It Takes One to Tango: How You Can Save Your Relationship Even if Your Partner Wants to Leave

By Jed Diamond, PhD, LCSW

Jennifer was in tears when she came to see me just before Valentine’s Day. “My husband, Matt, told me that he wants to leave,” she blurted out between sobs. “He says he loves me, but he’s not ‘in-love’ with me anymore.”  Jennifer cried softly. “He says the spark has gone out of our relationship and there’s nothing that can bring it back. He tells me he wants to move out so he can figure thing out.”

She went on to tell me more about their lives together. “We’ve been married eighteen years and we have two wonderful kids. We’ve had our ups and downs like all couples, but he’s the love of my life and I don’t want him to leave.”

I ask her to tell me when she first noticed that things weren’t working well between them. She thought for a moment and told me that it seemed to have started about three years ago when their daughter, Molly, began having problems.  “Matt wasn’t very sympathetic and he and I would fight a lot about how best to support her. We have different philosophies about raising kids and that’s been an issue between us for a long time.”

Jennifer had read my book, The Irritable Male Syndrome, and felt Matt’s increasing irritability and anger might be caused by depression.   “He would get very angry and blaming and I would close up like a clam shell to protect myself,” she said. “He would spend more time at work and I would complain that we never did anything fun together anymore. We’d fight, make up, and things seemed to be O.K. for a while. I thought things had improved, but now he wants to leave and I’m devastated.”

As she recounted the problems they were having she became increasingly somber. “I’ve been trying to get him to come to do counseling, but he refuses.” she said. “He insists it won’t do any good, that it’s too late. He says it’s not my fault, that I haven’t done anything wrong, but I feel judged and blamed.” She looked down and shook her head sadly. “I guess I’ll just have to accept him leaving. What can I do? It takes two to tango.”

“Actually,” I said, “it just takes one to tango.” Jennifer looked startled. I had at least gotten her attention and her head wasn’t hanging down in despair. I recalled the words of the George Carlin, actor, author, social critic and comedian extraordinaire.  “It takes two to tango,” mused Carlin. “Sounds good, but simple reasoning will reveal that it only takes one to tango. It takes two to tango together, maybe, but one person is certainly capable of tangoing on his own.”

We accept a lot of clichés about what makes a marriage successful and what we need to do to fix it when it’s broken. At core most of them suggest that “both people have to be motivated to change if things are going to improve.” Although this view is accepted by most marriage and family counselors, it is absolutely wrong and may be the reason that so many marriages fail, even those who have gotten the “benefit” of marriage counseling.

I’ve been helping people improve their relationships for more than 40 years. I’ve dealt with the ways menopause impacts a marriage as well as the ways Andropause can cause problems. I’ve worked with couples just getting started and couples who have been together more than fifty years. We all have a lot to learn.

I asked Jennifer to think back to a time when things were good between she and her husband. She brightened a bit and recalled a time she and Matt were really enjoying themselves and each other. “We laughed together and enjoyed each other’s company. We had our own lives, but we focused a lot on each other. He seemed to really love me and I loved him.”

“How was Matt different back then?” I asked.

“He was much less stressed and family problems seemed to be solved easily,” Jennifer responded. “He was light and easy, thoughtful and considerate.”

“And how were you different back then?”

Jennifer thought for a moment and responded that she was very active and engaged with her own life. She had lots of friends, but when she was with Matt she got great joy out of doing things for him. “I loved to leave him little gifts, ‘just because,’ and find ways to make him laugh. He came home for lunch one day and I had wrapped myself in cellophane, with nothing on underneath. It was more funny than sexy, but he was delighted, and we had a great afternoon of love-making.”

I brought her back to the Tango analogy. If you’ve ever taken a dance class together, you don’t both learn together. Each of you has to learn your part of the dance, and then you can put it together. “What would it be like if you started doing your own dance of love, breaking the old cycle, and acting in ways you did when you were at your best?”

At first Jennifer resisted telling me, “I’ve tried to be loving and he just responds with anger.” I explained that even when we “try to be loving,” we often have the underlying belief that “it won’t work.” It’s like driving our car with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake. We lurch along but it isn’t a very smooth ride.

I suggested Jennifer try an experiment. “Just be your loving self when you were at your best. Do it because it will make you feel good, not to try and get him to change. No matter what you are feeling or how Matt acts, be the Jennifer you remember being when you are at your best and observe how you feel and how Matt reacts. Jennifer seemed excited to try the experiment.

I didn’t hear from her for a while and wondered what had happened. When Jennifer returned she looked rejuvenated. She had a swagger of well-being and a big smile on her face. She recounted what had happened in detail. “Right after we talked, Matt came home and snapped at me. In the past I would have snapped back at him and we would have gotten into a fight.”

This time I just agreed with him. “Yeah, sometimes I mess up,” I told him. “I wasn’t defensive. I was just stating a fact. He seemed disarmed that I didn’t yell back at him.” That lead to a really good discussion about the stresses he was feeling at work and how he felt like a total failure. I really could see his point of view when he said with real sadness, “I feel like a screw up at work and then when I come home I feel like I can’t do anything right with you. Nothing I do seems to please you and I get enraged because I feel like such a failure.”

“I told him that I cared deeply for him and if he needed to leave I could handle it. I wouldn’t like it, but it wouldn’t kill me. He reached out and brought me into his arms and we both cried.”

Jennifer acknowledged that there were still many issues to be worked out and they still had their ups and downs, but she now knew that she didn’t have to worry so much about what Matt would do. “If I can just remember that ‘It takes one to Tango,’ I’ll be OK. We both laughed.

When things are going well in our lives, we naturally act from a place of security and our love flows easily. When things start to go wrong, we feel insecure and fear takes over our lives. Fear triggers more anger, hurt, and defensiveness. Love triggers more openness, understanding, and vulnerability. As Dr. Gerald Jampolsky wrote many years ago, “Love is Letting Go of Fear.” It’s always our choice whether we feed the fear or the love.

Jed Diamond, PhD, LCSW, is the Founder and Director of the MenAlive, a health program that helps men live well throughout their lives. Though focused on men’s health, MenAlive is also for women who care about the health of the men in their lives. Diamond’s new book, Stress Relief for Men: How to Use the Revolutionary Tools of Energy Healing to Live Well, brings together the wisdom accumulated in 40 years helping more than 20,000 men, women, and children.