If One Partner Doesn't Want to Fix the Relationship, Then It's Just Not Fixable

A man and woman sitting on opposite ends of a bench, ignoring each other. Image source.

So Focus on the Family is publishing a new book called "How God Used “the Other Woman”: Saving Your Marriage after Infidelity" by Tina Konkin. Sarahbeth Caplin has a blog post about this: A New Book from Focus on the Family Blames Women When Their Husbands Cheat. Yep, the book is about how, if your husband cheated on you, you can save the marriage by determining what your role was in causing him to cheat. Umm. Okay... that sounds unhealthy and victim-blame-y.

Caplin's post includes a quote from Sheila Wray Gregoire, a Christian blogger with a much healthier view on cheating. Here's the part that I want to talk about:

A marriage can only start healing if the cheating spouse first repents. That’s always the first step. Once that’s done, the hurting spouse can choose to extend grace, can go to counseling and look at how drift was caused, and try to rebuild. But unless there is total repentance from the cheater, you won’t get anywhere.

Yes, she is absolutely right. If the person who cheats isn't interested in fixing the marriage, then it doesn't matter what the non-cheater does- it's never going to work. In that situation, the marriage is just not fixable.

To put it more generally: If a relationship has some kind of huge problem, and one partner wants to work on solving the problem, and the other partner doesn't, then it is just not possible to solve the problem and make the relationship healthy again. It's just not.

This fact is SO IMPORTANT TO ME because I never heard anything like it in Christians' teachings about purity and dating and marriage.

In Christian purity culture- which is targeted toward unmarried people- breaking up is The Worst Thing Ever. And in Christian teaching about marriage, divorce is Always Bad. So all of the advice about what to do if you're in an unhealthy relationship is along the lines of "do these things to fix the relationship" instead of "here are the criteria you can use to decide if the relationship is fixable, or whether you'd be better off just leaving." Leaving is not an option, so I never heard any teaching about how to make a healthy decision about leaving.

Yes, the "how to fix your marriage" advice from Christians often included a disclaimer about "we're not talking about people in abusive relationships- if you're being abused then you should get out" and "okay in SOME cases divorce is okay, like if there's cheating or abuse." But those things were only mentioned to show that we aren't talking about them. They only gave "here is how to fix your marriage" advice- they did NOT give "here is how to recognize abuse" advice or "here is how to go about getting a divorce if there's cheating or abuse" advice.

And similarly, for the unmarried people, there was no teaching about how to break up in a healthy way. All of purity culture was about how to avoid ever experiencing a breakup, because if you have an ex that means you gave them part of your purity and you can never have a perfect marriage. Back then, I was terrified of breaking up. So terrified.

So no, I never knew that if one partner doesn't want to fix the relationship, then it's just not fixable. I never heard that before. I never knew that, in a situation like that, it's not possible to make the relationship healthy. If your partner really shows no signs that they'll ever be willing to work with you to solve the problem, then the best thing you can do for yourself is to break up. There's nothing good or virtuous about staying in a relationship like that.

Instead, all the advice goes like this: If your husband isn't treating you right, then here's what you need to do. You need to pray for him every day. You need to be a better wife. You need to submit to him more. You need to smile and not complain. You need to have sex with him more. And so on and so on. And if you do all these things, he will magically change and become a better person.

(Related: all the evangelism tactics we used to do, back when I was "on fire for God." We were trying to get people to change their personal religious beliefs. I didn't know about boundaries; I didn't know everyone's beliefs belong to them and I can't "make" them change. All the evangelism training was about how to try to coerce and manipulate people into changing. And how to pray for God to coerce and manipulate them into changing. I thought if I followed all the steps, then it would "work.")

No, it doesn't work that way. If someone doesn't want to change, you can't make them change, no matter what you do.

See, I now believe in boundaries morality. Boundaries means you can't "make" anybody do anything. You can't make someone treat you better. You can't make someone agree with you. You can't make someone become a better person. Everyone is in charge of their own self. You can't make someone treat you better, but you should set boundaries so that people who would mistreat you don't have access to you and therefore won't be able to mistreat you. And sometimes, when you set a boundary and somebody realizes they don't like being excluded from your life, it might inspire them to change their behavior and stop mistreating you. Maybe. It might. But it also might not. The goal isn't necessarily to make them change, it's to protect yourself from their bad behavior, whether they change or not.

A long time ago, I was dating a guy, let's call him Xin, and he was sometimes very nice and affectionate, and sometimes seemed to be acting like he didn't really want to have a girlfriend. And I loved him, and I cried a lot during the times he wasn't treating me right. I ... It never occurred to me that I would be better off breaking up with him. I was starting to get out of purity culture but I was still terrified of the very concept of breaking up; it wasn't something I considered as an actual option. Instead I tried everything I could possibly think of to manipulate him into being a better person. Occasionally he would treat me better, for 1 day, and I would be so happy and feel like it was all worth it and we could totally make this relationship work.

It felt like a big milestone when we hit the 6-month mark. Then the 1-year mark. I thought that being together for 1 year was something to celebrate- as if staying together is "success" and breaking up is "failure." No, that relationship was happy for just the first few months but then it should have ended. We all would have been better off. Staying in a relationship with a partner who doesn't treat me right isn't an accomplishment.

I knew the relationship wasn't happy, and so I feared that it would end. And by "it would end" I mean my boyfriend saying to me "we should break up." I never thought maybe I could be the one to say to him "we should break up."

I thought "loyalty" was a good thing. I thought it was godly how I was good and loving toward him while he was being heartless toward me. I thought "giving up" on the relationship was a bad thing. I thought I was supposed to selflessly love him and always do what would be best for him.

It turns out, in reality, "loyalty" isn't intrinsically good. It's only good to be loyal to someone who deserves your loyalty. Someone who loves you. Someone you can trust. And it's bad and unhealthy to be loyal to someone who doesn't treat you right. (And that's why I don't worship any god. I believe in God, but I don't worship them because I'm not willing to say they deserve my loyalty. Boundaries.)

And finally ... well ... I decided that me loving Xin and wanting what's best for him meant I should tell him "okay, we will take a break from our relationship." I didn't do it for myself; I did it because I decided he would be happier if I stopped trying to manipulate him into being a decent boyfriend. (Or at least, that's how I reasoned it out- maybe I also did it because of "selfish" reasons but I was a good Christian and therefore wasn't allowed to be honest with myself about that.) I still thought there was something wrong with making a decision to break up. I still thought that I should always put others first and never be motivated by caring about my own emotional needs- that would be "selfish." I didn't know about boundaries yet. In boundaries morality, you put yourself first. That's how it should be. But all my life, Christians had taught me the exact opposite.

And then I started dating Hendrix, who from the very beginning has always acted like he is just the luckiest person in the world to have the privilege of being in a relationship with me. And every day he says and does little things that show he's in love with me. (Reader, I married him.)

But even if I hadn't met such a good partner after breaking up with Xin, breaking up still would have been a good decision. Being single would be better than being in a relationship like that- though I didn't have any way to believe that back then. I loved Xin, I was lonely, and my whole life I had heard so many warnings about losing my "purity"... if I have to start over and find a new partner, that means starting over with less purity than I had originally, and therefore I would be less valuable and less deserving of a good partner.

I wish I had been taught a whole comprehensive ideology about "yes, even though breaking up is sad because you love him, logically it is a good decision because of these reasons." Instead, my "whole comprehensive ideology" was purity culture with its beliefs about how breaking up is The Worst Thing Ever... And then occasionally an adult who didn't buy into that might tell me I deserve better and someday I'll find a way better partner, and in the meantime it's better to be single than to put up with that crap anyway... but I didn't have any way to actually fit that in to the rest of my worldview with regards to dating. So it felt like just some fleeting faraway possibility, not something I could actually trust.

No, the idea that I could tell him "we should break up" because I deserved better was never something I actually considered. There was no way I could, when I believed "loyalty" was good and "giving up" was bad, when I believed a relationship that ends is a "failure" but a relationship that keep racking up anniversaries is a "success." When I believed in "always put others first." When all the relationship advice I'd heard was about "here is how to fix your relationship" instead of "here is how to know if your relationship is worth fixing." When I had heard stories of women who suffered for years and years in bad marriages, who kept submitting and working hard to be a good wife, until finally God magically changed their husband into a good husband- and those women were role models, that was the "correct" thing to do in an unhappy marriage. When divorce was only mentioned in terms of "yes, divorce is allowed in some cases but we aren't talking about that," basically saying that if your husband cheats on you then technically it's not a sin to divorce him but it's still better to stay in the marriage. When Christians were always saying "marriage isn't about making you happy, it's about making you holy" and divorce is for those selfish losers that didn't realize "marriage is hard" so they bailed at the first sign of conflict.

I wish I had known about how to put myself first and how to make healthy decisions about breaking up. I wish I had known about boundaries, and no matter what I do, I can't "make" someone treat me right. I wish I had known that if one partner just won't do the work to fix the relationship, then it's just not fixable.

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Related:
"How Far Is Too Far?" My Story, And What I Wish I'd Known
From "Virtues Morality" To "Boundaries Morality" 
"Marriage Is Hard"