Why You Didn't Leave Sooner Makes Sense

“Why didn’t I leave sooner?” can feel like a realistic question but the most real thing about it is how full of shame and self judgement that question is. We turn hindsight into a weapon and put the past version of us on trial. I want to slow that moment down and offer a different path, one rooted in self-worth after divorce and real emotional resilience.

I'll talk you through what’s actually underneath that question, the fear of “What’s wrong with me?” and why that belief is both untrue and unhelpful. I share how I coach women to widen the lens and find the real reasons staying made sense. Those reasons are not character flaws. They’re information, and they can be the start of post-divorce healing instead of another loop of self-criticism.

Then we walk through the emotional stages that often come before leaving a marriage. I also offer a powerful reframe to practice right away so you can rebuild self-trust after divorce.

If you’re ready for less shame and more grounded forward motion, press play, share this with a friend who needs it, and subscribe. If it helps, please leave a rating and review so more women can find this support.

To download your FREE "Becoming You Again Podcast Map" click here. 

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DISCLAIMER: THE COMMENTARY AND OPINIONS AVAILABLE ON THIS PODCAST ARE FOR EDUCATIONAL, INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY AND ARE NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROVIDING PSYCHOLOGICAL, COUNSELING OR PROFESSIONAL HEALTHCARE ADVICE. 

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Transcript

Welcome And What We Build Here

Karin Nelson 0:00

Welcome back to Becoming You Again. This is the podcast where you are learning to rebuild your self-worth, embrace your independence, and create an amazing new chapter with confidence after your divorce. I'm your host, Karin Nelson. I'm a divorce coach who loves helping women figure out how to be emotionally resilient, love themselves, and learn how to be compassionate with themselves as they go through something as hard as divorce. I'm so glad you're here. In today's episode, I'm talking about when that question of why didn't I leave sooner comes up. It's one of the most common questions that I hear from clients, and it's almost never really a question. It's more of like a judgment or a trial where you are basically prosecuting the old version of yourself using information that she never had. So let's get started. Welcome to Becoming You Again, the podcast where you learn to step into your power as a woman in this world, where you learn to reconnect to your wholeness, your integrity, and bring into alignment your brain, your body, and your intuition after divorce. This is the podcast where you learn to trust yourself again and move forward toward a life that you truly want. You are listening to Becoming You Again, and I am your host, Karin Nelson. Welcome back to the podcast, all of you amazing women. I am, as always, so so happy that you are

The Real Question Underneath Shame

Karin Nelson 1:28

here. Today I'm talking about this question that comes up so often when I'm coaching my clients, and it is some version of like, why didn't I leave sooner? Why did I stay so long? Why did I put up with what I put up with? Why did I keep believing that he was going to change when he just basically showed me over and over and over that that was never actually going to be happening? And what we're really going to focus on aren't those specific questions, because that's not what we're really asking, right? Those are like surface level, like I don't even think it's like a really a curious question, those surface level questions, because those are more of like a judgment of yourself. And the real underneath question of it all is what's wrong with me? There must be something wrong with me, right? Because that is the root of all of those judgmental, surface level questions that are coming up when we're asking, why didn't I leave sooner? Why did I stay so long? And you can even hear it in the way I say it, right? There's just like a tinge of judgment behind it. Cause we're really asking, what the fuck is wrong with me? Why didn't I? How could I do that to myself? How could I do that to my kids? So today I'm gonna answer the question of why didn't you? And let me tell you, it has nothing to do with something being wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with you. Okay, you are not broken. You don't need to be fixed. So that we're just gonna lay that on the table right now. That's not where we're headed with this. It's not more self-judgment. It's not more of you need to just do better or be better or know better. We're not going there because that is not true. So when I am coaching a client and this question comes up in one of those forms, again, she's not asking that question. She's judging herself, right? It's basically like I said at the very beginning: like there's like a trial being held, and you're the prosecutor, you're presenting the evidence against yourself, you're the judge, you're the defendant, sitting there with no lawyer, having these all these other people already decide, all these other versions of yourself already decide that you're guilty of doing something wrong. But

The Unfair Trial Against Past You

Karin Nelson 4:05

this trial is just like completely doomed from the very beginning because the judgment is focused on a previous version of you, but it's using information that the version of you right now has, and the younger version, the earlier version, the previous version of you didn't have. You are judging the woman that you were with all of the information and all of the ways that you see the world now. Everything that you've learned, everything that has become clear that you've become aware of, that you have understanding of, that you are experiencing in your life now. You have all of that information that she didn't have. She was standing like inside of this, in the middle of it, maybe even in a fog, doing the absolute best that she could with the information that she had. And that is not a fair trial for that version of you. So, what I want to do today is help you kind of widen the lens so that you can actually break things down and look at the evidence. And this is what I do with my clients when we are coaching it together. Like we will widen the lens often. And what I mean is like we're just looking at it from a broader perspective or from different angles so that we can see more than what your brain is offering you right in the moment. So I'm just gonna help you do that because this is literally if we were working one-on-one together, this is what we would be doing. I've been a coach for many years. I've been divorced for almost 10 years, and I have never once, not one single time, sat down with a woman and discovered that she stayed and that she did not have a good reason for staying. There all there's always gonna be a reason, and there's always a good reason. Even if you don't think it's a good reason now, again, it kind of goes back to that self-judgment, okay, but in the moment, you had a good reason for it. You had a good reason for staying, and we want to take a look at what those reasons were, because that is the real reason why you stayed.

The Real Reasons You Stayed

Karin Nelson 6:23

And then we want to have some compassion and understanding for those reasons. So I'm gonna offer some of them, and I want you to just see if any of them kind of hit close to home, if any of them resonate with you. You stayed because you loved him. Like that is literally not a character flaw. It's a beautiful thing to love people and to have relationships. You stayed because of your kids. Because you thought protecting them or not wanting to be away from them, or like leaving was gonna hurt them more than staying. You stayed because you took a vow, you made a promise, and you have told yourself that like being a person who keeps their promises is a good quality. And it is a good quality. That's not a stupid quality, right? You stayed because you weren't sure you could survive financially, which is a real fear that needs to be taken into consideration. You stayed because everyone else in your life, like your family, your church, your community, your neighbors, your friends, maybe even, told you that leaving meant you were a failure. You stayed because you were exhausted. Because you're managing everyone else's emotions, everyone else's feelings, you're managing the home, you're probably working and managing that as well, and you have nothing left to make this kind of big decision. And then you think, and then I'm gonna be on my own with my kids. And I'm how am I gonna manage that by myself?

unknown 7:58

Right.

Karin Nelson 7:58

Even though you're probably not getting very much help in your marriage. Again, this is what our brain does. We have good reasons for doing the thing. And when we're exhausted, that feels like such a good reason, even if we don't see it in the moment. You stayed because you genuinely didn't know what was going to come on the other side of it, because there was uncertainty, there was fear, you didn't know if you could handle it, you didn't weren't 100% sure that things would be better. You stayed because you wanted to get things ready. You wanted to get things lined up, you wanted to have the support and the guidance and the help that you needed first. Or maybe you stayed because you were scared. And that, my friend, is one of the most human reasons to do something. Every one of those reasons, and maybe it's something else that I didn't even say. Again, it's not an excuse. It's not a reason for judgment, it's not a reason to think there's something wrong with you. It's just a reason, and they're real. And it's totally okay that those are the reasons, or you had a reason for staying when you did.

A Simple Guide To Reconnect

Karin Nelson 9:15

I know what you're thinking. You're in the middle of divorce, or you're on the other side of it, and you found yourself thinking, I don't even know who I am anymore. First of all, you are so not alone in this, and second of all, I made something just for you. It's called 115 Ways to Get to Know You, and it's a $7 guide filled with ideas to help you reconnect with yourself, your wants, your passions, your personality in ways that you might have forgotten were even possible. I'm talking about creativity, adventure, self-care, joy, emotional healing, all of it. And the best part? You get to pick what feels good to you. There are no pressures, there's no rules, just permission for you to explore. Because the truth is, your relationship with yourself is the most important one you'll ever have. And it's never too late to start building it. Find the link in the show notes to grab your copy today for just $7. I can't wait for you to dig in.

The Emotional Stages Of Leaving

Karin Nelson 10:17

So I want to talk about why leaving feels like it takes so long, and again, why there's so much judgment there. Because leaving typically isn't just a one-and-done decision. Even if that's what it looks like on the surface, and you like there's a breaking point where you're just like, okay, I'm done. And maybe you do leave or you do file that day or whatever, there has been a buildup to it. And it has stages in order for it to happen. And I'm not talking about the like, I got the lawyer and then I, you know, had my the money in the bank. Those are part of the stages, but those aren't the stages I'm gonna be talking about today. What I'm gonna be talking about more is like the emotional stages that you're gonna go through to get to the point where you're ready. Because first we have to have the awareness, the noticing. And this one can take years because noticing and being aware of what's actually happening around you or to you or in your relationship, or what the other person is doing or saying, or what you're not doing or saying, or any version of that, that can feel dangerous or scary, even if you're not like consciously understanding of what's going on. Like in my marriage, I found out that my husband was having an affair. Like I found out he didn't tell me. I found the evidence, right? And it was a terrible day. It was like, and and I describe that as a terrible day in the feeling that I was having because I was so shocked and confused and sad and rejected and all of those things, right? All of the things that we feel when we find out somebody has betrayed our trust. But I can definitely look back on that and say, you know, it actually was a good thing that I found out, because I don't know how much longer I would have stayed. I don't know. Because that awareness felt so dangerous, right? And then after I told him that I had found out about the affair, and, you know, after I decided that I want to divorce and told him I wanted to divorce, he told me later that he had actually had multiple times during our marriage where he had stepped out on me, not necessarily like quote-unquote affairs, but like slept with other women. One-offs, one night stands, whatever you want to call it. Things that I wasn't even aware of. But I can look back now at the time that I was married, and I can look back and I can see the evidence so clearly, like whatever that saying is of hindsight is 2020, right? Like I can see the evidence of what was going on so, so clearly. But when I was in the moment, I couldn't see it, or I didn't want to see it, or I wasn't able to see it. So it is absolutely possible for you to have some kind of like intuitive awareness, but it still feels scary and it still feels dangerous, and you're not ready, willing, or able to be able to bring that awareness into your conscious mind. So what I'm saying here, that was like a very long explanation of what awareness is, but what I'm saying here is you gotta be aware, you gotta be noticing what's happening, and you have to be willing and able to accept that. That's like the first stage of leaving, right? Because even after I found out, I wasn't like, okay, filing for divorce right now, I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready to do that yet. There was still some more stages of my like building up to being able to leave that needed to come. So the next step in this emotional process of leaving is the understanding because after we have awareness, we have to like come to an understanding of what that means for us, right? We're not just knowing that something is wrong or something is off or we're we're not okay with how this relationship is going or whatever. We have to understand the why behind it, what it's costing you, what it's doing to who you are, what it's doing to you and your life, what it's doing to your kids, right? There has to be some kind of understanding there. And then we get to the stage where self-compassion must come in. This one is, I think, the hardest for most women, and especially my clients. This is the one that my clients struggle with immensely self-compassion. Because self-criticism, self-hatred is the norm. It is how we have been acting to ourselves our entire lives. And so any kind of self-compassion or giving yourself some grace or giving yourself a break feels so contrary to what we have known, feels so uncomfortable. It feels so bad to do it from that place that we don't want to. We do not want to offer ourselves any kind of self-compassion. And typically, the last stage that comes up is this willingness to feel the discomfort of not knowing what's next, of not knowing how things are gonna turn out, the discomfort of like sitting in that uncertainty and being okay with that uncertainty. Like sitting in, I really don't know how things are gonna turn out. I really don't know that like I'm gonna be able to make this work, even though you are. I'm just gonna give you that little clue right now. You are going to be okay, you are going to figure it out, you are so much stronger than you think, but you have to be willing to sit in the uncertainty of not having the confidence in that. Because when you can learn to sit with that discomfort, that is like typically the resolve where you are ready to go, okay, done. I'm done. I'm moving on, I'm filing the thing, I'm getting the lawyer, I'm uh getting my bank account in order, I'm, you know, telling him I want a divorce, like any of those steps, right? Any of those actual actions that are going to be taking place. And what I want you to understand about these different stages, like the awareness and then the understanding, and then the self-compassion, and then the feeling the discomfort and not needing to change the discomfort of it, they take as long as they take. Like there's not a timeline for any of these. For one woman, it might be really quick, and for another woman, it might take years, and for another woman, it might take somewhere in the middle of all of that. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not doing it wrong. You're doing it in the way that is supportive for you. All the years that we've been judging ourselves, that you felt stuck, that you are questioning what's wrong with me? Why haven't I left? Why didn't I leave? Why didn't I do it sooner? All of that, you were building all of those years, you were building the capacity to eventually be able to leave, to eventually get you to the place where you are today. So maybe you haven't left yet, maybe you've already left, maybe you left 10 years ago, but you're still feeling stuck. What is happening is you've been building the capacity to get you to where you are right now. So here's what I want you

Reframe The Question And Trust Yourself

Karin Nelson 18:04

to do. If this question of judgment comes up, and it typically will, I want you to get curious in a different way. Okay. So if the question of like, why didn't I leave soon or why did I stay so long, why was I so stupid, any of those versions of that comes up, what I want you to do is I want you to notice that you're asking it, number one, and then I want you to change the question. I want you to ask yourself, why does it make sense that I did? Why does it make sense that I put up with so much for so long? Why does it make sense that I trusted what he said? Why does it make sense that I stayed for as long as I did? And then tell yourself the reasons. Figure out why that makes sense. That is going to give you some of the understanding and the self-compassion that has been missing from this equation. Because when you can get to some deeper curiosity of like, what was I protecting? What did I need that I didn't have yet? What information was I like looking for or trying to understand about myself or about the situation? Like, when we can get to that deeper curiosity, that is when you are going to create more capacity and space for yourself to be able to step into a place where you can leave. The first one's just going to bring you shame because there's so much judgment attached to it. The other one is going to help you create understanding, give your past self some grace that she absolutely deserves and needs. And one last thing that I want to say. When you are so judgmental of yourself, like telling yourself you should have known better and all those things, all that is doing is that's reinforcing to you that you can't trust yourself. And that is not what we want to do. We want to get to the place where you do trust yourself, where you build up that self-trust. And more judgment and more hate for past versions of yourself is not going to help you do that. All it's going to do is keeping you stuck in believing that you can't be trusted. So we're going to let that version of yourself off the hook. We're going to be compassionate with her. We're going to create some understanding of why. And then sit with that discomfort and just let it be uncomfortable. Because that version of you, she got you to where you are today. She kept things together when things were hard or when they were scary. She protected herself. She protected people that she loves. And when she finally had the capacity to make some choices, to take some steps forward, she got you to literally where you are right now. She did not fail you. She helped you. She saved you. She might have done it slower than what you'd want, but she was doing it. So we don't owe her judgment. We owe her some love and some compassion. Okay? All right, my friends.

Closing Support And Next Steps

Karin Nelson 21:10

I hope that was helpful. That is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. I love you. You're amazing. I'll be back next week. Hi, friend. I'm so glad you're here and thanks for listening. I wanted to let you know that if you're wanting more, a way to make deeper, more lasting change, then working one-on-one with me as your coach may be exactly what you need. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life with weekly coaching, real life practice, and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one, go to Karin NelsonCoaching.com. That's www.k-ar-in-n. Ne-L-S-O-N coaching.com. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating wherever you listen to podcasts. And for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married, make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.