MorahRach -“Health -When you say the Rav and therapist are absolutely the ONLY ones who can decide if there should be a divorce or not, do you also mean ” and the two parties involved”?”
No, I don’t. They are obviously the ones considering it, or at least one is, but they/he/she Should Not make it final without the approval of both their therapist and their Rov.
“Please Gd I should never be in this situation and no one else here should, but I see this attitude or opinion a lot here that every decision in life should be made by you Rav.”
Life and marriage – which is part of most peoples’ lives – is Scary!
No Rov should ever just go tell s/o to get divorced. If he sees a major problem with one or the other he should inform the other and possibly the one with the problem – to seek help by a mental health professional.
“Hashem bH gave you a brain and a heart, shouldn’t we be able to know what is right for us, at least part of the time if not all?”
Hashem also gave us a Yetzer Hora and we don’t know what really is good for us a lot of the time.
“Of course consulting a rabbi close to you is important I am definitely not saying otherwise, I just feel like ultimately the decision should be up to you.”
The Rabbi can be making a mistake -that’s why I said both your therapist And your Rov. If you feel that the Rabbi is making a mistake and your therapist agrees that he is -then you have to find a different Rov. (Or perhaps you and the therapist are wrong and it’s time for a new therapist. This is why it’s so important to use a therapist that is a Ben/Bas Torah.) Usually both the therapist and the Rov are on the same page! E/o is human and e/o makes mistakes. If a Rov can make mistakes -how much more so will the party involved with this divorce not be able to think clearly?
“If someone is miserable in a marriage, does not have love for their spouse anymore, cries themselves to sleep, no longer has attraction to the other, or feels unloved and gets berated.. Any number of things that boil down to a miserable marriage, and your rabbi says stay together, what is wrong with making the decision for yourself?”
If both your Rabbi and your therapist say to – stay together -then obviously they are looking at the total picture. It might be true all these feelings, but if they both are on the same page – you are looking at it wrong. If anybody has these feelings and they are told Not to get divorced, then the next step is to try and change the marriage to be happy. Sometimes there is no basis for these feelings, and even when there is and you’re told to stay together anyway find out how to improve the marriage – that these feelings go away. I’ll tell you this much -it will take a lot of hard work on both spouses to make e/o happy!