Ep. 60: The Testing Stage — 4 Mistakes That Can Sabotage Real Change

You told your spouse something has to change.

And now you’re watching.

Are they following through? Is the effort real? Will it last—or are things eventually going to slide right back to the way they were before?

Welcome to Stage 3: Testing.

In this episode, I’m talking about four of the most common mistakes I see people make during this stage of the divorce decision process—and how those mistakes can make it much harder to figure out whether your marriage is actually changing.

I’ll talk about what happens when you expect your spouse to meet a standard you never clearly communicated, why one bad night doesn’t necessarily erase months of progress, and how unrealistic expectations can make genuine change almost impossible to recognize.

We’ll also get into one of the hardest parts of Testing: figuring out whether you’re evaluating the person standing in front of you today—or still judging them entirely by who they’ve been in the past.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to tell whether you’re actually in the Testing stage
• Why you need to clearly define what you’re asking your spouse to change
• How to distinguish a normal setback from a return to an old pattern
• Why sustainable change should be evaluated over time rather than moment by moment
• How past hurt can make it difficult to recognize progress happening in the present
• Why Testing can’t be entirely about what your spouse needs to change—you have a role in the relationship dynamic, too
• How to recognize when “too little, too late” may mean you’ve already moved beyond Testing and into a later stage of the divorce decision

Testing isn’t about waiting for your spouse to become a completely different person.

It’s about getting enough clear, honest information to answer a much bigger question:

Is meaningful, lasting change actually possible here?

Should We Get A Divorce Quiz: https://kari-hoskins-coaching-llc.kit.com/9e533cdd68

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Transcript

Kari Hoskins (00:05.274)
Hey there everyone. Welcome back to the Divorce Decision podcast. I'm your host, Kari Hoskins, and today we are talking about testing, specifically the mistakes, the most common mistakes that I see people make when they start testing their husband or their wife. And so I really would encourage you to think about your own scenario, your own situation, and see if you happen to be doing any of these.

So last time we talked about truth telling, which is stage two of the divorce decision process. And truth telling is the moment that you finally say out loud how serious the issues in your marriage have become, and how those issues are in fact significantly impacting you. And so what I'm doing today is talking about what happens next, which is the testing phase. And I just want to put out there once again.

That most people do not even realize that they are in the middle of the divorce decision process until they hit stages four, five, and eventually six. So most people go through these first three stages without even realizing the trajectory that they are on. And I also want to say that just because you are in the middle of the divorce decision process does not mean you're going to get a divorce. Okay. I was actually trying to figure out a

Different way to name to name all of this without it implying that there's a divorce. But I couldn't come up with one. So this is what I've got. But the bottom line is that it is not a foregone conclusion. I can't tell you how many couples I've worked with that they come in and one of them, you know, really wants the divorce, the other one doesn't. They're both, you know, a little bit unsure. And as we start working together,

The more unhappy partner changes their mind and they decide to stay in their marriage and make it work. So, all that to say is that your situation and your scenario is unique. And it does not mean that, you know, it is a foregone conclusion that you're going to be leaving your marriage. Okay, so let's get back to testing. So testing is a stage that almost everyone goes through in every single relationship.

Kari Hoskins (02:28.748)
That they have. I mean, I want you to think back to when you were a kid. Kids test parents all of the time. If you have a child, I'm sure that you can think about and identify times when your child has been testing you to see if you're going to follow through with that rule and that consequence that you set for them. Kids do it to their teachers in school. We do it when we're dating and we test friendships. We test new partnerships. I know my youngest daughter.

Avery, she has what she calls the Katie test, which is any guy that she's really starting to like or become interested in, before she lets her emotions get too far down the road, she brings them around her older sister. My oldest daughter has some pretty significant emotional and developmental and cognitive delays and disabilities. And so

you know, at times it can be a little bit of a handful. And so Avery has the Katie test and she brings these guys around to see how they interact with her. And if they don't interact with her well, then she says goodbye, right? so that is her version of a test that she does through the dating process. But in this specific case, we are talking about testing after you've told your husband or your wife

that you are not happy and that you want to see changes. And so what I want to do is I want to talk about how people mess this stage up and what you can do instead. But I just first really quickly want to give you four signs that you are in this phase. The first one is that you're watching for follow through and you are potentially hyper vigilant about watching every and listening for everything

your spouse does or says, right? And I think a lot of people become hyper-vigilant whether or not they mean to. Another sign is that you have both hope and skepticism happening at the same time, right? You hope that changes can, you know, you hope that changes can be made and you hope that changes can last, but you're skeptical. You're skeptical that it can happen, it will happen, and that it will stick.

Kari Hoskins (04:52.87)
and there's usually a lot of mixed emotions obviously during this phase. You're also in the stage if a very small setback hits way harder than you think it should. That's really a sign that you're in this stage because what that means is you've really gotten your hopes up and then there is a small setback where you know your spouse may revert to, you know, how they normally do things and then you feel devastated.

The last stage is that you feel guilty for not fully trusting any change that you happen to see. So if you say yes to any of those four things, I would say that you are likely in some part of this testing phase. Okay, so let's get into the most common four mistakes that I see. And let's see if you are making any of them. The first one is testing for a conversation that you never actually had.

So this is the one I think that people don't realize. Okay. It's really not fair to expect change and very specific changes if you haven't actually asked your spouse out loud for them. If you haven't sat down and specifically said, hey look, husband, hey look, wife, here are the things that are really not working in our marriage.

And here is how it's impacting me. Here is how serious this has become for me. Here's how it's affecting the way that I see you and affecting our marriage, right? and the truth of the matter is, what I hear a lot of people do and say is well, they should know. They should know because I mentioned it three years ago, or they should know because I, you know, I've made comments under my breath.

And by the way, you guys, that's normally passive aggressive comments. Like you just think that your spouse should automatically know exactly what it is that you're unhappy about and you know exactly what it is that you want to see changed. But really the truth is that people tend to blow that stuff off unless you make it clear how important and how serious it is to you.

Kari Hoskins (07:12.608)
And I need to remind you, relationships are all about give and take. And if your significant other doesn't naturally think a certain way or do certain things that you feel are missing, that you're unhappy about, that you want to be different, you have to directly and explicitly have that conversation with them because it doesn't occur to them. Because they were raised differently, because they have different life experiences, because they have a different mindset.

Because they have a different skill set. Okay. And maybe you've been quietly frustrated, just as an example, that your husband is never home. He works late a lot, then it's the gym, then it's a beer with the buddy on the way back, then it's Sunday golf, and you feel, let's say, emotionally disconnected, like you're not a priority. But you've never sat down and said, husband, I feel lonely.

I feel disconnected from you. I feel like our relationship is at a priority. Could you be home for dinner four nights a week, please? I'd really love it if we could be in the same room more nights than not. Instead, you start hinting. You make little comments here and there, maybe even passive aggressively. Maybe you sigh about it. You say things under your breath.

Maybe you've even made a comment like, I feel like I feel like we never see each other. And in your mind, you honestly believe that he should have picked up on it. Right? So then a few weeks go by, the schedule doesn't change, and quietly you're filing it away as more proof that he doesn't care. But he was never actually tested against a clear standard. He's being tested against something, a standard that's in your mind.

not something that you've explicitly said. So what I would encourage you to do, and this is just one example, is I really want you to be able to name specifically the changes that you want to see and the changes that you're watching for. Okay. You need to be specific, not, you know, be more thoughtful, not just spend more time together. You want to make it specific, something you can actually observe.

Kari Hoskins (09:29.324)
You want to name that thing that's missing, name that thing you're dissatisfied about, and come up with the plan with the two of you and be as direct and explicit as you can. Okay. And then you see what happens. And, you know, I would also say in this testing phase, you also want to set a time frame. That's something else that's not really on my list of mistakes, but it just kind of occurred to me.

I think that a really good time frame is three to six months. I remember when I was, you know, going through this in my first marriage, one of my things was just like never seeing him and him not being present and you know, not coming home from work until well after dinner time and just feeling super alone. And so for three months he brought his laptop home and he would work from home.

after dinner and I loved it. I was so happy. And then like month four hit, and one meeting leads to another, and next thing you know, everything's back to the way it was before. So I would definitely say that you want to set a time frame in your mind and maybe even explicitly of

Just to kind of test it to see are these changes actually going to stick if the changes actually happen. Mistake number two that I see is setting unrealistic expectations. So this one kind of goes in the other direction. You had the conversation, your spouse heard you, and now you're expecting a completely different person to show up, like permanently, immediately, without any stumbles. And you know, say, let's just like

I don't know, say you told your spouse that you need more emotional. I'm gonna go back to the emotional connection. You need more emotional connection, more real conversations about your marriage and about your relationship and about your feelings instead of a logistics only marriage, right? I'm actually thinking about a specific couple where this was the husband really wanted his wife to be more emotionally vulnerable with him and have more emotional connection. So pretend that she hears you.

Kari Hoskins (11:47.479)
And for two weeks, she's asking about your day. She's trying to slow down at dinner. She actually comes to the dinner table and sits down and eat instead of standing over the kitchen sink. And then one night she comes home exhausted, snaps a tube about something small, goes straight to her phone, and you're like, Well, there it is. Nothing's actually changed. Okay. But that's not evidence that change isn't real. That's evidence that you're married to a human being that has a bad day.

Real change is not a straight line. And it's not even the absence of any bad moments. Real change is a shift in the overall pattern. And you know, unreal expect expectations are really hard for everyone involved because what we do is we start grading on this past fail continuum based on a single incident.

versus looking over, you know, the last month, the last three months, the last six months, the night, last nine months, and asking yourself, is this trend actually moving in a good direction, even if it's not perfect? Okay. So if you have set unrealistic expectations, I would like to encourage you to really look for the trend. Kind of along those same lines is mistake number three, which I'm just calling throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

This is the mistake of collapsing like one disappointment into an entire judgment on their effort, right? And this is one you guys I see all the time. let's say that your husband has a temper or an anger, and that's the thing that you've named. And, you know, the raised voices, the slammed door, the way that you and the kids, you know, brace yourselves when he walks in.

From a bad day at work. And you've talked about it. And so for let's pretend three months he's doing the work. He's going to counseling, he's catching himself, he's staying in the room instead of storming off. He's apologizing in ways that sound real. He's not raising his voice. And then he's just got a really bad week at work. Like three really bad days in a row. And on the third night, he's like totally loses his shit, right? So

Kari Hoskins (14:10.814)
Right back to the angry voice, slam cabinets, same silence afterwards. And for you, it's not just a bad night. For you, it's everything. It's the accumulation of anger over the past 10 years. And so two months of him or three months of him staying calm, staying present, actually trying, are just wiped out in your mind, gone. Like the second that he raises his voice again. Okay. And in your mind, you're like, see, this was never gonna last.

He's exactly who he's always been, right? And so the unfortunate thing about this is all that work, all that progress, all that hoped, hope that you let yourself feel it all goes out the window in one moment, and you're right back to square one, right? And you are just as braced and just as skeptical as you were on day one of testing. Okay. So instead, what I want you to do is this. Hold both things at once. What I mean by that is on one hand,

This one thing can be a real letdown. You can acknowledge that. You can be bummed about that. And acknowledge that the last three months has shown that change is possible, that he does want to change, right? Both of those things can be true. So you just really need, again, to focus on the entire pattern, not just one or two singular events. Mistake number four that I see.

Is being too stuck in the past to see the present. And I think that this is probably the quietest one and honestly the hardest to catch in yourself. What happens with this is you're not necessarily even watching for change anymore. You're replaying old evidence. The years before the conversation, the years before the truth telling ever happened.

you're using all those things in the past to disqualify anything new, any changes that are happening now. So let's pretend that your wife or your spouse starts actually listening and apologizing and changing in whatever way that you've named. And some parts of you think, you know, it doesn't matter. It's too little, too late. They should have done this years ago.

Kari Hoskins (16:35.798)
I already know who he is or I already know who she is, right? You're not testing the present. You're basing your evaluation, your opinion on the past before the new behaviors have even had a chance like to count. Okay. So what I want you to do instead is this, okay? This does not mean forgetting the past. It does not mean pretending that old hurts and old patterns don't matter.

It means being honest with yourself about whether you're actually evaluating your partner's behavior today or whether your judgment about them has already already in your mind a foregone conclusion way before testing ever began. Okay. And here's something else I want to say about the whole too little, too late. I totally get that. That's so much resonates with me. Resonates with a lot of my clients, right?

That is really, really important information. If you're sitting here listening to this and you're like, look, I asked them for change five years ago. It's been five years. And now I've actually said out loud, I think I want a divorce, and now they're willing to change. And now it's too little, too late. What that means is you are no longer in this stage three. You are no longer in testing. You are already moved into stage four, which is fracture, which is resentment.

And you are likely into stage five, which is crossroads. So that is a really, really important thing just for you to think about as you're listening to this podcast. So I want to just kind of point out the common thread of all these, okay? Every one of these mistakes comes from the same place. Testing without the with like without clarity. Clarity about what you're actually asking for, clarity about what a reasonable timeline looks at.

Clarity about how to weigh a setback against a pattern and clarity about whether you are forming your opinion against the present or the past. Now, to get that clarity and to, you know, hopefully get out of testing what it's supposed to do, you really need to tell the truth about your marriage. You need again to have that conversation.

Kari Hoskins (18:59.118)
And if you skip it, testing just becomes a slower way of confirming all the stuff that you already believe about your husband or your wife or your marriage. So I want to give you some questions to consider. Number one, have I actually named explicitly, out loud, and clearly the changes that I'm looking for? The changes that I'm in air quotes testing for.

Question two, am I judging this change over time or am I condemning it after one bad night or one bad moment or a couple of setbacks? Question three, is there a specific setback that I've let outweigh real sustained change and progress? And number four, am I evaluating who my spouse is right now?

Or am I still sentencing them to who they were before? I think these are really, really important questions to consider. And before I want to let you go, I do just kind of want to throw this out there. Another mistake, I probably should have included it, is you expecting your partner to do all the changes, but you don't make any of your own. You are a part of your dynamic. And so if you're asking your partner to make changes,

That means on the flip side, you also need to be making some changes. If you want your husband to be less angry and less volatile and less whatever, your demeanor and the way you interact with him also needs to change. If you want your wife to be more vulnerable or to be more open to sexual intimacy or be more open to spending more time with you.

Then you need to be changing the way that you interact with her, the way you communicate with her, the way that you are hopefully expressing your love for her. Right? So this testing phase isn't just about your partner, it's about you as well, and how is your behavior impacting your dynamic? Okay, so if you are not sure whether or not you are in like the truth telling,

Kari Hoskins (21:20.438)
or you're deep into testing or you've already gotten past that into stages four and five. That is exactly what my quiz is for, you guys, I would invite you to head over to kahoskins.com, take the should we get a divorce quiz. I also put the link in the show notes for you. And that is going to help you figure out which stage you are actually in. And each result shows you which stage you're in and also some questions to consider.

So next time we are going to talk about stage four, which is the fracture. This is what happens when your hope finally runs out and your resentment builds. I'll see you then. This is the Divorce Decision Podcast. I'm Kari Hoskins. Have a great day.