The secret joy of a client's divorce

I am tired of the posture of indifference. I sit in these conferences and listen to presenters talk about the sanctity of the therapeutic container and the requirement of clinical neutrality. They speak as if I am a mirror or a piece of medical equipment. They suggest that I should have no preference for the outcome of a client’s life choices. I find that position to be a lie. I find it to be a dishonest performance that actually hinders the work. If I have spent months watching a client wither away in a marriage that functions like a slow-release poison, I am not neutral. I do not want them to stay and work on it. I do not want them to find a way to tolerate the intolerable. I want them to leave. I want the divorce. When that client finally walks into my office and tells me they have signed the papers, I do not just reflect their feelings. I feel a surge of professional satisfaction that borders on joy.

I have practiced this for fifteen years. I have seen the physical cost of bad partnerships. I have watched people develop chronic migraines and skin rashes and digestive issues because they are trying to share a home with someone who hates them. I have seen clients lose their ability to speak in full sentences because their spouse corrects their grammar or mocks their tone. These are not just clinical observations. These are injuries. I am a witness to a long, slow assault. If I pretend that the continuation of that assault is just as valid as the termination of it, I am failing my client. I am participating in the gaslighting that keeps them trapped.

The training manuals tell me to facilitate the client’s own discovery. I am supposed to help them arrive at their own conclusions without my influence. This sounds noble in a classroom at a university. It looks different when I am sitting across from a man who has lost twenty pounds because he is too anxious to eat at his own dinner table. It looks different when I see a woman who has stopped seeing her friends because her husband makes the social cost of leaving the house too high. In those moments, I have a stake. I want that person to survive. I want them to reclaim their life. My clinical success is tied to their liberation.

I remember a specific client who had been justifying a spouse who used silence as a weapon. This spouse would go four days without speaking if a dish was left in the sink. My client would spend our sessions analyzing the spouse’s childhood trauma to explain this behavior. I would listen and reflect. I would use the techniques I learned in my continuing education units. I would ask what it felt like to be ignored. I would ask what the client needed in those moments. But inside, I was screaming. I was looking at a person who was disappearing. I saw the way they stopped wearing bright colors. I saw the way they began to whisper even when we were alone in my office.

When that client finally told me that the spouse had moved out, I did not offer a neutral nod. I did not ask a circular question about their emotional state. I felt a rush of relief. I felt like a person who had been holding their breath for three years and finally hit the surface of the water. I told the client that I was glad. I told them that I had been watching them die and I was happy to see them live. This is the moment where the textbooks say I have failed. They would call this a boundary violation. They would say I have lost my objectivity. I argue that I have finally achieved honesty.

The performance of neutrality is a burden for the therapist and a barrier for the client. Clients are not stupid. They can sense when I am holding back a judgment. They can see the tension in my shoulders when they describe another round of emotional abuse. When I pretend that I have no opinion, I am forcing the client to do all the emotional labor of the session. I am making them guess what I am thinking. I am also teaching them that their own suffering is something that can be viewed with a cool, detached eye. This is the opposite of empathy. Empathy should have a pulse. It should have a preference for the health of the person sitting in front of me.

I believe that the therapists who claim to be neutral are often the most manipulative. They use subtle cues to lead the client toward a specific conclusion while maintaining plausible deniability. They use a certain tone of voice or a specific line of questioning to nudge the client toward divorce, but they never have to take responsibility for that nudge. I find that cowardly. I would rather name my stake. I would rather tell the client that I am biased toward their autonomy. If I name my position, the client can push back against it. They can disagree with me. They can tell me that I am wrong and that they want to stay. That is a real conversation. That is a strategic interaction.

The secret joy I feel when a client divorces is not about the destruction of a family. It is not about a lack of respect for the institution of marriage. It is about the restoration of an individual. I have seen what happens to the human spirit when it is crushed by a bad contract. I have seen the way people bloom after a separation. I have seen clients start hobbies they gave up a decade ago. I have seen them start to stand up straight. I have seen their eyes clear up. If I did not feel joy at that transformation, I would not be fit for this work. I would be a bureaucrat of misery.

We spend so much time talking about the risks of countertransference. We are told to watch out for our own stuff getting in the way. This is a valid concern. I should not want a client to get a divorce because my own marriage is failing or because I have a grudge against men or women. But there is a difference between personal baggage and clinical judgment. My desire for a client to leave a toxic situation is a result of my professional experience. I have seen the data in my own practice. I know that people who stay in emotionally abusive marriages do not get better. They do not find peace through more cognitive behavioral therapy. They find peace through the exit door.

I think we hide this joy because we are afraid of being seen as home-wreckers. We are afraid that the public will think we are anti-marriage. But my job is not to save a marriage. My job is to help the person who hired me. If the marriage is the thing that is breaking that person, then the marriage is the problem. I do not see why I should be expected to remain neutral toward a problem. We are not neutral toward depression. We are not neutral toward addiction. We are not neutral toward self-harm. Why are we expected to be neutral toward a relationship that functions as all three?

The therapist who admits they have a stake is better at managing it. If I know that I am rooting for a divorce, I can account for that in my internal dialogue. I can check myself to make sure I am not pushing too hard or too fast. I can ensure that the client is making the decision for themselves and not to please me. But if I pretend that I do not care, I lose that self-awareness. My bias goes underground. It becomes an influence that operates below the surface and the work without being named. This is how you get therapists who spend ten years helping a client manage their unhappiness rather than helping them end it.

I am finished with the idea that I should be a blank slate. A blank slate is a cold thing. I am a person with fifteen years of clinical evidence. I am a person who knows what a healthy human looks like and what a broken human looks like. When I see a client move from the latter to the former by ending a marriage, I am going to celebrate it. I am going to feel that satisfaction. I am going to walk into my kitchen at the end of the day and tell my spouse that I had a good day because a client finally chose themselves. I am not going to apologize for it. I am going to call it a successful intervention.

The joy is not a mistake. It is the reward for the work. It is the proof that I am still human enough to care about the outcome. If the day comes when I don’t feel that surge of relief when a client escapes a cage, I will turn in my license. I will stop taking the money of people who are looking for a way out. I will leave the profession to the people who are happy to watch their clients drown as long as the paperwork is in order. I am staying in this chair because I like to see people win. And sometimes, winning looks like a signed decree of dissolution. It looks like a moving truck. It looks like a life that finally belongs to the person living it. That is the only outcome that matters to me. That is the only thing I am interested in achieving. I am not here to be neutral. I am here to help them fight for their lives. If that makes me a bad therapist according to the textbooks, then the textbooks are wrong. I will take the joy over the neutrality every single time.