Does your marriage feel like a draining challenge right now?

Every couple has them: the small, everyday escape routes we take instead of turning toward each other. The strategies we use instead of talking about our feelings. A partnership Exit is any behaviour that acts out a feeling, rather than expressing it verbally.”

An exit isn’t always dramatic. It rarely announces itself. It’s the phone picked up mid-conversation, the extra hour at work that wasn’t strictly necessary, the glass of wine that becomes three, the box-set binged alone, the friend we vent to instead of our partner, the silence we retreat into rather than say the difficult thing.

We all need some space, some outlets, some separateness within togetherness. The trouble starts when an exit becomes the *default* – when it’s reached for automatically, again and again, instead of the harder, more vulnerable option of staying present with our partner.

An Exit drains energy from the marriage leading to disconnection and discontent. In his book, Getting the Love You Want, Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. warns Exits can be like the proverbial hungry cow stretching its neck over a fence to munch the green grass outside of its own ‘field’.

Thus, when partners look elsewhere for gratification the ‘marriage balloon’ has a leak becoming deflated. The couple wake up years later feeling like strangers, wondering where the connection went – when really, it leaked away exit by exit, day by day, sometimes resulting in misery, affairs, and even divorce. 

So it’s worth asking yourself honestly: What are my exits? Where do I go instead of staying? And what would it feel like, just once, to close one of them – to put the phone down, skip the extra hour, and simply stay in the room with the person I chose? What would it be like if I took the vulnerable risk of telling my partner how I feel instead of acting out?