Let us go live to the height of your row. Your fuse is going. You absorb one insult too many. And then you threaten to leave.
Or you are not the height of restraint either. You came into the conversation to talk, and within no time at all found yourself hissing if it does not suit you, you are welcome to go.
Feeling powerful? Enjoy it while you can. That counterfeit sense of strength will evaporate shortly, and you will have to find a way to reconstruct the ruins while swallowing the remains of your self-respect.
Climbing down from the separation tree is hard, humiliating and painful. But why did you climb up there in the first place?
Because — in the spirit of a rather flattened century — you have reduced your partner to something whose main purpose is to serve your self-worth, and nothing else. In other words, your partner is fine as long as they validate you and say amen to everything you are.
And sometimes our partners fail to supply that particular commodity. Surprisingly enough, our partner occasionally turns out to be a person in their own right, with their own agendas and wishes and opinions.
And then we discover that the external pipe which was supposed to supply us with a constant oxygen of approval has stopped working, we feel we are under a survival threat — and we threaten to leave. Like a toddler lying on the floor of a shop screaming when a toy is refused, we draw the doomsday weapon far too fast and far too early.
A threat to leave is a defensive act, and it produces a defensive act in response. Nobody responds authentically when a gun is being held to their head — which means the threat also destroys the one thing you actually wanted, which was to be answered honestly.
So what is the right way to make a threat of separation?
Simple. Do not make one.
If you have complaints about your partner, talk about the complaints.