Using the Rupture Ratio To Decide What You Want

Getting hurt sucks. You’ll want to move on. Before you can, you’ll need to know where to go. What is it that you want, exactly?

If your wife has been sleeping with another man, you might not know how to heal. It’s not like she can undo what she did or that you can unknow it. What’s done is done. You find it hard to trust and a persistent image keeps popping into your mind whenever you go to kiss her. You try to imagine feeling the same about her as you once did, but you can’t get there from here. It seems like the roads have all been closed and a confusing array of detour signs are sending you every which way.

The rupture ratio

Pick a number from zero to ten that expresses your interest in staying in the relationship, versus the desire to leave. Zero means you’re certain you never want to see your wife again. We’re not only talking divorce, we’re talking a scorched earth annihilation of affection, here. If there are kids involved, or an equally cherished Doberman, you’ll even walk out on them, so you don’t have to see her again.

You’re at a one if a bitter, no nonsense divorce is what you want; angry enough that she keeps her distance, but not so contentious that you lose the kids and the Doberman. Two is your number if you’d like it to be amiable; three means a trial separation.

The middle range, four to seven, represents a particular kind of hell of indecision and vacillation. You might even find the needle moving wildly throughout the day, depending on what you’re thinking about at that moment. There are many factors to consider and it’s all very complicated. The fact is, from four to seven you don’t really know how you feel or what you want to do. You may be sitting on the fence, keeping your options open, waiting to see which way the wind will blow. What your partner will do next will determine which way you go.

Eight is a grim decision to stay together for the kids, the Doberman, or financial reasons because there are some benefits to the relationship, but you’re not feeling so lovey dovey about your wife herself. Nine is reserved for people committed to the relationship for religious reasons, or those who believe that a vow is a vow. You hurt like hell but are not going to let a little thing like suffering get in the way of doing the right thing. You’re willing to extend grace, even though you don’t feel like it because we all need forgiveness for something.

If you’re a ten, you’re in the kind of love where nothing she could do could change how you feel about her. You want to stay together, no matter what. Divorce is off the table. No matter what she does, there’s no need for reconciliation.

You can apply this scale and these questions to ruptures in other kinds of relationship. If you were hurt by an abusive father, you may want to consider how close you want to be with him today. Would you invite him to live with you and your family? That would be a ten. Live in the same town and see him regularly? Nine, or so. Or are you at the filial equivalent to a one and do no more than send Christmas cards, or a zero and never want to see or hear from him again? Or are you somewhere in the middle?

You might be surprised to hear that I, speaking as a certified shrinker of heads, am most suspect of the people at zero or ten. They need to have their heads examined more than the ambivalent do. While indecisiveness is torture, it’s also the normal, and even adaptive, state of affairs, especially in the beginning, when the news is fresh, and you don’t know how it’ll all play out. While we would all like to feel certain, certainty is an almost psychotic level of denial.

What moves you?

What matters more than where you are on the scale is what way you are heading and the direction you are moving. To get you going somewhere, whether it be towards zero, or ten, I have two questions for you, in no particular order:

1. What gets you going towards ten, in the direction of reconciliation?

2. What actions move you towards zero, meaning dissolution of the relationship?

If you’re in the middle range and your numbers are vacillating wildly from day-to-day, then you have a lot more information about what gets you going in one direction or another. You’re feeling warmer towards her when she asks you about your day; colder the more time she’s on her phone. You really felt hopeful when she made that appointment with a therapist; but you were discouraged the time she stayed out late. These observations tell you what you want and what to ask for.

In a like manner, your own actions can move you up and down that scale. Notice how you feel after you start a fight versus after you make a confession. When you engage in retaliation, does it bring you closer together? When you snoop, does it drive you apart? The answers to these questions tell you how to heal.

Keith R Wilson is a mental health counselor in private practice and the author of The Road to Reconciliation: A Comprehensive Guide to Peace When Relationships Go Bad, from which this article is adapted.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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