When I made the decision nearly 40 years ago to leave my first husband and father of my two children, many well meaning friends and family members lectured me, saying I needed to have the guts to stay in the relationship and make it work. That it was selfish and cowardly of me to ‘give up’ on it. And that the courageous thing for me to do was to work on changing my behaviors in order to improve the relationship.

In theory, that advice makes a lot of sense.

But here’s what they didn’t know: For years before we separated, I felt that my husband and I were living a façade. The world saw the beautiful exterior of an increasingly empty shell that was our relationship. The shiny camouflage of the marriage, the enchanting personality of my husband, and my deep fear of being on my own, all left me paralyzed. How could I possibly leave all that ‘goodness’? For years, I lacked the courage to state my truth: That for me our beautiful union was not living and growing on the inside. It was stale and dying.

So in fact, it was cowardly for me to stay in the marriage as long as I did. Some relationships, even ones that were once nourishing, simply need to end. In fact, much has been written about how to do this. Just Google “how to end your unhealthy relationship” and you’ll find a world full of experts advising you how to extract yourself from partnerships that no longer meet your needs.

Sometimes ‘giving up’ on them is the most courageous thing we can do.

Here’s the really tough question for me: When is it cowardly and when is it courageous to leave a partner?

Looking back on my experiences, for me the difference has depended on how and why I made the choice to leave:

Can’t or Won’t?

For years, I felt I couldn’t leave my first marriage. As long as I stayed because I couldn’t leave, I was operating from a place of helplessness and cowardice.

My current marriage of almost 25 years is not immune to difficulties. But when Ed and I have gone through challenging times, we have said to one another that we won’t leave. What a huge difference that one little verb change — from can’t to won’t — can make!

2. Right vs. Wrong

As long as it’s not a situation of abuse or other harmful behaviors, I’m a coward if I leave because I think one of us is right and the other wrong, or one is good and the other is bad. Ironically in my case, I saw my first husband as good and myself as bad — but the direction of the judgment doesn’t really matter. Either way, I believe that leaving based on such judgments is cowardly.

It’s easy to assign blame to another — or take on the guilt oneself as I did — when a relationship begins to die. But judgments about who’s at fault stem from the false belief that any of us ultimately controls another’s feelings or behaviors. It takes courage to know that, except in extreme cases of serious abuse, the breakdown of a relationship is typically a mutual slide.

I didn’t understand all those many years ago that guilt is not the same as responsibility. In fact, although I can influence people and events by how I behave, nothing that happens outside of myself is ultimately within my control. But all of my choices are always my responsibility.

Do I have regrets? Absolutely.

I deeply regret how I left that relationship so long ago, but not that I left it.