For many spouses who separated earlier in the year (whether at the outset or mid-year), coming to the end of that year without having initiated the divorce process or without having made sincere attempts at reconciliation brings a reckoning.
You’ve stopped (or at least reduced) fighting, but you also stop talking about anything that matters. The holidays get handled. You and the kids get through it. Everyone survives December.
But the looming new year brings with it the realization that the option to simply drift has narrowed—and may not remain available much longer.
Then January arrives and forces you not so much to the edge of a cliff but to a fork in the road. And whether you choose deliberately or not, you will be choosing. Doing nothing is not neutral. It is still choosing.
That’s because time has a way of turning informal choices into settled patterns, whether anyone intended that or not.
- What felt temporary up to December starts to look like “how things are” for the year ahead.
- Who is doing school drop-offs now?
- Who is paying which bills?
- Who moved out and who stayed?
- Who has checked out emotionally?
- Have either of you grown more comfortable being apart?
- Prefer it to staying together?
These details matter. They shape expectations. They shape habits. And if divorce eventually happens, they often shape outcomes.
January is when consequences quietly begin to accrue, not because anyone files anything, but because patterns settle in. Ambiguity starts doing work for (or against) you, whether you intended it to or not.
At this point, there are really only two responsible paths forward. Both require effort. Neither allows drift.
Path A: If Divorce Is Likely, Act Like an Adult About It
If, when you’re honest with yourself, you know divorce is probably where this is heading. For a couple who has been separated for most of the previous year, waiting any longer does not make divorce gentler. It usually makes it messier.
This does not mean rushing to file. It means preparing.
What preparation looks like. Preparation is not just worrying or thinking about divorce. It’s doing the work. Knowing what the work consists of helps you do the work:
- Understanding your finances before emotions dictate decisions.
- Analyzing child custody issues in real, week-by-week terms,
- Recognizing that temporary arrangements have a way of becoming permanent unless challenged early and thoughtfully.
Divorce solves some problems. It ends a broken marital relationship. It may reduce daily conflict. It may restore a sense of agency. But it almost always creates new problems also, financial strain, divided households, complicated custody and parent-time and other parenting logistics, and permanent legal ties to each other through your children of the marriage. Pretending otherwise is counterproductive.
January (or if you need some time to recover from the holidays, February) is the moment to evaluate those tradeoffs soberly, not dramatically. If divorce is the path, walk it deliberately, not reactively.
Path B: If You Want to Save the Marriage, Treat It Like a Project not an Aspiration
Saving a marriage is not waiting to see how you feel in February.
It is not hoping that distance magically produces clarity. And it is not vague encouragement to “try counseling sometime.”
If the marriage is going to be saved, it requires structured, bounded action with goals, timelines, and accountability.
That might mean counseling, but not open-ended venting. It means counseling with defined objectives: What are we trying to fix? What behaviors must change? How will we know if this is working? By when?
It may mean difficult conversations about boundaries, resentment, trust, or emotional withdrawal that have been postponed too long. It may require acknowledging that the separation itself has started to feel comfortable and asking what that says about the marriage.
For many couples, that question cannot be answered honestly without confronting the role of mental illness or entrenched personality disorders that have gone untreated or unaccommodated in ways that are simply unsustainable. Some marriages do not erode because of indifference or a lack of effort, but because one partner’s instability, rigidity, or emotional dysregulation forces the other into a permanent state of accommodation. When illness goes unaddressed or when a personality structure resists accountability altogether; “trying harder” often means surrendering boundaries, safety, or self-respect.
And there is a harder truth that sometimes follows. A marriage cannot be repaired by insight, patience, or accommodation alone when one spouse’s untreated mental illness, entrenched personality pathology, or persistent emotional disorder is actively damaging it and that spouse will not seek help, accept limits, or tolerate accountability. The same is true when a spouse is not ill but simply no longer wishes to do the work of repair. Love cannot substitute for treatment, and commitment cannot be one-sided. When one spouse is willing to confront reality and the other is not, the marriage does not fail from lack of effort; it fails because the conditions for repair do not exist. In those cases, clarity is not cruelty. It is the necessary recognition that there is nothing left to salvage.
The hard question is not whether divorce is painful. It is whether you, your spouse, and your children—minor or adult—are genuinely better off divorced than married. What problems does divorce solve? What problems will it create or worsen?
If reconciliation is the goal, drifting is the enemy. You cannot save a marriage accidentally.
The Point Is Not Which Path You Choose. It’s That You Choose One, and Follow It.
January is not an ultimatum, but it is cause for reflection.
The most seductive option is often the least responsible one: staying suspended between endings and beginnings, catering to fear in the short term while letting inertia decide the long term. Don’t do that.
Identify the path you need to follow, then choose it, and then choose to follow through. Act deliberately. Stop drifting.
Whether you rebuild the marriage or bring it to an end, clarity is kinder than continued avoidance.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277