Can a Holiday Save My Marriage? My Advice for Giving It Your Best Shot, and Avoiding the Post-Holiday Divorce Spike

Can a holiday save your marriage? Only if you've done the real work before you get on the plane. Otherwise it just becomes a silent test, not a fix.

Here's what nobody says out loud: most couples go on holiday and, without ever deciding to, turn it into a test. Two weeks together, away from work and routine, quietly become a trial of whether the relationship still holds. Does he notice you need a break? Does he reach for your hand? Does a single conversation go past the logistics of the day? Pass or fail.

Neither of you agreed to this. Neither of you said it out loud. But by day nine, you're marking him against a bar he doesn't know exists, and he's likely doing something similar to you. Two people, side by side on a beach, silently grading each other and telling no one.

You can probably guess how that ends. A verdict, delivered in silence, arrived at alone.

Here's the thing: it doesn't have to be this way. And the shift that changes it doesn't happen on the holiday. It happens before you leave.

Why the ‘test’ happens in the first place

Family lawyers see a pattern every year. HM Courts and Tribunals Service data shows two reliable peaks in divorce enquiries: the first working Monday of January, "Divorce Day," after the strain of the festive period, and a second peak in late September, once the summer holidays end and normal life resumes. The enforced togetherness of a family holiday, followed by the return to routine has a way of bringing things to a head.

Sit alongside this the longer structural shift: couples over 50 now account for around 36% of all UK divorces, up from less than 10% in 1990. A generation of women is refusing to spend the second half of their life in a marriage that stopped working in the first. That's not a crisis. That's a reckoning.

There's a reason this tends to land in your forties and fifties specifically. Perimenopause is happening. Your hormones are shifting, your nervous system is more dysregulated than it's been since puberty, and you're entering your second act, so everything comes under the microscope at once: the relationship, the job, the town you live in. You want this next chapter to be brilliant, and that longing is legitimate. But a silent, unspoken test, run on an exhausted nervous system, over a fortnight - that's not the way to get a reliable answer to any of it.

The golden advice: do the reflection before you go, not during

Here's the reframe. Instead of waiting to find out on holiday whether the relationship still works, instead of quietly running the test and hoping he passes, do the reflecting first, on your own, before you pack. Get clear on who you are now, not who you were when you met him. What matters to you today. Which roles you want to keep, and which you're ready to put down. Your North Star - what you actually want your life to feel like from here.

This is the work that most people skip. And skipping it is exactly what turns a holiday into a covert exam.

Once you're genuinely clear on this for yourself, something becomes possible that silent testing can never produce: you can have the conversation with your partner before you leave, rather than after you land. Tell him what you've been noticing about yourself - how you've changed, what you need more of, what's shifted since the two of you first got together. Invite him to do the same. Ask him who he's becoming, not just what's for dinner.

A surprising number of partners respond to that invitation with something like relief. He may well be sitting on his own quiet reassessment, waiting for permission to say it out loud. You've been feeling that too? I have as well. Two people who've each been reassessing their own lives, given the chance to say so honestly, can choose to evolve into the next chapter together, rather than each silently marking the other's performance and letting the holiday decide for them.

What this changes about the holiday itself

This is the difference: instead of two people privately auditing each other, you go away as two people who already know roughly where the other stands - what they're feeling, what they're hoping for, who they're becoming. The holiday stops being a covert exam and becomes what it was always meant to be: space to actually reflect together. To notice, out loud, what's true. To ask each other the questions that get lost in the school run and the work deadlines the rest of the year.

That doesn't guarantee an easy answer. Some of what surfaces in those conversations will confirm that a relationship has run its course, and that's a real and valid outcome — better arrived at through honesty than through a silent, exhausted verdict at the baggage carousel. But most of the time, the couples who do this work beforehand come home from the same two weeks with a completely different holiday behind them: one where they actually met each other, rather than one where they quietly kept score.

How to actually do this before you go

Get clear on yourself first. Before any conversation with him, spend proper time with the question: what do I want my life to feel like in five years? Not what you want to escape from, but what you want to move toward. Write it down. This is the version of you that goes into the conversation, not the exhausted, reactive one.

Regulate before you talk. This conversation lands better from a settled nervous system than a stretched one. A few minutes of slow breathing, four counts in, six counts out, before you sit down together makes a real difference to how the conversation goes.

Ask him the real questions, not the logistical ones. Not ‘are we still okay?’ but ‘what do you want more of and where/what do you want to be heading towards?’ Tell him your own answer first. Most couples have never actually asked each other this, even after twenty years.

Then go on the holiday you've actually prepared for - one where reflection happens together, out loud, rather than alone and unspoken.

What ‘brave’ actually means here

The brave thing isn't leaving, and it isn't staying. It's doing the uncomfortable work of getting honest with yourself, and then with him, before the holiday starts, instead of packing your bags, saying nothing, and quietly waiting to find out what you already half-know (or think you know).

Staying with clarity, or leaving with clarity - both are real choices, and both deserve more than a fortnight's silent verdict. Have the conversation before you go. Let the holiday be what it should be: two people, reflecting together, not testing each other alone.

I'm Lauren, the "Should I Stay or Should I Go" coach for women in their 40s and 50s. If you're heading into this holiday season with more questions than answers, let's talk — my three-session process is built for exactly this kind of clarity.

⚖️ Stop Carrying the Weight of "Maybe." Indecision Is Costing You More Than You Think...

Whether you're navigating a career-defining pivot, a relationship crossroads, or a life-altering move to the country—the cost of indecision is the same. It drains your energy, stalls your progress, and keeps you from being fully present in the life you’ve built.

That's where I come in! I help high-achieving individuals move from mental fog to absolute certainty in just three transformational sessions.

As an ICF Certified Coach and NLP Master Practitioner, I combine strategic psychological tools with intuitive somatic techniques to help you make your "impossible" decision with total confidence. Here's how...

The Three-Step Transformation:

✨ 1. Alignment & Assurance
We clear the "noise" of fear and external expectations. By eliciting your core values, we ensure your next step is rooted in what truly matters—not just what looks good on paper.

🌍 2. The 360° Perspective
We explore your options from every angle—from daily practicalities and personal capabilities to your overall life mission. Whether it's a business model or a family dynamic, it’s all connected.

⚓ 3. Integration & Momentum
Using Generative Coaching, we connect to your intuition to dismantle obstacles and turn them into resources. We’ll walk through a timeline of actions and create "an anchor" to keep you steady on your chosen path.

The Result: You emerge from our third session with a definitive decision, a clear roadmap, and the peace of mind that only comes from true alignment. You're welcome!

Email me now to set up a free 30 minute Zoom call so we can see if we’re a good fit - I want to hear you ‘should I stay of should I go’ decision.

Thinking About Leaving Your Job? Here's What to Figure Out Before You Decide

The thought arrives quietly at first. A Sunday evening feeling you can't quite name. A meeting that drains you in a way it didn't used to. A moment where you catch yourself thinking: is this it?

By the time most women I work with come to me, the question "should I leave my job?" has been living rent-free in their heads for months, sometimes years. They've lost sleep over it, they’ve made endless pros and cons lists and talked it to death with their friends.

And yet the answer still won't come.

Here's what I've noticed after working with women at this crossroads: the reason the answer won't come isn't because the decision is too hard. It's because they're trying to answer the wrong question.

"Should I leave my job?" is the wrong starting point

It feels like the right question. It's the one that's burning. But it's actually a surface question - a symptom of something deeper that hasn't been named yet.

When you ask "should I leave my job?", your brain goes into yes/no mode. It starts scanning for reasons to stay and reasons to go, weighing them up, trying to tip the balance one way or the other. This is why the pros and cons list never works. The moment you write down a reason to leave, your brain finds a counter-argument. The moment you commit to staying, something shifts and the doubt comes rushing back.

The reason this happens is that you're not actually wrestling with a career decision. You're wrestling with an identity question. And identity questions can't be resolved with logic.

What's really underneath "should I leave my job?" is something more like: who am I now, what do I actually want my life to look like, and is the path I'm on taking me there?

That's a much harder question to sit with. But it's the one worth answering first.

Why this hits hardest in your 40s and 50s

There's a reason this kind of career crossroads tends to arrive with particular force in midlife.

By the time many women reach their 40s or 50s, they've spent a significant portion of their career being shaped by company cultures, managers' expectations, the need to prove themselves and the invisible pressure to be agreeable and accommodating and not ‘too much.’ The job they're in may have been a genuinely good fit for the person they were a decade ago.

But people change. Values evolve. What felt like ambition at 32 can feel hollow at 47. What once looked like stability can start to feel like a cage.

The question isn't really whether to leave the job. It's whether the job still fits the person you've become, and whether you've taken the time to get to know who that person actually is.

The question to ask before anything else

Before you research salaries, update your CV, or fantasise about handing in your notice, I'd encourage you to do something that feels counterintuitive: put the job question to one side entirely. Just temporarily.

Instead, ask yourself three things:

Who am I when I'm most myself? Not the version of you that shows up for Monday morning meetings or says yes when you mean no. The version underneath all of that. What are you like when you're not performing?

What do I actually value? Not what you've been told you should value, like security, status, a good pension, but what genuinely matters to you. Autonomy? Creative work? Time with people you love? Making a tangible difference? When you're honouring these things, you feel like yourself. When you're not, something quietly goes wrong.

What does the next chapter of my life look like, in an ideal world? Not just the next job title. What does a good day feel like? What kind of work energises you? What kind of person do you want to be?

This is what I call finding your compass, your own internal sense of direction that tells you whether any given path is moving you toward the life you want, or away from it. Once you have it, the job question becomes much easier to answer, because you're no longer guessing. You're checking.

What clarity actually makes possible

Here's something that surprises a lot of the women I work with: when they finally do this deeper work, the job question often becomes clearer much faster than they expected - but the answer isn't always what they thought it would be.

Some women realise the job was never really the problem. What wasn't working was the way they'd been showing up in it – zero boundaries, saying yes to everything, shrinking to fit a culture that didn't always deserve their best. With clearer values and a stronger sense of what they need, they can stay, but completely differently. Same role, different relationship to the work.

Others find that the job genuinely isn't aligned with who they've become, but now they understand exactly why, and that makes the decision to leave feel purposeful rather than like an escape. They're not running away from something vague. They're moving toward something specific.

And some discover that what they've really been craving is to work for themselves. Not because employment is inherently wrong, but because autonomy is their highest value and somewhere, underneath the practicalities, they've always known they wanted to build something of their own.

None of these are the right answer. The right answer is the one that's true for you.

Three paths forward (and what each one actually takes)

Once you're clearer on who you are and what you need, there are broadly three directions available to you:

Stay — but with intention. You keep your current role, but you stop treating it as the sum total of your professional identity. You get clearer on your boundaries, advocate for what matters, and show up as the full version of yourself rather than the version you've been editing down. This path works when the role has real potential but you've been operating below your own values.

Move to something more aligned. A new organisation, a different industry, a role that uses your skills in a way that actually feels like you. This path works when the issue isn't employment itself but the specific environment or type of work you're in right now.

Build something of your own. Go freelance, start a business, create a portfolio career that gives you the freedom and purpose you've been looking for. This takes more planning and courage than the other two, but for women whose compass points toward independence, it's often the most fulfilling direction there is.

Where to begin

If you're sitting with the job question right now, here's the most useful thing I can offer you: don't make any decisions yet. Not because the decision doesn't matter, but because you don't yet have the information you need to make it with zero regret.

Take a week. Not to research other opportunities or prepare for difficult conversations, but simply to sit with the deeper questions. Who am I? What matters to me? Where do I want to go from here?

You might find the job question answers itself. And if it doesn't, you'll be answering it from a place of genuine self-knowledge rather than exhaustion, fear, or the vague sense that something needs to change.

That's the difference between a decision you can trust and one you'll spend the next year second-guessing.

Lauren Johns is The 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go' Coach, working with women in their 40s and 50s facing life-changing decisions in work, relationships, and beyond. She is ICF and AC certified and an NLP Master Practitioner. If you're sitting with a big stay-or-go question and want support working through it, get in touch.