The Woman in the In-Between: When You're Not Unhappy Enough to Leave But Not Happy Enough to Stay

It started with a cake.

You wanted the Chantilly Berries cake from Whole Foods. The one with the mascarpone and the fresh strawberries. You had been thinking about it for weeks, the way you think about small things when the big things feel too heavy to look at directly. It was your birthday. It was Mother's Day. You mentioned it once, maybe twice.

He said no. His mom doesn't like that cake.

You offered a compromise. Two cakes. She can have hers, you can have yours. He said it wasn't worth the extra money. Which is why you are standing in your own kitchen making dinner on Mother's Day, which this year also happens to be your birthday.

And something in you cracked open that had nothing to do with cake.

You went to the bathroom. You sat on the edge of the tub. You picked up your phone to call your best friend because that is what you do when something breaks open. You always call her. But you didn't call. Because if you called, she was going to hear it in your voice, and she was going to ask what was wrong, and then she was going to want to FaceTime, and you had been crying and your face was splotchy and you didn't want her to see that. You didn't want to explain it.

You didn't want to say: I am crying because of a cake. Because that's not what you're crying about and you know it, but you don't know how to say what you're actually crying about, so you put your phone down and you sat there until your face went back to normal.

That is the in-between. That is exactly what it feels like.

When There's Nothing Wrong and Nothing Right

The in-between is not miserable enough to explain. That's the thing nobody tells you. You are not being yelled at. Nobody is lying to you as far as you know. There is no dramatic event to point to. Your husband is not a monster. He is just a man who made a choice about a cake and doesn't understand why you are in the bathroom.

And you can't explain it to him because you can't fully explain it to yourself.

So you walk back out. You smooth everything over. You order a different cake or you skip it entirely. You have dinner. You go to bed. And at some point in the night you pick up your phone and you start Googling things you would never say out loud.

Is it normal to feel lonely in a marriage? How do you know when a marriage is over? What does it mean when you don't want to talk to your husband anymore?

You read for a while. You close the tabs. You tell yourself everything's fine.

The Questions You'd Never Say Out Loud

The next morning you make coffee and you stand in the kitchen and he walks in and says good morning and you say good morning back and nothing is wrong and nothing is right and you look at him for just a second longer than usual, trying to find the thing you're not sure how to name. You don't find it. You hand him his cup. You move on with your day. But something is just slightly different now, the way a room feels different after you've rearranged one piece of furniture. Everything is technically in its place, and still your eye keeps going to the spot where something used to be.

Here is what the in-between actually is. It is the gap between what you have and what you thought you were going to have. It is the slow accumulation of moments where you wanted something small — to be asked how your day was, to have someone remember what mattered to you, to order the cake you actually wanted on your own birthday — and you didn't get it, and you told yourself it didn't matter, until one day it mattered so much you were sitting on the edge of the bathtub unable to call your best friend, as your heart was literally breaking.

The in-between is not a crisis. It is a question you have been refusing to ask yourself.

And the question is not: should I leave? You are nowhere near that. The question is: is this what I actually signed up for? Is this what the rest of it looks like? Is this as good as it gets?

You are allowed to ask that. You are allowed to not know the answer yet.

Fine. Tired. Disconnected.

The women I work with who are sitting in the in-between almost never describe themselves as unhappy. They describe themselves as tired. Disconnected. Fine. They say things like: we get along great, we're just not close. Or: he's a good dad, I just don't feel like he sees me. Or: I don't even know what I want, I just know it's not this.

That last one is the one I hear the most, and it's the hardest to sit with because it doesn't give you anything to work with. If you knew what you wanted, you could ask for it, or grieve not having it, or at least have something to point to. But I don't know what I want, I just know it's not this leaves you standing in the middle of a room with no walls, no door, no window. Just the vague and unsettling awareness that you are in the wrong place, and no map for how you got there or where else you could go. Most of the women who say it to me have been saying some version of it to themselves for years. They just never said it out loud before.

They have talked themselves out of their own feelings so many times that they've lost track of what they actually feel. They've made themselves small and reasonable and low-maintenance for so long that they don't even know what they would ask for if they let themselves ask for something.

A cake, maybe. A small thing. A birthday. A moment where someone chose them.

You Don't Have to Know Yet

If you are sitting in the in-between right now, I am not going to tell you what to do. I am not going to tell you to leave, or to stay, or to try harder, or to let it go. That is not what this space is for.

What I will tell you is this: the fact that you can't stop asking the question is not nothing. The fact that you are here, reading this, at whatever hour it is, means something. You don't have to know what yet.

But you are allowed to stop pretending the question isn't there.

If you are somewhere in the in-between and you're trying to figure out what you actually feel, I made something for you. It's called Is This As Good As It Gets? It’s a free guide for the woman who is questioning but not ready to decide anything yet.

You can grab it below.