Leaving Your Toxic Marriage

If you’re in a toxic marriage, you might be asking yourself if you should stay or if you should go. The decision to end a marriage is difficult. We made vows of “for better or worse,” but how much “worse” does it have to get before we decide that divorce is the best option?

On this week’s Find Me The Money podcast, Karen McMahon and I talk about the decision to stay or go, and techniques for navigating the process. Karen is a Certified Relationship and Divorce Coach and the founder of Journey Beyond Divorce. She began providing divorce coaching services in 2010 after she realized that the pain of her own divorce led her on a transformational journey into a powerful and unexpected new life.

Karen has created a coaching program to provide people a way through divorce, to help you love yourself and build a life you love to live too. She knows there are ways to not only survive your divorce, but to embrace the changes that come and create your ideal life that you love.

If you find yourself in a toxic marriage, you’re undoubtedly asking yourself whether you should stay or go. It’s tough to be on the fence, but how do you decide if you should divorce or stay together? In this episode, Karen and I talk about how you differentiate between a marriage that has gone sour versus a truly toxic marriage, and then what you do about that toxic marriage. We dive into some of the fears surrounding making the decision to get divorced. 

These individual changes can help you clarify whether you are able to work through your problems with your spouse or whether you are in a toxic marriage that you must leave. 

Karen has some tips on what YOU can change about your behavior in a toxic relationship. We may not be able to change a spouse or an ex, but we can change our own behavior.

• Start noticing your own triggers. What sets you off with your spouse?
• Do you react to those triggers in ways that aren't helpful?
• Change your responses to more calmly respond to your spouse. Walk away if you can’t be calm.
• See how your spouse responds to you. Your calmer behavior may draw you close or it may frustrate them further.

Be sure to tune into to the full podcast episode with Karen McMahon here. You don't want to miss all she has to share about conflict, toxic marriage, and making the right decision for you.