2 Questions To Ask When A Divorce Seems Inevitable, By A Psychologist

Forbes

10-05-2025

When a marriage teeters on the edge, and divorce seems like the only way forward, most partners ... More blame each other. But asking these two humbling questions could change everything.
When a divorce seems like the only way forward, it's often the result of a slow relational erosion. Communication gets clipped, small frustrations compound and, somewhere along the line, both partners begin prioritizing everything but the relationship. It's often a combination of grief and a last-ditch attempt at self-preservation.
The fallout doesn't always come with screaming or infidelity. Sometimes, it shows up as quiet resignation. You stop trying to be understood, and you stop asking to be seen. By the time divorce feels like the only path forward, it can feel like you're rejecting each other.
But what if that's not entirely true? What if, at the heart of it, you're not rejecting each other, but the direction your shared life has taken?
That distinction really matters. And in the blur of emotion, paperwork and outside opinions, asking the right questions — the ones you might regret not asking later — could offer a moment of clarity, or even a way forward, perhaps. Here are two valuable questions many couples are too proud to ask each other at the end.
This question actually does get tossed around a lot, but it's usually a jab or a rhetorical sting. It often sounds like:
But, even so, the emotional undertow of this question is often a veiled invitation to stop, block some time and trace your way back to the beginning.
Maybe it was love at first sight. Maybe it was a 10-year friendship that turned into something romantic. Maybe it was chaotic, imperfect and complicated, but it still felt like home.
The point is, at some point in your shared past, you both made a promise. You stood in front of people who mattered to you and said: You see this person standing before me? I'm going to build a life with them, no matter what obstacles come our way.
That decision wasn't made lightly. But over time, the clarity of that moment can get dissipate owing to mismatched careers, kids, miscommunication, quiet disappointment and emotional drift.
Revisiting the clarity you once felt is so that you can re-ground yourself.
In some cases — and this can be hard to come to terms with — you'll find that you've drifted too far apart as people and that the marriage isn't worth saving. But a failed marriage can still teach you what you really want out of life.
Other times, you might remember something that's still alive and something worth protecting. If this is the case, this question, if presented with genuine curiosity, can help recalibrate the marriage.
Either way, the act of remembering is powerful. It strips away defensiveness and reminds both of you that this was a story that began with hope, honesty and a choice. And in the middle of all the opinions, lawyers and paperwork, remembering that you still have a choice can be empowering.
This is the harder one of the two. Because, and let's be honest, by the time a relationship is close to ending, each partner likely already has a mental list of reasons why it's the other person's fault. It can be hard to swallow your pride and put yourself in the spotlight, even temporarily.
But this is exactly where one underrated relationship strength comes into play: intellectual humility.
People who are willing to admit they don't have all the answers — those who recognize that their own viewpoint might be incomplete or flawed — tend to navigate relationship conflict more constructively, according to a June 2025 paper published in the Journal of Research in Personality. In a total of 74 couples, partners who scored higher on intellectual humility reported better relationship quality and felt they handled conflict more positively.
Interestingly, men's intellectual humility not only improved their own experience of the relationship, but also significantly shaped how their partners felt. Women's intellectual humility, while impactful, tended to influence only their own perspective. In other words, humility — not as self-erasure, but as curiosity — can change the entire emotional climate of a relationship. And that's what this question offers.
It helps couples take a beat and say, 'If I contributed to this distance, I want to understand how.' And the truth is even if your partner doesn't say it out loud, they probably have an answer to this. It could be any of the following:
Asking this question may not save the relationship if it's too far gone, but it helps both of you process what's happening with honesty and grace. Because the pain of a relationship ending is often about the questions left unanswered.
And 'What did I do to push you away?' is one that almost always lingers ambiguously, even when the divorce papers are signed.
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