Existentialism: When Faced with a Choice, How Should I Decide?

English translation of the original Chinese essay. Original Chinese illustrations are retained. English reading guide and web presentation updated: 7 October 2026.

Many clients have already spent a long time thinking before they enter my office.

They repeatedly ask:

“Should I really get divorced?”

“If I leave, will I regret it?”

“If I stay, am I wasting my life?”

“My parents tell me to endure it, while my friends tell me to leave. Who is right?”

These questions differ from the first essay, “Stoicism: When Marriage Does Not Go as You Hoped, What Can You Still Decide?” Stoicism first helps us distinguish what we can control from what we cannot. But once we finally let go of what lies beyond our control, a harder question emerges: if the choice is ultimately mine, how should I choose?

Existentialism is a philosophy concerned precisely with this question.

View the original Chinese learning poster

1. No one can make the choice for you

The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre famously said:

“Man is condemned to be free.”

It sounds strange.

Is freedom not a good thing? Why describe it as a condemnation?

For Sartre, we arrive in the world without an instruction manual telling us how to live. There is no prewritten answer defining the right life, the kind of marriage that must be preserved, or the point at which a relationship must end.

Of course, we can listen to many people's advice. Parents may say that marriage requires endurance. A friend may say she would have left long ago. A lawyer can explain how property may be divided, where children may live, and the risks of litigation.

But no one else can answer: how do I want to live this one life?

Existentialism therefore first reminds us that advice can inform our judgment, but our choice cannot be outsourced.

2. Not choosing is itself a choice

Faced with a major decision, people often say: “I do not want to decide yet.” “Let us carry on for now.” “Let us wait and see.”

This may, of course, be a rational arrangement.

But existentialism adds a reminder: even if you do nothing, you have already chosen. You have chosen to continue your present life, temporarily accept the relationship as it is, and defer the decision.

The real question is therefore not “Should I choose?” but “Am I willing to acknowledge that I am choosing?” This also explains why marital suffering is often accompanied by intense anxiety.

Once we recognise that staying and leaving, forgiving and not forgiving, offering another chance and ending the relationship are all choices, we can no longer hide entirely behind “I have no alternative.”

3. The other side of freedom is responsibility

Existentialism does not say: “You are free, so do whatever you like.”

Quite the opposite. Sartre's freedom is a heavy freedom, because responsibility follows choice. If we choose to stay, we cannot forever blame someone else for our lives while continuing to choose that path. If we choose to leave, we cannot imagine that divorce will automatically remove every problem. Every choice has a cost.

Staying may require rebuilding trust, redefining boundaries and facing old wounds.

Leaving may involve loneliness, financial changes, children's adjustment, the reorganisation of social relationships and beginning again.

Mature freedom is not a search for a path without costs.

It asks:

After thinking carefully, which costs am I willing to bear?

4. Ask not only which choice is easier, but who you want to become

Another particularly important existentialist idea is this:

We do not begin with a fixed “essence” and then live according to it. We gradually become ourselves through successive choices and actions.

Sartre expressed this as “existence precedes essence”.

Applied to marriage, this is a powerful thought. Today's decision determines more than whether a marriage continues. It also answers who I hope to become. Someone who stays for fear of loneliness, or someone who actively chooses repair after careful judgment? Someone who leaves in anger, or someone who understands the consequences and nevertheless decides to begin again?

The same act of staying can carry very different meanings. The same act of leaving can reflect very different states of mind.

Existentialism therefore concerns more than the outcome. It asks: is this my choice? Will I take responsibility for it? What kind of person is this choice making me?

5. Marriage has no standard answer, but others cannot write your life forever

Existentialism will not tell you that betrayal always requires divorce, that children always require you to stay, or that a twenty-year marriage necessarily deserves greater persistence than a two-year marriage.

It will not even supply a “correct answer”.

It simply returns a difficult but powerful truth to us: ultimately, nobody can live your life for you.

A lawyer can clarify legal consequences. A counsellor can help you understand your emotions. Parents and friends can offer experience and advice.

But at life's real crossroads, the decision must ultimately be yours.

A mature choice does not require absolute certainty that you will never regret it.

Perhaps maturity means only this: I have tried to see reality clearly; I know I have the freedom to choose; I understand the possible costs of different paths; and I am still willing to decide and accept the consequences. This is existentialism's greatest insight into marital choice.

Having no standard answer does not mean that life has no direction.

Sometimes direction is not something another person gives you. It is something you create through your own genuine choices, one after another.

When faced with a choice, how should I decide? Three questions from Mingyue Gao

Question 1

If I temporarily set aside parents, friends, children and social judgment, what kind of life do I truly want?

Question 2

What costs would staying and leaving each involve? Which of those costs am I willing to bear?

Question 3

Looking back ten years from now, would I want to remember that others decided for me, or that this was a considered choice I made for my own life?