The curse of the ‘quiet divorce’: have you secretly left your marriage?

You’re still together, but do everything apart and put more energy into relationships outside the home. Victoria Young talks to couples who are ‘disengaged, but not divorced’ and asks: can ‘quiet quitting’ a marriage can ever work in the long run?

They all have different reasons: for Jane*, a 57-year-old accountant who has been with her husband since university, it’s his refusal to discuss their relationship that has led her to emotionally withdraw. For Hannah*, a 54-year-old business manager, it’s the lack of intimacy that triggered her to expect less and invest in friendship instead. And for Audrey*, a 56-year-old business analyst, checking out of the marriage was triggered by her husband’s increasing disinterest in her.

They all describe trying to improve things before concluding that their best option is to just “quietly quit” their marriage. They want to avoid the earthquake of divorce. But in order to preserve their sense of self and wellbeing, they’ve stopped nurturing the relationship and started focusing their energy and attention elsewhere.

As The Independent reported last week, women are now as likely to start divorce proceedings as men, especially in midlife. The “walkaway wife” phenomenon was identified by a recent report from the law firm Mishcon de Reya, wealth management company Julius Baer, and the midlife community platform NOON that showed that women are often calling the shots based on simply having “had enough”.

But some women are taking a different approach. The “quietly quitting” approach was recently described in a piece in The Cut magazine and is one that resonates with many. Audrey, for example, estimates that around 40 per cent of her friendship group are in “zombie” marriages: the lights may be on, but they’ve spiritually left home to find fulfilment somewhere else.

Jane believes that if it were not for the issue of finances, many more of her friends would consider leaving their husbands, although that is not the sticking point for her personally. “My husband began to struggle with addiction in his forties until he went into rehab a decade ago,” she says. “To his credit, he has not relapsed since then, but it feels like he has not addressed any of the demons – and I suspect he has many – that made him unwell in the first place.

“Unfortunately there is a lot of damage done, despite him stopping drinking. I have tried many times but he won’t talk about what might have caused him to drink, or how he is feeling at the moment, and he won’t look at how it has affected our marriage.

“I was on the brink of plucking up the energy to leave him when Covid came along. At the end of the day, he is a very old friend. He is a great father. And when Covid hit, it would have been like kicking someone when they were down to leave him. So I stayed.”

However, that marked a turning point in their relationship. She says that the combination of the children leaving and her getting a bit older made her decide to do things a little differently.

“We’ve had a few friends die this year, which has been quite a wake-up call and I want to do the things I may not be able to soon. I’ve recently been to Morocco with a girlfriend, which was just great. Another old friend invites a group of us to stay in his house abroad every year. My husband is always invited but never comes. My reaction nowadays is to think “Fine – you boring old git; I don’t want you to be there!’”

“Increasingly, I’m running my life as if it’s only me. I just don’t see it as my job any more to try to improve things, I’m living my life in my own way.”

She describes what is left as being “very transactional”. There has been no physical intimacy between them for a decade, and her husband usually sleeps in a separate room.

“Our life is about the day-to-day maintenance rather than our relationship,” she says. “When the children are home we have dinner together and it’s lovely. If they are not home, there’s a lot of companionable silence. We will never talk about how we are feeling – that just doesn’t happen. If I suggest we work on our relationship, it always ends in a blazing row.”

Jane describes quiet quitting as “the least stressful option” – although she is not sure whether it will go on indefinitely.

“If I had the energy for it and felt that the children would understand – then I think I’d see through my plan to separate. But it’s a real earthquake to end things and there would be a lot of angst and anger, so for now I’m seeing if I can rub along.”

Hannah, who has been with her husband for 20 years, says she has recently accepted that the relationship will probably never be what she wants it to be – but still has no intention of leaving. There has been no affection or intimacy for the past eight years; something that she thinks is rooted in her husband’s lack of career fulfillment – and the challenges of parenting high-need children, now aged 16 and 18.

“He never settled in a career, so it made sense for him to be the stay-at-home parent, but he feels a lack of achievement as a result and it’s really affected our relationship,” she says. “He’s also weighed down by the slog of raising teenagers and he just doesn’t see me as an individual person any more.”

She makes the point that it takes a lot for a marriage to get to the stage where one partner quietly quits. “It’s seen as the lazy or easy option, but it’s not,” she says “I spent years and years trying to reconnect us and do things together, but slowly we have become business partners who are raising children together and I have given up any hope that we will reconnect.

“A few months ago, I thought: I can’t leave, but I need to live the best life I can, even though I am quite lonely in the marriage. So I started to do social things like seeing bands or having more time out with friends.

“I do actually believe he would be happier too if we divorced. But I am the only breadwinner, so the financial fallout and effect on our children is too great to risk.”

She says that her new approach has left her feeling not exactly happier, but more at peace. “Having given up thoughts that I need to leave, I have felt less anxious.”

For some people, quietly quitting is the precursor to actually quitting. “If the relationship involves children, the important thing is to read the temperature of the family unit as a whole,” says Camilla Nichols, a psychodynamic psychotherapist who works with couples and individuals in Suffolk and online. “If the atmosphere in the home is of a deep freeze, then it might well be kinder to the children to separate although this has to be the last resort.”

‘I don’t want to be looking after other people’s needs all the time’ (Drobot Dean - stock.adobe.com)

Audrey, a 56-year-old business analyst from London, was married for 16 years before divorcing six years ago. “Our relationship was very romantic,” she says. “We fell totally in love and I felt like we were real partners who would be together forever. We supported each other as we bought a house and raised two children.”

Then her husband lost his job and they had money problems. “He was laid off or fired from a few jobs. He became moody and unhappy and I increasingly felt that he had checked out. “His lack of interest in me began to make me feel really terrible. We were still functioning as a family and I loved him but I didn’t feel happy. And I was getting to that age when women look around and say, I don’t want to be looking after other people’s needs all the time.”

“I realised I no longer thought of marriage as being the source of my erotic life or even romance. We were working on a very important project together and the project was the family. My quiet quitting allowed me to continue being married, but only to a point.”

Had her husband addressed the issues that were making him difficult to live with, Audrey thinks they might still be together. “I was devoted to my marriage and not necessarily looking for a way out of it. I still think that quietly quitting might be the secret to success in some relationships because it is a way of retaining your identity rather than expecting your partner to be the all-encompassing answer to everything.”

“Look at the French way of doing things, where people get their fulfilment from friends or affairs and remain committed to their marriage. Maybe another way of looking at it is quitting not marriage, but the old model of marriage – it could even be seen as a positive.”

*Names have been changed

Have you or your partner quietly quit?

Camilla Nichols, psychodynamic psychotherapist advises:

Spot the symptoms: the key signs of a ‘quiet’ divorce are more in the absence than the presence of something: a lack of tenderness; sex will probably have taken a back seat; separate beds might already have been adopted ‘to get better sleep’. There’s an indifference to the everyday successes or failures of the partner and a tendency towards keeping an unwritten ledger of who has contributed more financially, emotionally, and practically. Parenting becomes competitive - not just who has done what, but how it has been done (more ledger keeping). And social lives are rarely shared. The biggest lack of all, which allows the growth of hurt, resentment and distance in a couple is the desire to communicate.

The good news: Quiet quitting is a symptom of a relationship disease which is not necessarily terminal: therapy can help. It’s a safe place to talk through resentments, hurts and confusion and can help to break and soften the brittle patterns that have been adopted by both partners.

What to do now: take a deep breath: Take time to consider your feelings and the potential feelings or your partner and how to communicate them.

Ask questions: Recognise and reflect back feelings to stimulate non-confrontational communication. For example: ‘you seem excited/fed up/concerned - would you like to tell me about it?’

Communication is not just verbal: The pain of withholding tender touch is not to be underestimated. Restore non-erotic, everyday, touch with your partner in a way that is respectful, caring, affectionate.

Try not to be knocked back quickly: The pattern of indifference and resentment will need work to get out of. This is where therapy can be so helpful.