Why She Wants the Relationship—And Then Wants Out
She wanted the commitment more than he did. So why does she want to leave?
Posted May 15, 2026 | Reviewed by Tyler Woods
A relationship paradox: When a heterosexual couple is unmarried, it is very often the woman who is pursuing commitment and a marriage contract, while the male partner resists. Once a couple is married, if someone wants to leave, it is also, most often, the woman. Why?
What happens to that woman to take her from yearning for closeness and commitment to what sometimes looks like gasping for air and a desperation to get out? I sat down with fellow couples therapist and author Colette Fehr, whose new book The Cost of Quiet covers strikingly similar territory to my own Push Back . We had some ideas.
1. Who We Pick to Marry Isn't Necessarily a Great Person to Create a Life With
Very often, you're attracted to a guy who would stand between you and a grizzly, but who's not so great at emotional intimacy and connection. The confidence that reads as strength and safety at 28 can reveal itself as emotional unavailability at 38—by then you've built a life around a relationship that feels cold and detached.
There's also a psychological phenomenon worth naming: misattribution of arousal, the tendency to mistake the physical sensation of anxiety for attraction and romance. When the intensity subsides, you aren't left with a mellower but still potent love. You're left with an empty connection and a partner who was never right for the long game.
Colette realized she kept finding the same guy in fresh packaging — "men with a lot of narcissism and emotional unavailability, which is the case for many of us really warm, empathic women." What finally broke the pattern wasn't finding someone more exciting. It was choosing someone stable, honest, and communicative — and using her voice from the beginning.
2. Women Often Struggle to Individuate and Also Be in a Relationship
Women are called on to be the relationship managers — attuned to everyone's needs, responsible for maintaining harmony, doing most of the emotional labor that keeps a family functioning. Men are allowed to be in the relationship and remain their own person.
A self cannot be suppressed indefinitely. What I see repeatedly in my office is women who have spent years becoming smaller inside their marriages — accommodating, deferring, making it work — until one day they look up and can't find themselves anywhere. As Colette put it: "A lot of women feel like the only way they can actually have a self is to just blow the whole thing up and leave."
It doesn't have to come to that. We maintain our individuality by keeping a full life outside the relationship and by being fully known inside it. When both partners are individuated and no one is suppressing their needs to maintain harmony at all costs, there will be friction. Conflict is not a problem. It's the point.
3. All Conflict Feels Like It's Threatening the Fabric of the Relationship Instead of Potentially Creating Deeper Understanding and Connection
If there is no friction, someone is not being heard, known, or considered. Very often, that someone is the female partner. Conflict isn't what destroys relationships. The avoidance of it is.
We are wired for connection and simultaneously wired to avoid perceived threat. Conflict, especially for women trained to equate harmony with love, registers as danger in the body before the mind has a chance to weigh in.
What makes it worse is what happens when she finally does try to speak up. She raises something, and he responds with what Colette calls the three D's and an F — Defensiveness, Distancing, Dismissiveness, and Fixing. Enough of those in a row and she learns that bringing things up leads nowhere. The silence that follows isn't peace. Often it means she is quietly beginning to plot her exit.
The goal in couples work is to run two tracks simultaneously — helping her find her voice and helping him turn down the volume on his defensiveness enough to actually hear her. When couples make that shift, the relationship often blooms. When they can't, the life leaks out of it.
4. Years of Shock Absorbing or Good Girl-itis Lead to Exhaustion and Disillusionment
Colette calls the cultural conditioning underneath it "good girl-itis" — the deeply ingrained belief that a good woman puts everyone else first, says yes when she means no, and carries the emotional load without complaint.
My concept of shock absorbing is what that conditioning looks like in practice. In a car, shock absorbers make the ride smooth for everyone. In a relationship, she does the same — accepting, ignoring, or minimizing others' thoughtless behavior to avoid conflict. She makes excuses for his bad behavior. She softens his edges. She tells the kids he had work obligations when the truth is he just didn't feel like showing up. Good girl-itis is the conditioning. Shock absorbing is the behavior. Both are entirely predictable results of being a woman raised in a patriarchal culture.
5. Communication and Pushing Back Are the Antidote
If you don't learn to speak up, tolerate healthy conflict, and insist that your needs are valid, no one will do it for you.
Speaking up gets easier, and it feels better than you expect, even when the response isn't what you hoped for. You can handle a bad response. What you cannot handle is the slow erosion of never being known.
The ideal partner isn't just someone who will stand between you and the grizzly. It's someone who wants to know you, not just keep you. That relationship only becomes possible when you stop making yourself easy to overlook. The woman who wanted the marriage certificate and the woman who wants the divorce papers are often the same woman at different stages of the same realization: she deserves to be known.
Co-authored with Colette Jane Fehr, LMFT, LMHC, the author of The Cost of Quiet: How to Have the Hard Conversations That Create Secure, Lasting Love.
Share this post Facebook Bluesky Linkedin Email
There was a problem adding your email address. Please try again.
By submitting your information you agree to the Psychology Today Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy
Tonya Lester, LCSW , is a psychotherapist in Brooklyn, NY.
Get the help you need from a therapist near you–a FREE service from Psychology Today.
This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.