was a better and a different way? I have a free ebook, a free guide that I want you to download. 10 text messages to reconnect with your spouse. Now you might be saying, Kimberly, those are text messages. You don't have to text them. The whole idea of it is that it's a communication framework that you can follow on how to do things differently. This is the first step to help your specific situation right now where things are just so bad you're considering moving out. What if before you do that and possibly upend your whole future? Maybe just try and say some things a little bit differently. You can click the link on the screen right now to get that free guide, completely free. There's no, you know, strings attached to it. It's going to be 10 texts that you can send or 10 things that you can begin to say differently in your marriage in order to reconnect with your spouse without a bunch of pressure. So again, click the link right here on the screen, or it's in the show notes below. Either way, I highly encourage you to really think this through before doing it. And you may say, I have, but have you thought about it in the way of what is my goal? Am I just trying to leave in order to feel peace again and to avoid the feelings that I'm having right now? Is it actually gonna change anything? Because most of the time it doesn't. And the marriage ends up headed for divorce. Get the free guide. Be sure you subscribe to this channel in order to see more content just like this. And until next time, I want you to remember there is always hope.