By: Rachel Keane

Dr. Becky Whetstone took in the middle-aged couple sitting across from her in her Little Rock, Arkansas office. Clearly distressed, their eyes shot daggers at each other, hands clenched. The tension was palpable. By now, she knew the signs by heart.

“I don’t know why we’re even married,” Doug said, his words sharp and heavy with frustration. “She never wants to have sex. I never get anything from her. I’m done. I can’t go on like this.”

Doug’s wife, Jill, struggled to hold back tears. “Maybe if he did anything to help out,” she said. “To show me a little something. He treats me like I’m the maid, while he spends all his time watching sports. Then he drops this bombshell on me that he wants a divorce. I didn’t know he was unhappy. How was I supposed to know he was unhappy?”

Whetstone offered a box of tissues. “Let me ask one question,” she said. “How much do you care about making your marriage better? Because if you’re both willing to work for it, I believe I can help you. I’ve been exactly where you’re at. But there’s no magic solution. Divorce isn’t always the answer. It’s important to just take a breath. Don’t make decisions out of anger. There’s time to figure this out.”

Her eyes met Doug’s and Jill’s. In more than 20 years working as a marriage and family therapist, these words often had a positive effect. Couples came to her office on the brink of separation, but they left calmer, sometimes thinking, for the first time in years, about their marriage, what mattered, and what was important to them. It seemed like such an obvious first step to Whetstone, but not one any marriage therapist had ever suggested when her own marriage had fallen apart. It was her frustration with traditional therapy, her need to understand what truly brought couples closer and what pulled them apart, that had set her on this journey in the first place.

“I can’t do this anymore!” The words echoed in her head like a drumbeat every day, louder and louder until they were impossible to ignore. For five years, she’d tried everything to get through to her self-absorbed, workaholic husband prone to angry, explosive outbursts. “We need to get help!” she would tell him over and over, more insistently each time.

Finally, after her husband committed an act that deeply hurt her, she felt she had nothing left to give. “We need to separate,” she told him. “I can’t take it anymore.”

But her husband refused even this. They went to a marriage counselor, one they had seen a few times before. “Becky, you have zero motivation to work on this marriage, there’s nothing I can do,” the therapist said. Then he turned to her husband. “You need to move out.”

The thing was, Becky might have found the motivation to work on her marriage. They had two children, Benjamin, 6, and Casey Marie, 3. She wasn’t looking to destroy her family. But she needed direction, a roadmap, a therapist who would engage with both her and her husband as individuals. She wanted someone who would listen.

Instead, she and her husband separated without any kind of plan for going forward. The therapist washed his hands of them. “It was like we were in a car driven by a cat,” Becky recalls. “We swerved around, hurt each other, made mistakes, and eventually drove off a cliff.”

Still, for years afterward she was left with this question: Why couldn’t a marriage therapist actually help? She began searching for the answer. Reading, studying, asking her divorced friends for their take. And she came to a realization: Most marriage therapists lacked sufficient knowledge about relationships as a science, often relying on outdated, stereotypical notions. Many also avoided high-stress conflicts. She thought of how many marriages ended in divorce that, with the right help, might have been saved. There had to be a better way.

From the time she was a girl, she’d read Ann Landers and Dear Abby in her local newspaper. She’d always been interested in relationships. Now it had become a passion. She pitched writing her own column to the San Antonio, Texas newspaper and got hired. She was Carrie Bradshaw before Sex and the City was even a thing. She wrote about dating, about relationships, about what women wanted, what men wanted, and yes, she wrote about what couples were and weren’t doing in the bedroom. Her column was well-received, but it wasn’t enough. Whetstone wanted to actually work one-on-one with couples. And she wanted to know more.

In 2001, she entered graduate school, then went on to get her doctorate degree in marriage and family therapy. For five years, she studied the science of relationships, from every angle imaginable. Marriages and why they deteriorate. How it is that some couples in crisis reconnect and fall in love all over again. Abusive relationships. Narcissistic relationships. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

She learned about how people meet, the laws of attraction, the decision to marry, and the decision for one person to say, “I want out.” She spent a year writing her dissertation on why marriages of ten years or more fall apart. She’d gained an in-depth understanding of what makes relationships work—and not work. Then she opened her practice and began actually working with couples, and quickly realized her education was only just beginning.

Then she opened her practice and began actually working with couples—and quickly discovered that textbooks and degrees were just the foundation. The real lessons came from sitting with real people in pain. Even now, years later, Becky will admit she’s still learning—about people, about relationships, and about herself. “I don’t have it all figured out,” she often tells clients. “But we’ll work through it together.” That honesty, that humility, helps people trust her and feel understood.

Couples like Paul, a 44-year-old professional man, who insisted to Whetstone that his wife Mary Kate was as unhappy in their 18-year marriage as he was prior to the night when he dropped the bombshell on her that he wanted a divorce.

“We’ve both been going through the motions, making no effort,” he blithely told Whetstone. “In fact, I thought my wife might beat me to the announcement. She never acts like I’m important to her, ever. She just wants to be with her friends or the kids, so I say, let her.”

But Paul was completely clueless about Mary Kate’s thoughts on their marriage. The two never actually talked about it. So, Mary Kate’s surprise turned back on Paul with sudden fury. “Over my dead body,” she told him. “You will not divorce me. I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you. Get your act together, Paul! What the hell is wrong with you?”

But having found his courage to at last say he was unhappy, Paul wasn’t backing down. And so there they sat in front of Whetstone, confused, angry, desperate for answers.

“I haven’t done anything to deserve this,” Mary Kate told Whetstone, tapping her foot hard against the floor, making it quite clear that she didn’t want to be there a minute longer than necessary. “You need to figure out what is wrong with him. He’s acting like a fool.”

Time and again she met with clients like Paul and Mary Kate. She began to realize that in almost every case, one spouse was the Decider, the person who had stewed for years over their discontent in their marriage, and the pressure built up until, like a volcano, they blew up.

The other spouse is what she would call The Leaning In Partner. In cruise control in the marriage. In denial. Completely shocked that their spouse is done. At the heart of it all, in almost every instance, was a lack of communication, spouses clueless about how to have an honest conversation with each other, to advocate for themselves and listen, truly listen, to their partner. But communication could be learned; it was a skill really, one that with practice would come more naturally. This was something she could teach her clients. A way of investing in their marriage. In each other. She had seen the difference in her own relationships. She had found love in her own life and gained a deeper understanding of how she could have done things differently in her own marriage—that the fault wasn’t only her ex-husband’s.

Now there was joy! Fulfillment. A sense of purpose in helping clients—clients like Paul and Mary Kate, who with her guidance, had found re-connection in their marriage. But there was also sadness, deep sadness. Her son Benjamin was killed while serving in Afghanistan. Her grief was overwhelming.

But she found strength even in her grief. There was healing in the processing, in taking a breath, getting past the initial emotions. Nothing good could come out of letting emotion rule you. It was important to take time.

This was also a message she passed along to her clients. There’s value in separation, a planned separation. Outside of an abusive or truly toxic relationship, there was rarely an emergency. The house was not burning down. It only felt that way. She’d helped hundreds of clients reclaim the joy in their marriages. And yet each couple was unique, deserved to be treated as individuals, listened to, appreciated. The very things she had wanted from a therapist herself. Listening. It was really key to so much. A lesson she’d learned over a lifetime.

Now she, Dr. Whetstone’s eyes, met Doug’s and Jill’s, warm, encouraging, listening. She could see the couple relaxing as well, the tension subsiding.

“I’m willing to try to make this work,” Doug said. “I do love Jill.”

“Me too,” Jill said. She took Doug’s hand. “It’s good, just to have someone to talk to.”

About Becky Whetstone, PhD:

Becky Whetstone, PhD, is a Marriage and Family Therapist and Life Coach specializing in marriage crisis counseling. Based in Arkansas, she developed Managed Separation (MS), an intervention guiding separated couples with purpose and timelines. Inspired by her own marriage crisis, Dr. Whetstone created tools to help couples navigate turmoil. A former journalist, Becky has a forthcoming book, I (Think) I Want Out: What To Do When One Of You Wants To End Your Marriage (Feb 4, 2025), aiming to reduce marital chaos and foster healthy relationships.

Published by Iris S.