Ok, so let’s say you believe that marriage is for happiness*.
Let’s think this through. If marriage is for happiness, then how long should you tolerate an unhappy marriage? A month? A year?
Putting a hard deadline on it is, of course, ridiculous.
“Sorry honey, you should have spoken with me earlier. My year of unhappiness is over, this marriage is over.”
If we can’t have a hard deadline, then how do we decide when to throw in the towel? There are a few good markers that most reasonable people would agree indicate that it’s time to divorce, or at least separation until one or both people can get their acts together: Abuse, affairs, addictions. These things destabilize and destroy the household and family so much that it’s no good trying to tough it out — separation and counseling is vital, and divorce might be the only option in some cases.
But if you believe marriage is for happiness, how do you decide to leave a marriage when none of those markers are there? When do you stop tolerating the unhappiness?
Sure there are radical people who might ditch their marriages for casual reasons, but let’s assume that we’re talking about reasonable people who kind of want to keep their marriages. How does a reasonable person get to the point where they’re considering divorce?
How much unhappiness does it take?
I suppose most reasonable divorced people justify divorce in one of a handful of ways:
“I can’t tolerate it any more.”
Let’s think about this. You’re going to stick it out until you feel like you can’t stand it any more. You’ll stand strong until you reach the point where you are so overwhelmed, stressed, or angry that you snap.
But that’s just a single point. One moment where you choose to tip over the cliff. How do you know that it’s not just a passing mood, depression, or an emotion brought on by lousy circumstances? How do you know that the mood won’t pass next month, and you’ll never experience it again? How do you base your commitment to a marriage on the whims of the moment? You can’t, if you have any sense at all. Clearly you have to have a standard outside of momentary whims.
“We’ve changed.”
You’ve seen a long pattern of problems, and maybe it’s only getting worse. This is usually described as ‘drift’, as it ‘we just started drifting apart’. Or “we become different people” or “we got married very young, we didn’t know who we were”.
Right, so if you married someone and that person changes for the worse, or maybe you both change and that alters the state of your relationship, then it’s only reasonable to leave the relationship, now that you know better, now that you’re different. People change.
But that’s the problem. People change. Always.
Welcome to being a person. You’re not marrying a plastic doll, who might sit in your living room for hundreds of years, static and unchanging. You’re marrying a person, and people change. If we aren’t changing, we’re dead. So if you’re marrying a person, you’re signing up for change. If you’re not willing to commit to a dynamic, growing and changing relationship with your parter as they experience the change of life and aging (and put up with your stupid changing self too, by the way), then you might as well give up on being married: you’ll never find someone who doesn’t change. Oh, you also have to give up on all relationships except one-time flings (a person doesn’t change too much over a month-long relationship), all familial relationships, and every kind of non-surface-level friendship. You can’t have deep relationships without change. If you believe that people changing is a good reason to get a divorce, then welcome to a shallow life of terrible relationships. In married life, you have to learn to love each other over and over again, commit to falling in love with your partner when they inevitably change. They’ll have to learn to adjust to your changes, too. It’s your only option if you want any sort of depth in your marriage.
“I’ve been unhappy for a long time.”
Right, so you’ve seen a long pattern of unhappiness. You’re miserable in your relationship, and you want out. Ok, so if marriage is for happiness, then unhappy results should equal the termination of the marriage, right? Failed experiment, let’s try again with someone else, or maybe I’ll be happier alone.
But here’s a question: How do you know it’s not you? How do you know that your diagnosis is correct — that your marriage is the source of your unhappiness?
How do you know that it’s not your spoiled, selfish, narcissistic, depressed, flawed, stupid self who is generating the problems, and the pursuant unhappiness? People are unknowingly the architects of their own unhappiness all the time. How do you know it’s not you that’s the problem?
How have your other relationships ended? That’s something to think about for two seconds before you file relational bankruptcy. You might see a pattern — maybe you made yourself miserable in other relationships. Maybe you thought marriage would fix it. (Guess again. You’re in the most committed, important relationship of your life, and you’re considering chucking in the garbage.)
Maybe you’re making yourself miserable with the choices you make. Maybe you’ve got simmering resentments because you’re conflict-avoidant and passive, and you won’t say what needs to be said to your spouse. Maybe you’re angry and disagreeable all the time, you might want to examine why that might be. Maybe (probably) you’re self-absorbed most of the time, and you refuse to think about what would make your spouse happy once in a while, maybe you’ve forgotten how kind and attentive you were in the early days of your relationship, maybe you’re forgotten how to be a decent human being around your spouse. Maybe you won’t stand up to your family and they’re walking all over you, destroying your relationship with their opinions, ridiculous out-of-control behavior, and boundary issues. Maybe you’re being a passive wimp, whining about how other people are making you miserable, unwilling to take responsibility for your emotions, and your life.
If you feel like the potential divorce is your partner’s fault, you’re wrong and you’re blind. Look in the mirror once in a while, and consider your own miserable faults. Show some gratitude that someone committed to put up with you, your deficiencies and your foibles. Thank God that you found anyone willing to bind their life to flawed, incomplete you.
“We’re incompatible.”
Well, you didn’t think you were so horribly incompatible at the beginning of the relationship, did you? In fact, you thought that you were perhaps the most compatible people who ever met — that’s why you got married. If you were truly incompatible (if that phrase actually means anything, which I’m not willing to concede) then you never would have dated.
“We’re two perfectly fine people, who are poison together.”
Maybe your unique combination of perfect personalities happen to clash in a destructive, poisonous way. You can’t help it, it’s just the way it is.
This is a very comfortable justification, that has the useful advantage of absolving you both of all responsibility. How could you be expected to stay together if your perfect little souls are poisonous when brought together?
Stop lying to yourself. You weren’t poisonous in the early days of your relationship, you became poisonous over time by interacting in dysfunctional ways. People aren’t elements, that can be neutral alone, and toxic when brought together. Toxicity comes from a series of choices.
Only feed yourself this crap if you prefer your life to be an adolescent fantasy, where you never have to take responsibility for your flaws. Look in your heart, you know that you’ve got toxic tendencies. You know what you did to contribute to the poisonous nature of your relationship.
“Marriage interferes with my true self, prevents me from self-actualizing/doing what I want/ chasing the career I want/living the life I want to live.”
Maybe you feel justified, or even obligated to leave your marriage, because you feel like life promised you something, and your family is standing in the way.
First, it’s most likely that your family is not standing in the way of your dream. Way more likely: You’re using your family as a scapegoat, so you don’t have to do the hard, scary work that you care about. Stop your whining and start working a bit each day towards your dream.
Admit that you haven’t taken the difficult steps towards your dream, because they’re hard, and they’re scary. Admit you’ve been weak, self-sabotaging, and inadequate.
Don’t say your family is standing in the way if you’ve been spending all your time binge-witching Netflix. Do the hard work of working towards your dream. You won’t be as much of a resentful pain in the neck to your family, and you might actually gain some self-respect and make some progress.
But let’s say your family is actually standing in the way of your dream: you wanted to go to Hollywood or something, but you really have to stay around family because of the stupid kids. If this is the case, you’re probably STILL self- sabotaging by choosing an unattainable goal. Pick something important, meaningful, exciting, whatever, to work for that you can actually (maybe) attain while staying with your family. Work towards that. If it turns out in a year or two that it isn’t what you’re looking for, switch paths. Try things. Don’t assume you have only one path to what you’re looking for. There isn’t just one path, that’s a philosophy for people who want to stay powerless and ineffective. The universe didn’t single you our for special things. Make yourself useful, and then you can stay with your family and not be the guy who runs out on his kids to be a mime, because being a mime was the only thing he ever loved.
“ I’m worthless. My family doesn’t deserve horrible me, and I don’t deserve them.”
You’re not worthless, you’re deeply flawed. You’ve got real problems, but remember: beating yourself up is useless, another form of self-sabotage. You’re like a child who doesn’t get enough attention from their parents, so they start running themselves down — the parents rush in and shower attention and love on the child, because they can’t stand to hear the child beating themselves up. Honest evaluation of your numerous flaws in one thing: running yourself down to get attention and sympathy is another. Don’t be that person. If you regularly talk badly about yourself, you’re doing it for attention and praise. Stop it. Quietly get to work on yourself. You’ve got a long way to go, whining about how bad you are won’t help. Certainly you don’t deserve your spouse, and they don’t deserve to have to put up with you. But they’ve committed, and so have you. If you feel inadequate, you’re probably right — but the way forward is not to punish yourself, or flee from your relationship in a cloud of self-hatred. Assess your flaws. Get to work on them, and humbly thank your partner for helping fix and moderate the parts of life that you find difficult.
You cannot justify divorcing until you are the perfect person, because YOU might be the reason you’re miserable, you might be the reason you’re incompatible, you might be the reason you’ve drifted apart, you might be the reason you’re poisonous, and you might not know that you’re the reason. You’re a fixer-upper, you know that deep in your gut, if you’ll admit it. Maybe you can feel comfortable with your decision to get a divorce after you’ve fixed yourself up and turned yourself into a responsible, caring, loving, paragon of virtue who has proper boundaries, tells the truth, doesn’t self-sabotage every other day, and is deeply considerate of others.
You’re not that.
You are contributing to the catastrophe of your relationship, and you’re not willing to admit it. And if you don’t shape yourself up and work on your relationship, you’ll end up converting your family into a broken family, and that doesn’t work out well for anyone, least of all your kids.
Grow up. Take control of yourself, and work hard to try and become better. Polish up some of your deficiencies. Humbly go to your partner and confess some of your shortcomings. Do some good, instead of being a burnt-out, resentful, addicted, self-sabotaging, untruthful menace to everyone around you. Fix yourself up. Make yourself as good as you can possibly be. Be perfect, and then you’ll know for sure that you’re not the problem in your marriage.
You are the problem in your marriage.
Your partner is undoubtably the problem as well, but their behavior doesn’t concern you.
You’re enough to work on as it is.
P.S. I’m talking to you in the article, but all of these tough words are for all of us, myself included. I’ve been married for 10 years, and I’m aware that I’m a deeply flawed individual. I know how messed up you are, because I’m in the same boat.
*P.P.S Also, marriage isn’t for happiness. That’s a discussion for another time.
