What should I do if I'm thinking about divorce but haven't decided?
Everything genuinely useful at this stage is also reversible. Knowing what you own, what a divorce would involve, and what has actually been happening are all things that serve you if you stay and serve you if you go. None of them files anything or tells anyone.
That is the useful frame for this period: do the things that are valuable in both futures, and postpone the ones that only make sense in one.
Understand your own finances
Most people, including people who consider themselves organized, cannot list what their household owns and owes. That is normal and it is worth fixing regardless of what you decide.
Gather the picture: income for both of you, account statements, retirement balances, the mortgage, debts, insurance. Not to hide anything or move anything, just to know. Gathering your documents has the list and the order, and its cautions matter here: copy, do not remove, and do not access accounts that are not yours.
If you stay, you understand your household better than you did. If you go, you have just saved yourself the most expensive hours of a divorce.
Get one consultation
An hour with a family-law attorney is not a commitment, it is not a filing, and it does not obligate you to anything. It is confidential, as long as you are genuinely talking to them about hiring them. What you type into a firm's website contact form before anyone has spoken to you may not be, so save the details for the conversation itself.
People consistently report that it made the decision easier in both directions, because a vague fear becomes a set of facts. What the process would actually cost, roughly how support and property work where you live, what the timeline would be. Uncertainty is heavier than most of the answers turn out to be.
Preparing for that meeting roughly doubles what you get from the hour, and what a divorce costs covers the money question most people are actually asking.
Write things down
Start a plain factual log: dates, what happened, what was said, what was decided. Short entries, close to the event, no adjectives.
If you stay, it is a private record you never use. If you go, it is the single most useful thing you will have, because memory under stress is unreliable and you will be asked about specific days months later. Keeping a record explains why the factual log and the private journal should be separate documents.
Talk to someone who is not in your marriage
A therapist for yourself, first. Deciding something this size while exhausted and isolated is the worst possible condition for it, and this is the step people postpone longest.
Choose your confidants deliberately. Telling everyone makes the decision harder to unmake and puts pressure on you that has nothing to do with what you want.
What not to do yet
Do not move money. Emptying or repositioning accounts before anything is decided looks exactly like what it looks like, and it converts a neutral situation into one you are explaining. The mistakes that cost people most covers the instincts worth resisting.
Do not post about it, anywhere, including private groups.
Do not use the word as leverage. Threatening divorce to be heard tends to be transparent, and it damages the thing you are trying to repair.
Do not move out on impulse. It does not forfeit your interest in the house, but it can quietly establish a parenting pattern and it is much easier to plan than to undo. The specifics are here.
If safety is part of this
Then the sequence above does not apply and the timing matters more than the preparation. Talk to an advocate before you do anything visible, including gathering documents. The safety resources page has the numbers, free and confidential at any hour.
Divorcery exists to help people through a divorce, not to talk anyone into one. Everything on this page is worth doing whichever way you decide, which is the only reason it is here.