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When couples get married, they vow to stick together through the good, the bad and the ugly. But what happens if they can’t work through a rocky patch together, and need to work on themselves instead?
Michael Douglas has shed light on his several months-long split from his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, in his new memoir One Helluva Ride. The pair had been married for 13 years when they separated briefly in 2013 — around the time he told a newspaper his cancer had been caused by HPV he’d contracted through oral sex. Zeta-Jones was reportedly upset by his admission at the time, and he later said he regretted causing her embarrassment.
The Welsh actress had said in a statement the couple was “taking some time apart to evaluate and work on their marriage,” and they reunited a few months later. Asked how he rekindled the flame in a new interview with The Sunday Times, Douglas replied: “What, I won her back? It was a mutual … You know, we had our problems but I love her dearly and, 25 years, you know.” It seems to have worked out: they will celebrate their 26th wedding anniversary this November.
They are not the only Hollywood couple to take time apart to figure things out before coming back to one another. Ben Stiller and his wife Christine Taylor split in 2017 after 17 years of marriage but rekindled their relationship during the pandemic; Sylvester Stallone and Jennifer Flavin went back on their 2022 divorce announcement and said they were “extremely happy”; Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard came back from a breakup when they first started dating; Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel split in 2011 but wed a year later. There are others to add to that list: Gabrielle Union and Dwayne Wade; Pink and Carey Hart; Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor famously married twice.
When couples get married, they’re meant to work through tumultuous times, for better or worse. But if a couple is struggling — with communication, trust or a lack of spark — does staying together at all costs actually help, or can some time apart give partners the space to hit a hard reset?
Taking a break in any type of relationship can be extremely beneficial, says Dr. Eli Kraiem, couples and relationship expert and adjunct professor at Ferkauf Graduate School in New York City. A split could be for a multitude of reasons — a break of trust due to infidelity, financial problems, poor communication or a lack of intimacy — but Kraiem says a brief separation could be an opportunity for both partners to step away and ask themselves a simple question: Do I really want to be with this person?
“A brief split could be really helpful because it gives each partner the space to reflect on the negative patterns that they got stuck in,” says Kraiem. “A break can help us kind of rediscover who we are, what we want, what our values are, what our true feelings are. It’s also an opportunity to make an intentional decision about choosing your partner again.” Kraiem adds that deciding to pick a partner again can be extremely powerful and romantic.
“It creates a lot of hope to see your partner show up differently, or see yourself show up like that. It might be, ‘Wow, I didn’t know we were capable of this,’” he continues. But the relationship can’t go on as it previously was, of course. “The couple must choose to be different people, for the relationship to be different and to work on things that weren’t right in the past,” he says.
The therapist says he doesn’t prescribe rules to his clients when they take time apart, but he says the less contact, the better. “It’s so that you don’t get engulfed by the relationship, even if you’re physically apart, because you need to have the emotional space to process without feeling stuck in the relationship,” he says.
Anna Elton, a Florida-based couples therapist and author of The Formula of Desire, does offer some loose rules for her clients who take relationship breaks. She says that 30 days could be the magic number for taking time apart and advises on minimum contact. “It gives you a chance to calm your nervous system down so you are not impulsive, and that you’re able to think clearly,” she says. “It’s an opportunity to step back and analyze the whole situation, the relationship and your thinking.”
Elton says she asks couples three things: “Why did you like the person?; Why did you commit to the person? And why are you still trying to make it work?”
The break needs to be significant so that you’re not reentering into exactly the same relationship that made you unhappy in the first place. She says that couples need to figure out what needs to change before they rekindle, so that they have a clear roadmap. “If nothing changes, you’ll just reenter the same scenario.”
“That honeymoon period of missing each other will be over very quickly,” she says. “After two weeks max, you will be back in the same cycle again.”
Elton’s 30-day break advice has no scientific research to back it up, but many of her clients try it. What Elton says matters more is how much work is actually done during the separation.
“Are both people reflecting on why the relationship stopped working?” she says. “Are they changing the patterns that led to the split? And when they reconnect, are they coming back because something has actually changed, or simply because they miss one another?”
There are, of course, times when a relationship should not be salvaged. If microcheating, infidelity and more serious issues, like domestic abuse, have occurred, then there may be a point of no return (each relationship is different and would be judged by a therapist on a case-by-case basis). Couples who repeatedly break up and reconcile without resolving underlying issues may not reap the benefits of a fresh slate. A break can only work if both parties are intentional.
During an interview with The McBride Rewind podcast, Christine Taylor reflected on reconciling with Ben Stiller during the lockdown after four years apart, saying that the changes and pressures that came in adult life made them grow apart. “I met Ben when I was 28 years old … you have different chapters and stages in your life, and I feel that’s also true for adults and particularly women,” she said. “You get married, become a mom, for those who become mothers … career, put your career on hold, all those different chapters, and I think at that moment in time for us, we were just not on the same page with a lot of things.”
It was a similar story for Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade, who broke up in 2013 after dating for four years, got back together and were married one year later. “We kind of took a step back. We supported each other, but we took a step back for a little while,” Wade said on The Tonight Show. “At the end of day, we came back together and said, ‘Listen, we want to continue this. We want to try to continue to get better each day,’” he said.
As for Douglas and Zeta-Jones, who have a 25-year age gap, the Basic Instinct actor seems to think the reconciliation paid off.
“I never gave up hope that we would reconcile,” he wrote in his new memoir.
He told The Sunday Times: “We’re in good shape. It’s all I can say.”
