The Oprah Podcast Featured My Content on "Quiet Quitting Your Marriage" — What the Term Means and What to Do Next
- Alex Beattie, Divorce Prep Coach & Founder
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 15 hours ago
If you've been physically present but emotionally disconnected for a long time, this one is for you.
Last fall, an article in The Cut entitled "The Women Quietly Quitting Their Husbands" went viral. It put words to something millions of women around the country have been quietly experiencing — the strange, painful limbo of being physically present in a marriage while being emotionally checked out for a long time.
The article sparked a massive conversation, and Oprah noticed.
In a recent episode of the Oprah Podcast, Oprah sat down with Monica Corcoran Harel, the journalist who wrote The Cut article, along with Nedra Glover Tawwab, author of The Balancing Act, and Julie Menanno, author of Secure Love, to discuss why so many women are choosing to stay in marriages despite feeling unhappy, unfulfilled, and deeply disconnected.
I made a reel about after reading the article last fall. I was struck by the term "quiet quitting" and wanted to use it as a jumping off point to talk about what I see happening to women in this situation. A clip of that content was featured in the episode.
Oprah's producers reached out to me in March. I've been keeping this secret ever since. Seeing my work included in that conversation is something I am genuinely so grateful for.
The truth of the matter is that navigating this time in marriage is really hard. The shut down in your marriage doesn't just stay there, it ripples through every area of your life.
This time in your marriage is like a purgatory, and when we talk about it, it becomes less of a sentence and more of an opportunity to take action and regain control over our lives. If you recognized yourself in that article, or in that episode, you are not alone. And there are steps you can take right now.
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What "Quiet Quitting Your Marriage" Actually Means
The term quiet quitting your marriage has exploded in cultural conversation, but it's worth being precise about what it actually describes, because it's not just being unhappy in your marriage. Most people have periods of unhappiness in long-term relationships.
Quiet quitting your marriage is something more specific. It's the point where you've made a decision — consciously or not — to stop investing. You've stopped trying to fix things, stopped bringing your needs to the table, stopped expecting things to change. You're going through the motions. You're managing the household, showing up for the kids, maintaining the social calendar. But emotionally, you checked out a long time ago.
It looks like this:
You have stopped bringing up problems because the conversation always goes nowhere. You've had the same argument so many times you can script both sides. You've tried to explain how you feel and walked away feeling more alone than before you started.
You have stopped imagining a future with your spouse. When you think about your life five years from now, they're not in the picture or you feel nothing when you try to put them there.
You feel more like roommates than partners. You coexist. You coordinate schedules. You are functional. But the intimacy (emotional, physical, conversational), has been gone for a long time.
You feel relief when they're not home. Not because you don't care, but because the absence of tension feels like breathing.
You are staying for the reasons like the kids, the finances, the logistics, the fear of what people will think. The overwhelm of imagining everything that divorce would require.
If any of that resonates, you've arrived at a crossroads. And the most important thing you can do right now is get honest about where you are.
The Slow Fade: What's Happening Beneath the Surface
Quiet quitting doesn't happen overnight. It's the result of what I call the slow fade — the gradual emotional withdrawal that happens when needs go unmet for long enough that a person stops expecting them to be met at all.
The slow fade usually starts with a moment, or a series of moments, where you reached out for connection and didn't get it. You tried to talk about something that mattered and were dismissed. You asked for something and were told you were asking for too much. You expressed hurt and were made to feel like the problem.
So you stopped reaching. Not in a dramatic, declarative way. Just quietly. The emotional distance grew. And at some point, the idea of reconnecting started to feel more exhausting than the disconnection itself.
This is what the Oprah conversation was really about. Not women who are disengaged because they stopped caring, but women who are disengaged because they cared for so long, tried for so long, and eventually ran out of the emotional resources to keep trying.
The slow fade is a self-protective response to a relationship that stopped being safe enough for honesty.
Why Women Stay
The Cut article and the Oprah conversation focused on women who have quietly quit but chosen to stay. And that's worth understanding, because it's not simple.
Women stay for real, complicated reasons:
Financial dependence or uncertainty. Divorce has significant financial implications, and without a clear picture of your financial reality, the unknown can feel more frightening than the status quo.
The children. The fear of disrupting their lives, changing their environment, splitting their time, and explaining something that feels unexplainable.
Social and community belonging. Your marriage is often embedded in a social structure — friends, family, faith community, neighborhood. Divorce can feel like losing all of it at once.
Exhaustion. The emotional bandwidth required to leave (to make the decision, have the conversations, navigate the process, rebuild) can feel impossible when you're already running on empty.
Fear of regret. What if it doesn't get better on the other side? What if you're making a mistake?
All of those reasons are valid. None of them are reasons to stay forever if the marriage is fundamentally not working.
Quiet Quitting Is a Signal, Not a Solution
Here's what I said in the content that Oprah's team featured, and what I want to say clearly here:
Quiet quitting your marriage isn't an answer, it's a signal.
It's telling you something important about the state of your relationship and the state of yourself. The question is what you're going to do with that signal.
Staying in relationship purgatory indefinitely is not a neutral choice. It has real costs. To your mental health. To your children, who are watching and absorbing more than you realize. To your sense of self. To any possibility of genuine connection, whether in this relationship or a future one.
The signal deserves a response. That response might be couples therapy. It might be individual therapy. It might be a direct, honest conversation with your spouse about the state of things. It might be divorce preparation. It might be a combination of all of those things.
But doing nothing and hoping the limbo resolves itself is not a strategy. It's just a slower version of the same pain.
If You've Quietly Quit Your Marriage: What to Do Next
Whether you're contemplating divorce or trying to decide if this marriage can be saved, these are the steps that actually move you forward:
Step 1: Get Honest About Where You Are
Not where you wish you were. Not where you tell people you are. Where you actually are.
Are you staying because you genuinely want to try to rebuild the relationship or because leaving feels too hard? Those are very different situations and they require very different responses.
If you haven't already, read the post: Quiet Quitting Your Marriage Isn't a Solution.
Step 2: Stop Making Decisions from Limbo
Limbo is the worst possible place to make major life decisions. When you're emotionally depleted, financially unclear, and operating on autopilot, you make reactive choices instead of intentional ones.
Before you decide anything, get clear on your actual situation. What does your financial picture look like? What would your life actually cost on your own? What are your legal rights? What do you actually want your future to look like?
Clarity is what allows you to make a decision you can stand behind, whatever that decision is.
Step 3: Give the Signal the Response It Deserves
If the quiet quitting is telling you the relationship can be saved with real work, that work starts with an honest conversation, possibly with a therapist present, about what it would actually take.
If the quiet quitting is telling you the marriage is over and you've known it for a long time, the most compassionate thing you can do for everyone involved, including yourself, is to start preparing to leave thoughtfully and strategically.
Either way, the limbo has to end. The signal deserves a response.
Step 4: Don't Navigate This Alone
Whether you need emotional support, financial clarity, legal guidance, or someone to help you figure out what you actually want, get the right people in your corner.
A therapist for the emotional processing
A divorce coach for strategic preparation and action — that's what I do.
A family law attorney for legal clarity on your rights and options
A CDFA if your financial situation is complex
Book a free 15-minute consultation with me and we'll talk through where you are and what your next steps look like.
Listen: The Slow Fade — The Divorce Planner Podcast Episode on This Topic
I covered this subject on an episode of the special summer series of The Divorce Planner Podcast. It's a quick solo episode, just me sharing the framework I use with coaching clients to understand what the slow fade is, how it happens, and what to do when you recognize yourself in it.
You can listen to it on my website:The Slow Fade — What's Really Happening When You've Emotionally Checked Out of Your Marriage.
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Book a free 15-minute consultation with me and we'll talk through where you are and what makes sense for your situation.
About Me | ALEX BEATTIE
Divorce Preparation Coach & Author
Alex Beattie is the founder of The Divorce Planner, host of The Divorce Planner Podcast, and author of the upcoming The Divorce Planner: 8 Weeks to Get Organized, Find Clarity, and Become Your Own Best Advocate (Jossey-Bass/Wiley, 2027). Learn more here.
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