Either way, my heart will take a massive hit that I cannot bear. I simply do not know what to do.

From the Therapist: I understand why you feel trapped. From the way you frame the issue, your only option is to ask yourself: Which form of suffering is more bearable to me? If you choose to stay, you give up emotional and physical intimacy for the rest of your life. If you leave, you lose the comfort of being in this partnership, along with its entire ecosystem: a beautiful home, financial security, common interests, couple friendships and travel companionship. But I think you’re missing something important: the parts of your future you can’t predict.

As I read your letter, I thought of a quote attributed to therapist Virginia Satir: “People prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty.”

You already know what you’ll get if you stay – what you have now. And you know what you’ll lose if you leave: a particular ecosystem that makes you feel safe. However, what you don’t know – despite your fear of reliving the “nightmare” that followed the end of your marriage – is how your life will play out in a different ecosystem. By “different ecosystem”, I mean different from not just your current relationship, but also the one that came after your divorce. It sounds like your divorce ended in a traumatic way that left deep scars. Yet if this relationship ends, it will be the result of your reflected-upon choice about what is most important to you at this point in your life. And that affects what follows.

For instance, you might live in a more modest house, but it could feel more like “home” without the resentment that’s building in your current one. Your social world might shift in some ways, but despite those challenges, it might also change for the better. Maybe you would make new friends in unexpected places, deepen relationships with existing friends or have encounters you wouldn’t have had in the context of your current social circle. While you’ll certainly feel lonely at times, you might also create a life that makes this other flavour of loneliness more tolerable than the one you’re experiencing now – and also preserves the possibility of finding the emotional and physical intimacy you crave.

I’d also question the reason you believe you’re “no longer the determined woman” who managed to get through a difficult time. Is it because the divorce wore you down, or because this current relationship has been wearing you down to the point that you no longer recognise yourself – and that staying will wear you down even more than leaving?

Most couples aren’t perfectly compatible on all dimensions, including intimacy, but there’s a difference between disappointment and deprivation. I’m not clear on how your relationship became platonic and why it needs to remain that way. If your relationship has been important enough for your fiancé to participate in couples therapy for a year, what is preventing him from trying to meet – even in some small way – the fundamental needs of the person he wants to marry?

I also wonder why he’s satisfied with this kind of relationship, or whether there’s more to his experience he hasn’t been willing or able to share. Is there shame, fear, low desire or some aspect of his sexuality he hasn’t fully confronted? (Was this a problem in his previous marriage, too?) If he’s not willing to explore that, and the most he can offer is compatibility without intimacy with no room for change – and neither of you is interested in opening up the relationship as a possible solution – perhaps you two aren’t so compatible after all.

I’m not denying the very real losses either choice entails. But I want you to consider that you might feel trapped less by a lack of viable options and more by the weight of two kinds of grief. There’s the anticipatory grief of what you might lose if you leave, and the grief of what you’ve already lost. You’re afraid of your heart taking “a massive hit”, but your heart has already taken one: you’re lonely, angry, touch-starved, ashamed and living in resignation.

Sometimes the cost of what’s already lost seems smaller than the cost of what you have yet to lose. If it’s already gone and you’re surviving – however unhappily – you might convince yourself that this current loss is less painful than the alternative. But that’s not a fair comparison: you’re not weighing how you might feel after another decade without emotional connection, touch and affection.

At 65, there’s nothing wrong with deciding that companionship, financial security, family, faith and community matter more to you than a certain level of intimacy. Perhaps you can have your emotional needs met outside the marriage and find that the lack of physical affection bothers you less. But that choice should come from a place of agency rather than resignation. A decision can be right for you and still contain loss and doubt. If you leave, you will probably miss him at times. If you stay, you will probably wonder about the life you might have created. The goal isn’t to deny the loss. It’s to understand what you’re choosing – and why.

So instead of just asking yourself, “What am I giving up by staying?” and “What am I giving up by leaving?” here’s a more helpful question: “Which losses would feel like grief, and which would feel like self-betrayal?” That distinction might lead you closer to the answer you’re seeking.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Lori Gottlieb

Illustration by: Marta Monteiro

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