Unraveling the Ties That Bind: Lessons from a Failed Marriage

The long-awaited end is just around the corner and all the emotions decide to show up to the party.

Photo by Stephen Harlan on Unsplash

The final divorce papers are sitting somewhere in a judge’s files waiting for a signature that ends the legal bonds of my nearly thirty-year marriage. There is no handbook on the appropriate way to feel in these moments. Friends who have walked this road before me have described a near-euphoric space of the end of something awful. Others have talked about the deep grief that welled up unexpectedly from within. My heart is simply a jumbled mess with layers of feelings resembling a ball of yarn hopelessly knotted into an indecipherable mess.

No Longer Waiting to Exhale

The most prominent thread in the ball is relief. For the last decade, my biggest struggles in this marriage were the reckless disregard my almost-ex had for how his decisions impacted others and the steep consequences that his family could potentially carry as a result. This sense of pending doom was hanging over my life like a smothering blanket and kept my anxiety ever present. All of the “what-ifs” seemed to haunt my thoughts and became a driver of my decision-making. So, there is great relief to no longer have my financial and personal…