<div id="readability-page-1"><div>“You made a *** ****?!”Susannah turned to her husband, Ron, mouth agape. He looked down, his cheeks reddening. Also Read: A Stranger Jokingly Asked If I Was Having Twins. He Had No Idea How Deeply His Comment Cut.“It was right after college. I was experimenting,” he mumbled, twisting in his seat. “No big deal.”As a couples therapist, I am always looking for how to mend the frayed edges of a relationship, but Susannah and Ron were different: They had come to my office to end their marriage. I practice what I call breakup therapy — a short-term treatment I developed for couples who want to end their relationships without bitterness. The premise is counterintuitive: Instead of looking forward toward separate futures, we look backward at the relationship itself. It’s structured to look at the beginning, middle and end of their time together with exercises that focus on both their gratitude as well as their resentment. The work culminates with the couple crafting a shared narrative about their union and literally writing it down — a story of what worked and ultimately what did not. Then, I ask them to sign it. In this way, they resolve the many unanswered, and often unasked, questions that can trap couples in recriminations and keep them from moving on. Also Read: Doctors Expected My Son To Die. In My Rush To Prove Them Wrong, I Made A Serious Error.The idea was born from my own bitter divorce. After my split, I was plagued by questions that repeated on an endless loop in my brain: “What was I thinking?”; “Why didn’t I see that red flag?”; “What is wrong with me — I’m a therapist and I should have seen what was happening.” Then, one day, my therapist asked me a different question: Who was I when I decided to marry? Suddenly, my internal feedback loop stopped. “You’re asking me who I was, not why I married him?” I said, skeptically. “Yes, I am,” she answered. “Marriages can be as much about identity as they are about a union. What were you trying to solve — or avoid — by marrying him?”Also Read: I Was A Combat Soldier In Iraq. Here's The 1 Question Everyone Should Be Asking About ICE Right Now.The question unlocked something for me. I’d been full of anger at myself, but I hadn’t really taken responsibility for my own actions. With her help, I crafted a story that I could hold onto about what function the marriage had served for me. Truly owning my choices helped me have more compassion for myself and less anger. The most startling realization? When I had created a story that hung together, the nagging questions ended for good.I have seen this same process unfold for many couples. But often, in the course of these sessions, new things surface.“Susannah?” I said, surprised to hear the hurt in her voice. “This feels like a big deal for you. Why is that?”Ron and Susannah had not been the most willing subjects for breakup therapy. During our first session, Ron blurted out: “You’re like a medical examiner doing autopsies on dead relationships! Your scalpel hurts. I don’t think you know what it feels like to be humiliated.” Also Read: I Was A Confident 21-Year-Old. Then I Woke Up With A Tube Of Skin Connecting My Cheek To My Chest.“I wouldn’t be so sure,” I answered softly. “I have a teenager.”Ron was not mollified. “This feels stupid,” he said on another occasion. “She’s done, I accept that. What is there to say? This feels like horseshit.”“See what I’m working with here?” Susannah said, throwing up her hands and shifting away from Ron on the couch. “I knew he wouldn’t take this seriously.”Also Read: The Truth Of My Birth Was Kept From Me. Then I Received An Envelope — And It Explained A Lifetime Of Darkness Inside Me.“No, he’s right,” I said. “If it’s really true that you fully accept and understand her decision, Ron, then this is horseshit. But is that true?”His silence was all the answer I needed. Over the next few sessions, we went over how they’d fallen in love (“It just made sense, we fit”); the birth of their three children (“The unit held us together”); the unraveling of their connection (“We were ships in the night for as long as I can remember, but then one day I woke up and just wanted more from life”). We mapped the patterns their marriage had fallen into over the course of three houses, two cross-country moves and their children’s exodus from home. It was a saga spanning decades. Then, in our fourth session, Ron mentioned the *** tape.“Something about this is landing hard on you,” I said to Susannah, her mouth still ajar. “Why?”“Yeah, why?” Ron echoed. Susannah paused and looked out the window. “It’s that you ... you tried something that — I don’t know — was out there ... bold and different.” A tear welled in a corner of her eye. “It’s not you. You’re not brave! Or, at least you haven’t been with me, not in all these years together.” Then she began to cry. Ron and I looked at one another.“Susannah?” Instantly, I regretted breaking the silence. “All this time, I decided you just couldn’t try new things,” she managed after a while. “I gave up.”Ron put up his palms. “What is happening?” he said, exasperated. “But if you can do that ...” she continued. “What was it? Did I just not ask? Did I build my life around a lie?” She looked lost. “Was it that you never really loved me enough?” She turned back to Ron and banged her fist on the couch. “I did ask! I asked you to look at **** together when we stopped having ***, to take classes with me, to go on that whale-watching tour. … You just ignored me!”This time, I held my tongue. “Is that a thing?” she went on, turning to me. “That you can reach the end of a relationship and not even have known what was possible?”“I made that tape 30 years ago,” Ron blurted out. “She’s upset over something I did when I was a totally different person!”This was the impasse that I had expected, that arrives in most of my breakup therapy work — the moment when two people realize that as well as they think they know each other, there are things they don’t know or have lost track of. It’s my job to help them hold that bitter realization. Then it’s my job to help them arrive at forgiveness or some kind of reconciliation — if not with each other, then with what happened to them.“It was 30 years ago, Ron,” I said. “But you aren’t a different person. You’re the same person, and she’s wondering why you couldn’t have been that with her.”I turned to Susannah and said, “You have a right to be hurt, but were you truly honest with him? Did you give him the space and the safety and the encouragement to be that person? Do you think you both can forgive each other for what you weren’t?”It was three weeks before they appeared again in my office, having canceled two sessions in between appointments.“I was stirred and moved by what happened here last time,” Susannah began. “When we left, I thought: Maybe there’s enough left between us?”Ron’s eyes were downcast. “But I realized I can’t,” she said. “I just can’t open up that part of me with him anymore. I want ... I need this divorce.”I nodded. “Ron? How do you feel?”“I can see where we are ... I’m not fighting it.” His voice broke. “I’m just really sad.”Often it requires some kind of shock to break through the built-up layers of anger, resentment and disappointment in a couple in order to illuminate the cracks in their relationship — something true that has been avoided or left unsaid. In this case, it was the surprise of an ancient transgressive act that lay bare how little they knew each other and how misaligned they’d become. Susannah moved closer to Ron on the couch and laced her fingers with his. “You guys seem calmer — closer. Tell me what you are feeling,” I said.I knew something about that calm after the storm. After my own divorce, we had maintained an uneasy truce for years, until one long car ride after dropping our daughter at camp. As we rode in silence, I suddenly remembered my therapist’s question: Who was I when I decided to get married? For the next two hours, we talked over that question and everything else, and together realized how lonely we had been — two Israelis who, instead of understanding why we had both chosen to leave, had clung to each other and to a shared language. Before long, we were laughing as we had not laughed since the early days of our marriage. “So, where do we go from here?” Ron asked me in their last session.“Well, in my experience, when a marriage ends, a different relationship can sometimes be created,” I said. “That’s up to you guys. All endings are sad, but not all endings have to leave you broken. There’s an opportunity here to get to know each other in a different way. And ...” I leaned forward to make eye contact with each of them “... to know yourselves better.”After they left, I sat quietly in my chair for a while. I allowed myself to remember that moment in my therapist’s office when I realized that I had been using my marriage to escape a question I had been avoiding and what a relief it had been to finally face it. When a *** tape from decades ago unlocks two people’s grief, it’s not so much about the end of the road as it is about the roads never taken — the versions of a marriage they never tried. It is a sad moment, but also a generative one. They’d come to me to bury their marriage. What they found instead was a way to know each other — maybe for the first time in years — even as they said goodbye.Note: Names and some details have been changed to protect the identities of the individuals appearing in this essay.Sarah Gundle, Psy.D., is a psychologist in private practice and an assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai Medical Center. She is currently writing a book about breakups. You can find her on Instagram @dear_dr_sarah.Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.Like this article? Keep independent journalism alive. Support HuffPost.<h3>Related...</h3><ul><li>I Sacrificed Everything To Give My Sick Wife More Time. I Had No Idea What It Would Cost Me.</li><li>I Watched My 11-Year-Old Son Defend Himself Against A Grown Man. I Wish I Could Say It Was An Anomaly.</li><li>We Were Thrilled To Be At My Husband’s Green Card Interview. We Didn’t Know We Had Walked Into An ICE Ambush.</li></ul>Read the original on HuffPost</div></div>

A couples therapist shares a unique approach to helping couples end their marriages without bitterness, termed "breakup therapy." This method involves reflecting on the relationship's journey, focusing on gratitude and resentment, and crafting a shared narrative. During a session with Susannah and Ron, a long-buried secret emerged, highlighting the complexities of their relationship. The therapist emphasizes the importance of understanding personal identity in marriage and how this process can lead to closure and compassion for oneself.

A Husband And Wife Asked Me To Help End Their Marriage. They Didn't Expect A 30-Year-Old Secret To Come To Light.