From my colleague Elisa Reter, in the Legal Intelligencer: Attorneys and mental health professionals are frequently asked by clients and patients why a marital relationship is ending.
Theories abound about whether it is better to be the leaver or the left, and whether it behooves a party to be the petitioner or the respondent in a divorce action. An article published in March 2025 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology explores the issue of how relationships deteriorate, using measurements that can be tracked.
Researchers Janina Larissa Bühler of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Ulrich Orth of the University of Bern analyzed data from four long-term studies using information from different countries. How does being the “leaver” as opposed to being the party who is “left” impact legal proceedings? Or in confronting family changes in counseling?
The end of a romantic relationship is rarely a symmetrical experience.
When a marriage dissolves, the dynamics between the person who initiates the separation and the person who is left behind create dramatically different emotional journeys and recovery trajectories. Recent research on the decline in relationships sheds new light on how these different roles shape not only the immediate aftermath of separation but also long-term psychological well-being.
This asymmetry in relationship dissolution represents one of the most profound yet under-discussed aspects of divorce psychology. While popular culture often portrays breakups as mutually understood conclusions to failing relationships, the reality is far more complex, with significant implications for how individuals process grief, rebuild identity, and eventually move forward.
The Asymmetry of Separation: Different Timelines, Different Pain
When a relationship ends, the partners are rarely at the same emotional stage simultaneously. For the leaver, the emotional disconnection typically begins long before the actual separation. Dr. Diane Vaughan, whose research on "uncoupling" remains foundational in this field, identified that leavers often experience what she termed "transitional feelings" – a gradual emotional withdrawal that may occur months or years before they verbalize their desire to end the relationship.
The person who initiates the breakup has typically undergone an internal grieving process while still in the relationship. By the time they announce their intention to separate, they have often already:
- Mentally rehearsed life without their partner
- Emotionally detached from the relationship
- Begun to establish a vision of their post-relationship identity
- Started building support systems outside the relationship
But these have all been done in private. The spouse often notices their partner has “changed,” but there is no acknowledgement of it. In fact, attempts to confront those changes – “Is anything wrong?” – can be met with, “No, I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” Often, the departing spouse creates a separate life apart from the partner and the children. It is far beyond a “midlife crisis” or an “emotional
affair,” although these often signal the problem, like a faraway lighthouse.
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