What If Marriage Came Up for Renewal?

What if marriage wasn't a lifetime contract, but a 20-year contract with the option to renew? In this solo episode, Tania Leichliter challenges the one measure we use to judge every marriage — how long it lasted — and offers a different question entirely: would you choose each other again? A conversation about change, renewal, and why a marriage can end and still have been a success.

In this episode:

• Why length is a poor measure of a successful marriage — 50 miserable years gets called a win, 20 good years that end gets called a failure
• The extraordinary promise we make young: that the people we are at 30 will be the people we are forever
• Everything that changes between 30 and 50 — children, careers, money, loss, caregiving, bodies, priorities, friendships, identity
• The thought experiment: a scheduled renewal conversation with no lawyers, no papers, and nothing terrible having happened
• "Would you choose me again?" — and the follow-up question that matters just as much: what does our next marriage need to look like
• Why renewal means consciously choosing the next 20 years, not repeating the first 20 — including learning how to be a couple again after years of being mom and dad
• What it means when one person wants to renew and the other doesn't
• Why judging an entire marriage by its ending erases everything that came before
• Marriage can end without the family ending — the family doesn't break, it gets re-envisioned
• Where amicable isn't possible: safety, abuse, addiction and serious financial misconduct change the situation entirely
• Why becoming enemies after divorce is a choice, not an outcome — even where there's been infidelity
• How the option to renew could make marriages stronger: listening differently, addressing resentment earlier, staying curious about who your spouse is becoming
• The real problem isn't that people change — it's that we don't update the relationship when they do
• The renewal conversation: six questions to ask every five years
• Why going to therapy doesn't mean your marriage is falling apart

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro

01:31 - The provocative idea: a 20-year marriage contract with the option to renew

01:55 - Why is the length of a marriage our only measure of success?

02:24 - Twenty good years that end — do we really call that a failure?

02:40 - The extraordinary promise we make when we're young

03:33 - Age 30 to 50: everything that can change before renewal comes up

04:18 - The thought experiment — would you choose me again?

05:05 - If the answer is yes, ask the second question

05:15 - What the next 20 years could be about: travel, intimacy, independence

05:41 - Renewal isn't repeating the first 20 years

06:09 - What if one person wants to renew and the other doesn't?

06:37 - Judging an entire marriage by its ending

07:04 - Marriage can end without the family ending

07:34 - Birthdays, graduations, weddings — the hundreds of moments ahead

08:00 - When amicable isn't possible: safety, abuse, addiction, financial misconduct

08:26 - Becoming enemies is a choice, even after infidelity

08:51 - How the option to renew could make marriages better

09:20 - Would you listen differently? Take them less for granted?

09:41 - Addressing resentment earlier instead of assuming they'll always be there

10:24 - The problem isn't change — it's not updating the relationship

10:48 - The renewal conversation: six questions every five years

11:15 - Therapy isn't proof your marriage is falling apart

12:14 - The question to sit with tonight — would you renew?

12:32 - And would your spouse? What a pause actually means

13:01 - A marriage can end and still have been a successful marriage

13:30 - Join the conversation in the comments

14:11 - Outro

The Six Renewal Questions:

Don't wait 20 years. Sit down every five and ask:

1. Who are you now?
2. Who am I now?
3. What is working?
4. What is not working?
5. What do you need from me?
6. What do I need from you?

Resources & Links:

• Join the free Better Than Bitter™ Community
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• The Child-Centered Divorce Method™ and coaching programs

Connect with Better Than Bitter™:

• YouTube: @betterthanbitterdivorce
• Facebook Page: @betterthanbitter.coach
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• LinkedIn: @tanialeichliter

Remember: your journey through divorce is unique. Whether you're married, divorced, dating, or somewhere in between, the goal isn't to make marriage easier to leave — it's to build the kind of relationship people keep choosing.

You are getting divorced, and the feeling of overwhelm is keeping you stuck. You keep replaying the why this is happening in your brain. You are carrying anger, resentment, and disbelief. You fear conflict, financial adjustments, and what comes next for you and/or for your kids. But here's the truth: your past doesn't get to write your future. You do. Welcome to the Better Than Bitter™ Divorce Podcast. I'm your host, Tania Leichliter, Divorce Success Coach and founder of Better Than Bitter™. On this show, real people going through divorce sit down with our trusted, vetted divorce professionals and get coached live. You'll hear their real questions and real challenges, and walk away with answers you can use in your own journey. On other days, I'll give you the inspiration and the tools to get you unstuck, to throw away the why and stop playing victim so you can lead yourself forward. What if divorce is happening for you, not to you? And what if you get to choose what that brighter future looks like and how it feels? Because you do. So let's go build it. Let's get into today's episode.

I want to throw a pretty provocative idea out there tonight. What if marriage wasn't a lifetime contract? What if marriage was a 20-year contract with the option to renew? I'm not saying everybody should get divorced after 20 years. I'm asking something much more interesting.

Why have we decided that the primary measure of success in marriage is simply how long it lasts? Think about that. If two people stay married for 50 years, we tend to say, wow, that's a successful marriage. But what if they were miserable for 30 of those years? And if two people were married for 20 years, loved each other, raised incredible children, built a life together,

supported each other through difficult times, and then realized, you know what, we no longer want the same life — we call that marriage a failure? Well, why? I wrote an article about it several years ago.

And lately I've been thinking about it again, because I spend a lot of time talking with people who are contemplating divorce, going through divorce, or rebuilding their lives afterward. And I've started questioning some of the assumptions we have about marriage. We stand in front of somebody when we are relatively young and essentially say, I know who I am, I know who you are,

and I know that the people we are today are going to be what we have together forever. Well, that's an extraordinary promise when you think about it, because you're going to change. They're going to change. Life is going to change. Think about 20 years after that life where you said "till death do us part" and made that commitment.

Let's say you get married at 30. Even when you're 50, when that contract comes up for renewal, think about everything that can happen from the ages of 30 to 50. Yes, you may have children, you might have raised those children, built careers, lost jobs, gained jobs, made money, lost money, moved, lost parents, cared for aging parents, illness — maybe you change physically.

Changes in your sexual desires. You've changed emotionally. And you know what? Your priorities have changed. Your friendships might have changed. Your interests change. Your understanding of yourself is going to change. You might not even recognize the 30-year-old version of yourself anymore. And yet,

we're so surprised when two people who were incredibly compatible at age 30 discover that something isn't working at 50. My ex and I, we thought we were each other's soulmates. So this is my thought experiment.

Imagine that when you got married, you knew that 20 years later the two of you would sit down together and ask these questions. Not with divorce papers, not with lawyers, not because somebody cheated, not because something terrible happened, but simply because this was always part of the agreement. And you would ask each other: would you choose me again? That's it.

Would you choose me again? And maybe the answer is an enthusiastic absolutely — sign me up for another 20. But what does that next marriage need to look like?

Well, that first marriage might have been about raising children and building financial security. But the second one, maybe it's about travel. Maybe it's about growing old together and supporting each other and spending a lot of time together. Or what does intimacy look like in the next 20 years? Independence, adventure, slowing down, speeding up.

You might need different boundaries. You might need more time together. You might need more time apart. Maybe you've spent the last 20 years being mom and dad, and you need to figure out how to become a couple again. Renewal shouldn't mean repeating the first 20 years. It should mean consciously choosing the next ones. Now, here's where it gets uncomfortable. What if one person wants to renew

and the other doesn't? Does that automatically mean the marriage failed? I don't think it does. And I think this is where we've gotten something terribly wrong about divorce. We often judge the entire marriage by its ending. Twenty good years can somehow become "my marriage failed," "my marriage broke apart," "I wasted 20 years." Really? Maybe you loved someone, you built a home,

you had children, you helped each other become adults, you laughed your asses off together, you survived incredibly difficult things together and created a family — and that doesn't matter if you're married or divorced. That family is going to exist for the rest of your lives. Your children are going to be your children for the rest of your lives. But maybe that romantic relationship eventually came to an end.

So why does the ending get to erase everything that came before it? Marriage can end without the family ending. This is probably the part I care about the most. Because if there are children involved, your marriage, your romantic partnership may end, but your family, it doesn't end. It just gets re-envisioned. You're still a mom, they're still a dad.

Those children, they still have birthdays, graduations, weddings, grandchildren maybe someday. And there are going to be hundreds of moments when your lives will intersect. So perhaps instead of saying "our family is broken," we could sometimes say "our family is changing, it's evolving." That's a very different story. And it creates a different possibility for divorce.

Not every divorce can be amicable. There are circumstances where safety, abuse, addiction, serious financial misconduct, or other issues can completely change the situation. But there are also a lot of divorces where two basically decent people have reached the end of their marriage and then somehow feel they're supposed to become enemies. Even if there is infidelity,

you do not need to become enemies. That is your choice. That is you not being able to get over whatever it feels like — maybe that you're not enough, and that that is the reason why there was infidelity. But it is your choice to become an enemy or not. I don't think you have to. And here's the part that may actually make marriages better.

Imagine knowing from the day you get married that your spouse and you get to choose again. You don't own the commitment forever because you said those words at an altar 20-plus years ago. Someday they're going to look at you and decide: do I want another 20 years with this person? What would have to change in order for my next 20 years to be great?

Would you listen differently, knowing that the other person has the option to renew or not? Would you take your partner less for granted? Would you pay more attention to the intimacy? Would you keep developing your own life? Would you be more curious about the person your spouse is becoming?

Would you address resentment earlier? Would you stop assuming they'll always be there? Because here's what I keep coming back to. Maybe marriage shouldn't be something we're trapped into preserving. Maybe it should be something we're motivated to keep choosing. And yes, men and women are very different. This actually

is what got me thinking about this in the first place. Sometimes I look at the way men and women communicate, experience intimacy, process emotion, and respond to relationships, and I think, my God, how did we even make this work for 20 years, much less 50 years? I mean, obviously I'm generalizing.

But here's what I think matters most. Human beings change. The person you married has changed. And you have changed. The problem isn't necessarily that change happens. The problem is that we often do not update the relationship when it does.

So we keep trying to operate in this 20-year-old marriage with two completely updated human beings. So maybe we don't actually need a 20-year contract. I mean, maybe that's not the point. Maybe we need a renewal conversation. Maybe every five years, couples should sit down and ask: who are you now? Who am I now? What is working and what is not working?

What do you need from me? What do I need from you? And I know so many of you have gone through therapy, and these are the questions that are being asked of each of you, and you're working through these issues. But I believe it really does stem from the beginning — and with the expectation that this is the norm, and that going to therapy doesn't mean your marriage is falling apart.

It means that you are working toward that renewal of the next 20 years, and that you are going to be committed to the evolution of what this new relationship is going to look like. And that second 20 years is not going to look like the first. So what are we building next? And most importantly, would we choose this relationship again? We're not threatening divorce, because we might just be choosing marriage.

But again, it's a marriage re-envisioned. So the question I want to leave you with. If your marriage contract came up for renewal tonight, would you renew it? And if your immediate answer is yes, wonderful. Then ask yourself,

well, would your spouse? And if either answer gives you pause, don't immediately assume that means the marriage should end. Maybe it means there's a conversation that needs to begin. Because ultimately, I don't think the goal should be to make marriage easier to leave. I think the goal should be to create marriages people continue to choose.

And if two people eventually decide not to renew, maybe we can stop automatically calling those 20 years a failure. Maybe sometimes a marriage can end and still have been a successful marriage. I believe my marriage was a successful marriage, even though there was a choice for it to end. So that's the conversation I want to start. So tell me in the comments:

a 20-year marriage contract with the option to renew — would knowing you had to choose each other again make that marriage stronger? Or do you think I've completely lost my mind? Let's talk about it. I would love to hear all of your comments. This is an open dialogue. I'm signing off. This is Tania from Better Than Bitter™,

and sometimes, if you believe that divorce might be happening FOR you and not TO you, that mindset will open the door to a life of possibilities.

Thank you for being here today. If something in this episode spoke to you, don't let it stop here. Head to our show notes to connect directly with the professionals you heard today. You do not need to do this alone. Come and join our Better Than Bitter™ community at community.betterthanbitter.coach. That's where you'll find our support group membership information, our divorce resource library, and our new Ask a Professional space where you get real answers from real divorce professionals. Still need help finding the right people for your team? Through our partnership with Vesta Divorce Concierge, you can meet with a divorce concierge who will help guide you through your next steps. So visit VestaDivorce.com. We are here to support you through your divorce and beyond. Because guess what? You get to choose what comes next in your life. So keep leading yourself forward, and you will be better than bitter.