Is It Time to Get a Divorce? A Private Self-Assessment

There is no scoring. The work is in how you answer, not what you score. Take a notebook, or use the Decision Map below, which auto-saves your answers.

Part 1: The marriage itself. (1) Can you remember the last hard conversation that ended well? When? (2) When you imagine telling your partner something difficult tomorrow, what do you feel in your body before you speak? (3) When was the last time you laughed together about something neither of you had laughed about before? (4) If your partner walked in right now, would your shoulders drop or rise? (5) When you imagine the next ten years exactly as they are, what's the feeling?

Part 2: The kids (if applicable). (1) When you picture telling them, what's the first concrete fear, not the abstract one? (2) When you picture them five years from now in a two-home life, what does that picture actually look like? (3) Is there a version of staying that you believe is genuinely better for them than a well-handled separation, or are you assuming there is? (4) Are they already aware that something is wrong, in your honest read?

Part 3: The money. (1) Could you describe your household's full financial picture from memory, accounts, debts, monthly fixed costs, retirement, equity, without checking? (2) If the answer is no, whose decision was it that you wouldn't know? (3) What's the single financial question that scares you most about leaving? Is it a real number or a feeling?

Part 4, Yourself. (1) Who are you outside this marriage, concretely, this year, not historically? (2) If a close friend described your last year of life back to you, what word would they use? (3) When you imagine being alone, really alone, not lonely, is the feeling closer to fear or to relief? (4) What part of yourself have you been holding offstage during this marriage, and how long has it been offstage?

Part 5: The family / faith / community context. (1) Whose disappointment are you carrying that isn't yours to carry? (2) Is there anyone in your life whose response to a divorce you genuinely cannot predict? (3) If your community fully supported either decision, would the question feel different?

Part 6: The future. (1) If nothing changes, where will you be in five years? Write the sentence. (2) If you left, where would you be in five years? Write that sentence. (3) Which sentence was easier to write? Which one made you flinch? (4) If you were reading these answers as someone else, what would you tell that person, gently?

What to do with your answers. The pattern matters more than any single answer. Read what you wrote, slowly, twice. Notice which answers you wrote fast and which you avoided. Both are data. The Decision Map below holds all of this for you, auto-saves, and lets you come back over weeks rather than minutes.

When to bring a professional in. A licensed therapist (individually, or with your partner) is the right next step for almost everyone in this question. A family-law attorney is the right next step when you want a confidential read on what a separation would actually look like, financially, legally, practically, in Connecticut. Tara offers a 60-minute paid Decision Clarity consult specifically for that purpose. Nothing is filed. Nothing changes. You decide what, if anything, happens next.