September 15, 2026

I Was Quiet Quitting My Marriage Before I Knew There Was a Name for It

I was recently featured on Oprah’s podcast in an episode called “Quiet Quitting Your Marriage”.

And when I first heard the phrase quiet quitting your marriage, I thought:

Oh.

That’s what I was doing.

I just didn’t have language for it at the time.

In 2020, I had just turned 40. The pandemic hit in March, the whole world seemed to stop, and somewhere in all that stillness, I had to face something I could no longer ignore:

I didn’t want to be married anymore.

And I told my now ex husband.

But I wouldn’t actually leave for another two years.

Knowing You Want to Leave and Being Ready to Leave Are Two Different Things

This is the part we don’t talk about enough.

Sometimes you know before you go.

You know the relationship isn’t working.

You know you’re unhappy.

You know you’ve lost yourself somewhere along the way.

You may even know, deep down, that you don’t want to spend the rest of your life married to this person.

But knowing and leaving are not the same thing.

Square pull quote graphic reading “Sometimes you know before you go.”

I had been married since I was 23 years old.

Marriage wasn’t just something I did. It had become part of the identity I had built my entire adult life around.

I had done what I thought I was supposed to do.

I got married.

Had the children.

Built the family.

Bought the house.

Checked the boxes.

I had followed the good girl blueprint beautifully.

And then I turned 40 and had to admit that the life I had worked so hard to build no longer felt like mine.

That realization didn’t immediately come with a moving truck and divorce papers.

It came with grief.

Fear.

Questions.

And eventually, emotional detachment.

I Emotionally Checked Out of My Marriage Before I Physically Left

There came a point when everything became too heavy.

The conversations.

The conflict.

Trying to make something work that I no longer believed was supposed to work.

Trying to explain myself.

Trying to get someone else to understand what I was feeling.

Trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do next.

Eventually, I stopped.

Not because I suddenly didn’t care.

I was tired.

And instead of continuing to pour all of my energy into the marriage, I started moving differently.

Quietly.

Strategically.

I began turning my attention toward myself and the life I knew I was eventually going to have to create.

Looking back, I can see that I had emotionally checked out of my marriage long before I physically walked out the door.

Today, we have language for that.

Quiet quitting your marriage.

It doesn’t necessarily mean you wake up one morning, stop speaking to your spouse, and secretly start packing boxes.

Sometimes it looks much quieter than that.

You stop fighting for the relationship.

You stop trying to convince yourself that you’re happy.

You stop performing the role of the good wife.

And somewhere inside yourself, you begin preparing for what comes next.

It Took Me Two Years to Leave

I told my ex husband in 2020 that I no longer wanted to be married.

In 2022, I finally left.

For the first time in my 40s, I got an apartment of my own.

There is a whole life contained inside those two sentences.

Leaving wasn’t simply about changing my address.

I was dismantling an identity.

I was asking myself who I was outside of being somebody’s wife.

What did I actually want?

What did freedom look like for me?

Could I trust myself to build a completely different life?

Could I disappoint people and still be okay?

Could I choose myself without needing everyone else to agree with my choice?

Those questions became bigger than my marriage.

They became the beginning of finding my way back to myself.

And they became part of the coaching work I do now with women who are standing in the same uncomfortable, honest place.

The place where the boxes have been checked, the life looks fine from the outside, and something inside you is still saying, this is not mine anymore.

Maybe You’re Quiet Quitting Your Marriage Right Now

Maybe you found this because you typed something into Google that you would never say out loud.

“I don’t want to be married anymore.”

“How do I know if my marriage is over?”

“Why have I emotionally checked out of my marriage?”

“Is it normal to want to leave my marriage after 40?”

Maybe you aren’t ready to make a decision.

Maybe you already know the decision, but you aren’t ready to act on it.

Or maybe you’re somewhere in that strange in between place where you know the life you’re living isn’t working anymore, but you have absolutely no idea what comes next.

I know that place.

And I know how tempting it is to pressure yourself into having all the answers.

You don’t.

But you do have to start telling yourself the truth.

That was the beginning for me.

Not the apartment.

Not the separation.

Not the divorce.

The truth.

The moment I stopped trying to make myself want a life I no longer wanted.

Watch Oprah’s “Quiet Quitting Your Marriage” Episode

Being featured on Oprah’s podcast years after living through this season feels full circle.

Oprah was once on my vision board. Now I’m featured on her podcast, sharing the story I was still learning how to name back then.

Because the woman you see today, the woman talking about freedom, choosing yourself, starting over, and creating a life on your own terms, didn’t appear overnight.

She was being built during those years when I was trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life.

And if you hear yourself somewhere in this story, you are not strange, selfish, or alone.

You may simply be becoming honest about what your life is asking of you now.

If You’re Thinking, “I Don’t Want to Be Married Anymore”

I created the I Don’t Want to Be Married Anymore video and workbook because so many women began reaching out to me after I shared my divorce story on social media. They were looking for support as they questioned their marriages, considered separation or divorce, or simply tried to make sense of what they were feeling.

This resource is for you whether you’re considering divorce, in the middle of a divorce, separated, or simply having the thought and needing space to hear yourself.

It is not therapy.

It is not a divorce plan.

And I’m not here to tell you whether you should stay or leave.

It is a guided conversation and workbook to help you get honest about what you want, what is keeping you stuck, and what choosing yourself could look like from here.

Sometimes the first step toward freedom isn’t leaving.

Sometimes the first step is finally admitting:

This isn’t the life I want anymore.