Marriage Isn’t Supposed to Be Hard
This is something I wish someone had told me.
For the first 13 years of my life before my parents finally divorced, I witnessed their hard marriage every day. In some ways they mirrored sitcom tropes — my mother endlessly martyred herself and characterized my dad as an infantile, un-helpful, thoughtless jerk whom she had to keep in line. My dad seemed to bear her histrionics with stonewalling and sarcasm.
I watched every day as he tried to hug or kiss her upon returning home from work, while she squirmed, made faces, and batted him away. It was clear she regarded him as a nuisance and it was clear he didn’t respect her boundaries.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that I went on to have my own hard marriage in which contempt was the rule, not the exception. And the thing is, I stayed in that marriage long past its obvious expiration (it should’ve been over before it began) mainly because… “marriage is supposed to be hard.” How many times had I heard that, from how many sources? Not just from watching my parents, but from most people’s advice about marriage. “Marriage is hard, you have to work at it.”
Every time I thought about leaving, this advice would creep into my consciousness and I would somberly vow to just work harder. I also often thought that if I did get out and did ever re-marry, I’d find myself in exactly…
