You and your husband haven't been getting along for a long time. Your marriage is in crisis, and nothing you try seems to help. Not the romantic vacation abroad, not another late-night conversation, not even the couples counseling you finally managed to drag him to. You ask for more intimacy, more partnership, more interest, and every attempt ends more or less the same way: For a few days, it seems as though something has changed, but then everything goes back to the way it was. Eventually, you simply get tired of trying.
But you don't want a divorce, either. There are children, a home, a mortgage, an entire life you've built together, and fears about what might happen if you dismantle it all. So you don't leave the marriage. You just stop really being part of it. You no longer plan dates or suggest weekend getaways. You stop complaining that he doesn't listen, and you stop waiting for him to initiate sex or ask how you're doing. Instead, you travel with friends, find new hobbies and perhaps even move into another bedroom. From the outside, you're still a couple. On the inside, at least one of you has already checked out.
Gallery
When your cell phone is more interesting than your husband: Quiet quitting your marriage
(Photo: Milan Markovic/Getty Images)
This phenomenon has recently acquired a name: "quiet quitting." The term originated in the workplace, describing employees who stop putting in more effort than the minimum required. But in November 2025, it took on a new meaning in relationships following an article by journalist and screenwriter Monica Corcoran Harel in New York Magazine's The Cut, titled "The Women Quietly Quitting Their Husbands."
Corcoran Harel wrote about women, primarily in midlife, who either don't want to divorce or aren't prepared to do so. Instead, they emotionally and physically withdraw from their partners.
Corcoran Harel, 58 and married herself, opened with a personal story. Over the course of her parents' 25-year marriage, her mother gradually withdrew from her father. At one point, she stopped speaking to him altogether. Almost unbelievably, it took him a year to notice and ask whether something was wrong. She eventually stopped watching movies with him, moved into the guest bedroom and grew increasingly distant.
But the women Corcoran Harel described differ from their mothers' generation in one significant respect: Some of them actually have the option of leaving. They work, are financially independent, and divorce no longer carries the stigma it once did. Yet they stay. Sometimes it's because of the children, sometimes because they don't want to break up a family and endure a bitter divorce, and sometimes because they're simply not convinced that life outside the marriage would be better enough to justify the cost.
From the outside, you're still a couple. On the inside, at least one of you has already checked out.
So they create lives of their own within the lives they already have. One of Corcoran Harel's friends described traveling alone "to take much-needed vacations from my annoying husband." Another woman moved into her daughter's bedroom as soon as the daughter left for college: "I can watch old episodes of Broad City. He can watch porn or whatever it is he does."
And perhaps that's what makes this form of quitting so quiet. The arguments themselves may disappear. When women stop asking for anything, the disappointment disappears too. They simply stop trying.
But Corcoran Harel also acknowledges that the distinction isn't always clear, questioning how much of this resignation exists in almost every long-term relationship.
"Unlike my mother, I'm not quietly quitting my marriage. But after so many years together, don't we all stop trying to some extent? We make compromises, accept less passion and more boredom," she wrote.
I've changed. You haven't.
The article in The Cut went viral, and this past August, Oprah Winfrey devoted an entire episode of her podcast to the phenomenon. She invited Corcoran Harel, along with couples therapists and women who said they had already begun emotionally withdrawing from their marriages.
"I remember reading the article and thinking, I know a lot of women who are doing this," Winfrey said as she introduced the subject. "Women have been doing this for years. We're just giving it a name now."
Oprah Winfrey devoted an entire episode of her podcast to the phenomenon
(Photo: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)
One participant, Hendi, who has been married for 19 years and has two teenage daughters, said she and her husband have slept in separate bedrooms for years. As she continues to change and grow, she feels the distance between them widening. Nevertheless, she hasn't given up on the relationship.
"I love my husband very much, and I can see that with a little effort, we could reconnect and remain a stable family for our daughters. But I can't do it alone. I just need more," she said.
Another woman, Keisha, said that for 16 years she felt responsible for bridging every emotional gap in her marriage. If a difficult conversation needed to happen, she initiated it. If they needed to reconcile after an argument, she made the first move.
When she suggested sleeping in separate bedrooms, she hoped her husband would object. "I wanted him to say, 'I'm going to fight for this. I'm going to fight for you,'" she recalled.
Instead, she was met largely with silence. Eventually, she reached the point where she stopped waiting. "I got to the point where I realized I needed to emotionally separate myself from him."
Corcoran Harel summed up the change taking place among some women in one striking observation: "You used to say to your partner, 'You've changed.' Today, women are saying, 'You haven't changed, but I'm evolving. You're not growing, and therefore this relationship isn't growing either.'"
Quiet quitting isn't about women waking up one morning and suddenly deciding they've had enough. More often, it's the endpoint of a process that has unfolded over years. And that is precisely the point Smadar Miller, founder of Krovim, a school for relationships, and an educator specializing in relationships and sexuality, wants to emphasize.
"This term gives a name to a phenomenon in which women reach a point where they lose hope after a very long period of trying to get their partner to be emotionally intimate, show interest, participate and share the burden of everyday life and raising children," she says. "Then comes a turning point: 'OK, I no longer expect that from you. I'm going to build a meaningful life for myself, with interests of my own.' The woman stops trying to please, make him happy, engage him, get closer to him or even complain. You could call it quiet despair.
(Photo: Milan Markovic/Getty Images)
"But beneath the surface, the longing hasn't really disappeared. It's the realization that everything I've been doing until now has produced no results, and I'm finally allowing myself to get tired of it, lose hope and let go," she adds.
If you've reached that point, why not simply get divorced?
"There are many reasons. In some circumstances, divorce is almost a privilege. A woman gets divorced when she can see a future in which she has an income, a social and professional life, and a relationship with her children. It's very frightening.
"There are communities where divorce is unacceptable for moral, religious or social reasons, and some people experience it as a personal failure. There's also the fear of causing suffering to the children and, of course, the financial issue. Suddenly, you have to support two households."
But Miller believes the narrative in which one partner repeatedly tries to establish closeness while the other simply refuses to participate in the relationship can overlook important aspects of the dynamic.
"I think that's a very common but superficial way of looking at it. In many cases, one partner needs togetherness to calm down: 'Let's talk, let's work things out, let's hug.' The other partner, however, needs to calm down alone. They need space, time to cool off, and don't want to talk right now," according to Miller.
Couples' therapist Smadar Miller
(Photo: Yifat Yogev)
"The problem is that each believes their own approach is the right one for the relationship, so the other person must be doing something wrong. That creates a cycle: The more one partner seeks closeness, the more the other withdraws, and the more they withdraw, the harder the first partner tries."
So what should couples do in that situation?
"You need to ask why your partner is pulling away. Is it simply because they're unwilling or unable to connect, or could my way of communicating be putting too much pressure on them? Am I demanding togetherness even when they need something different? Am I being overly critical or condescending?
"The narrative of 'I wanted closeness and you didn't' doesn't leave enough room to examine my own contribution to the dynamic we've created between us."
Can quiet quitting create an opportunity for change?
"It's not a strategy where you say, 'Wow, what a great idea.' It's the result of a very unhealthy pattern and a point of exhaustion and despair. But there can also be an opportunity in it.
"I actually really like despair, because it means I stop doing the same thing over and over when it isn't getting me anywhere. How often do I hear someone say, 'I've told him a thousand times'? In relationships, we often do something that doesn't work a thousand times. Here, you finally stop.
Journalist and screenwriter Monica Corcoran Harel, wrote the article titled "The Women Quietly Quitting Their Husbands"
(Photo: Rob Latour/WWD/Penske Media/Getty Images)
"When I no longer expect anything from him, I can suddenly see him, not what he was supposed to provide for me, but who he actually is. And on the other side, there may be someone who has been waiting all along to be seen for who they are, rather than as the sum of all the expectations placed on them. Sometimes, when you genuinely let go, rather than doing it as a form of manipulation, the other person suddenly wakes up."
How can you tell when your partner has reached that stage?
"You'll see a desire to reduce contact. Suddenly, she's going from one class or activity to another, traveling abroad with friends or immersing herself in work. These days, it's also very easy. I pick up my phone, and just like that, I'm somewhere else. Each person watches the TV series they like, and the relationship becomes very transactional. Often, couples stop arguing.
"When someone has truly quietly quit, there are no longer any expectations, disappointments or drama. Couples come to me in severe crises, and you can see that they're hurt, that they're fighting, that they're determined to get this person to see and love them. With quiet quitting, there's already a sense of, 'The thing I want is never going to happen here.'"
What should you do if you recognize yourself as being on the verge of quiet quitting, or already in the middle of it?
"First, it's worth identifying early on whether the relationship has become asymmetrical, with one person constantly initiating outings, sex, conversations or vacations. Sometimes it starts out feeling very comfortable: I'm dominant and know what I want, and you're comfortable letting me make the decisions.
"But you need to learn to create a relationship that's more like a game of ping pong, where one person gives and the other responds, where there's dialogue and a sense that you're moving forward together."
And what if you've already reached the point where you've stopped expecting, arguing and asking?
"Go through a process with a professional who won't just comfort you and tell you how unfortunate you are and how right you are, but who will also challenge you to look at your own contribution to the situation. Yes, your partner may have messed up, but the only thing you can change is what you do.
"And you may decide that you want a divorce. That's a legitimate decision and sometimes a necessary one. But to avoid repeating the same pattern in your next relationship, it's worth understanding what happened. Looking at it honestly can be incredibly painful, but it can also lead to extraordinary growth, including healing the relationship itself, if that's what you choose."
This article was originally published in La'Isha magazine.