Knowing Which Winter You're In

This last weekend a bloke at work told me that his marriage was ending.

There was no big story attached to it. No anger, no accusation, no dramatic turning point. Just a tired honesty, delivered quietly, like something he’d already rehearsed to himself long before he said it out loud. I didn’t really know what to say, so I didn’t try to say much. I just listened.

Afterwards, I found myself thinking about how often marriages don’t actually end in explosions. They end in confusion. In people not knowing whether they’re being strong by staying, or simply afraid to admit something has shifted. That space....the uncertainty....is familiar territory to me. I didn’t always know how to navigate it. I didn’t always have the tools to see clearly. And I paid for that lack of discernment.

There’s a line that gets thrown around a lot these days...usually with good intentions ...that if you’re not happy, you should walk away. I understand where it comes from. No one wants people trapped in something unhealthy. But it’s always felt too blunt for something this personal. Happiness comes and goes. Marriage doesn’t move at the same pace. Anyone who’s lived inside one long enough knows there are periods where it just doesn’t feel very good. You’re tired. The kids are young. Work’s relentless. You’re not sleeping properly. You lose a bit of yourself without really noticing when it happened.

That doesn’t automatically mean the marriage is broken. Sometimes it just means life is heavy.

The mistake, I think, is treating every winter like it’s permanent. Because not all winters are the same. Some are clearly seasonal. You can feel the cold, but you can also see what’s causing it. External pressures are doing most of the damage, not the relationship itself. There might be frustration, even anger, but underneath it there’s still goodwill. When things ease...a bit more rest, a decent conversation, a reminder of why you chose each other in the first place...warmth has a way of finding its way back. That’s when you put on another layer and keep walking.

Other winters don’t feel like that at all. They don’t lift when circumstances improve. The distance becomes normal. You start holding your tongue more than you speak it. You edit yourself just to keep the peace. Contempt....quiet, almost polite....starts creeping in, and that’s when something deeper is going on. That’s not really a season anymore. That’s a climate and, sadly, that was the place my friend was in.

I didn’t always know how to tell the difference. For a long time, I only knew how to endure. It took me a while to realise that endurance without awareness isn’t strength....it’s just staying blind and hoping for the best. And blindness, even when it’s well-intentioned, still carries consequences.

Duty plays a big role in this for us humans. We stay for the kids. We stay because we want to be good people. We stay because families and histories get tangled up in ways that feel impossible to unravel without causing damage to people we care about. There’s nothing weak about that. But duty can quietly turn on you if it asks you to disappear in order to keep everything else intact. At some point, values stop guiding behaviour and start suppressing humanity, and that’s when endurance crosses a line most people don’t see until they’re already past it.

None of this is to say that warmth doesn’t matter. It does. Being seen matters. Being chosen matters. Affection matters. But warmth can’t be the foundation, because it’s the first thing stress strips away. Fatigue dulls it. Pressure erodes it. Life interrupts it. What has to remain underneath is respect, goodwill, shared values, and a belief that repair is possible. When those things are intact, warmth doesn’t need to be chased.....it finds its way back in its own time.

Conflict is unavoidable. Anger happens. That never excuses harm....physical or emotional....but anger is still engagement. Contempt is something else entirely. Anger says this matters. Contempt says you don’t. And once contempt settles in, the relationship starts dying quietly. Not because people fought too much, but because someone stopped feeling that their other was worth fighting for. When contempt becomes cold and habitual rather than momentary and ashamed, that’s usually the point where a winter has stopped being seasonal and become the climate.

I didn’t tell my workmate what he should do (but he did ask). That wasn’t my job. What I’ve learned....mostly by getting it wrong before learning how to see more clearly....is that staying without discernment and leaving without discernment are equally dangerous. “Stay” and “leave” are the wrong binaries. The real work is learning how to tell which winter you’re actually in.

Some winters are meant to be walked through. Others aren’t winters at all....they’re climates. Marriage without sentimentality isn’t cold. It’s realistic. It’s choosing commitment as a practice rather than a feeling, without asking a partner to erase themselves to prove their worth. That kind of marriage isn’t easy, but it’s honest. And in the long run, honesty does far less damage than noise ever will.

If you’re reading this while sitting in your own quiet winter, there’s no instruction here....only an invitation.

Slow down.
Pay attention to what you’re actually living inside.
Notice whether you’re tired, or diminished.
Whether warmth has faded, or whether respect has gone with it.

Discernment takes time. It asks for honesty more than certainty. And it doesn’t arrive in moments of emotional intensity..... it arrives in the quieter spaces, when you’re willing to sit with the truth rather than rush to escape it.

Some marriages ask for patience.
Others ask for courage.

Knowing which one you’re being asked for is the real work.

Take your time with that.