Should I stay in my marriage? It’s one of the most common questions women reach in midlife — and one of the least likely to be asked out loud. In our latest episode of the Drama-Free Divorce Podcast, Cary Jacobson sat down with certified master coach Betsy Pake to talk about what to do when you find yourself asking it.
Betsy has spent twelve years working with women in midlife transitions, using trauma-informed and neuroscience-based methods. She’s the creator of the Navigate Method™, host of The Art of Living Big, and the author of Start Small, Live Big.
The hesitation runs both ways
In Cary’s practice, the pattern is familiar: women who are stuck, not because they don’t know what they want, but because acting on it feels impossible in either direction. Some hesitate to leave a marriage that plainly isn’t working. Others hesitate to fight for one, even when part of them wants to.
That second version gets far less attention, and it traps just as many people. Both come from the same place — the fear of the unknown weighed against the fear of everything staying exactly as it is.
Why midlife brings it to a head
Marriages tend to come apart, or come back together, at this stage more than almost any other. The questions that were easy to defer through the early years — the career years, the young-children years — stop being deferrable. The house gets quieter. The distractions thin out. And the thing you’ve been managing around becomes the thing in front of you.
Deciding from peace instead of urgency
The heart of Betsy’s work is the difference between deciding from fear and deciding from clarity. When someone feels they have to decide right now, that urgency is usually a symptom rather than a deadline. Decisions made from that state tend to be the ones people spend years undoing.
Her Mirror, Mend or Move framework gives the question a structure: look honestly at what’s actually happening, then determine whether this is something to repair or something to leave. For someone who has been going back and forth in her own head for months, having a shape to the process is a relief in itself.
The part nobody talks about: your nervous system
Betsy also brings nervous system regulation into the conversation, which is rare in discussions about marriage. Dysregulation shows up as reactivity, shutdown, and the sense of having the same argument on a loop. Some of this work, in other words, doesn’t begin with the marriage at all. It begins with the body.
If the answer turns out to be divorce
Clarity comes first; the legal process comes second. If you do reach the conclusion that your marriage is ending, how you handle it from there is a separate decision — and there are calmer paths through it than most people realize. Mediation and uncontested divorce exist precisely for couples who want to resolve things without a fight.
If you’re asking should I stay in my marriage, you don’t have to answer today. But you also don’t have to keep circling it alone.
Listen to the full episode → https://youtu.be/h1E2GtvGbi4
Ready to talk about your options? Book a consultation with Jacobson Family Law. We serve families in Maryland, DC and Virginia.