When people learn about my divorce and that my ex-wife and I are still friends and in each other’s lives, they sometimes have…let’s say interesting questions (interesting, in this context, means a little rude). One of the most common ones: If you could still be friends, couldn’t you make the marriage work?
This question always baffles me. I tilt my head, look at them, and have to remind myself to be polite. Imagine all of your friends. Do you want to be married to them? Can you envision cohabitating with them, raising children with them, sleeping with them (I don’t even mean sex – just sleeping with them, with their snoring and blanket-hogging and legs that take up half the bed), kissing them, hearing them out no matter how exhausted you are, arguing with them over anything from wallpaper to the welfare system, day in and day out for the rest of your natural life? I have many friends whom I love dearly but, if we had to live our lives together to that degree, one of us would probably end up strangled (it would likely be me, I have irritating habits and a terribly slow reaction time).
Another question I get, though it was far more frequent when we were at the beginning of the divorce process: Do you think you tried hard enough?
This one I find as insulting as it is baffling. What do they think, that we just had a couple of bad days and threw in the towel? That we decided the division of our present, the release of our past and the burning of our potential future was somehow less exhausting and painful than couples’ therapy and communication exercises? That we got married and raised children thinking that it would be sunshine and lollipops and the moment it got tough, we ran for the hills?
The other question that tests the limits of the filter on my sarcastic, neurodivergent mouth: Do you think divorce was really necessary? …No, Susan, we just got wildly bored on a Wednesday and said, “Ah, screw it, let’s call a lawyer, shake things up a little.”
I said something to a therapist, once, about all of these questions and she responded with, “They’re likely projecting their own inner monologue about their marriage or relationship onto you.” Well, clearly. And I understand that. But I was raised to do my projecting internally, silently, and politely like a good girl.
However, as that is most often the reason, let’s examine those opinions or questions and look at the real pain or fear that lies behind them. Because they’re all symptoms of the same disease, and it’s a sickness many of us come down with. It’s the illness of self-negation.
Inner monologue: If we can be friends, we can make the marriage work.
Reality: Friendship and marriage are not synonyms. They are two different things. This belief that all it takes for marriage to work is a friendship with one another is mind-boggling to me. I am a gay woman, so according to this logic, every single one of my female friends is someone I could be married to and sweet baby Moses in a basket absolutely not. Just because you are friends with the person does not somehow mean you should be able to spend every day with them, navigate the most challenging courses of life with them, trust them with everything you are, talk to them daily, keep an intimate relationship with them – physically or emotionally. Telling yourself that friendship is all that’s needed to get through your marriage, is like telling yourself that, as long as your shoes have soles, they’re okay to use for mountain climbing. Would you risk your life on a pair of flip flops? No. No you would not.
Inner monologue: I’m not trying hard enough to make this marriage work.
Reality: Before I launch into that, I need to state very clearly that there are times when this is true; when we know that we need to give a little more than we currently are. But what I am referring to here is the time when our negative, angry voices are shouting judgements at us that simply do not align with reality. We can feel the difference between the two situations - one feels like a tired sigh, the other feels like we’re carrying boulders on our shoulders.
Marriage requires so much shifting and trying, working and moving, changing and growing, taking and giving, grasping and releasing. Some of us partner with people who are very different than we are; some of us partner with people who, at the start, are very similar. But no matter who you or they are at the beginning of a journey, that is not who we are by the time we reach the middle. Dreams, goals, alignments, needs, wants, opinions – these often do not stay the same as we age and grow. I had a friend who was having intense struggles with her husband, who often complained that my friend was not the same woman he had married. Our other friend reached over, took her hand, and told her, “It’s okay to say, ‘I no longer fit in the box you bought me in.’” And even in the best and most aligned of times, there are still potential issues in communication styles, differences in love languages, disparity in needs and wants, etc. No one comes bespoke; and certainly no one remains bespoke as time and change elongate us in certain areas and shrink us in others.
I think we have this mindset that, in order to be “trying hard enough”, we have to be abjectly miserable and exhausted for such a prolonged stretch of time that it has become our existence. If we aren’t, if there’s even a shred of our souls, senses of humor, or optimism left intact, then we aren’t trying hard enough. I’d like to find the person responsible for this mindset being passed around to all of us, like a laced joint at a party, and throttle them to bits. Did you sign a contract that said, “I will keep trying at all things until I reach such a point that I have lost all ability to hope, laugh, and breathe, and my existence just stretches out before me as one unending path into despair lined with rubble and ash”? No. You didn’t. No one would sign a contract like that. Yet that mindset is one of the most pervasive belief systems we have, and it poisons multiple areas of our lives.
Inner monologue: Is divorce really necessary?
Reality: This question has a translation. And the translation is: Isn’t there some way around this so I don’t have to go through this awful pain and chaotic upheaval? This is the one I asked myself, the one that came shrieking into my mind with frantic claws digging desperately to find something to hold onto.
There are variations of this question. Some might say to themselves, “Isn’t this being a bit dramatic? After all, no one is that happy together after all this time. And romantic love is just not sustainable long-term. This is fine.”
Or, “Come on, we might be able to fix this eventually. Other people have hung on through things like this, even though it’s devastating.”
There are a lot of different ways to phrase it, they all mean the same damn thing. Our brains are digging around desperately in the box of rationalization for a tool to avoid the onslaught of emotional upheaval heading our way. And if we peel back that top layer of those pragmatically phrased questions, what is revealed is just a lot of fear. The truth underneath each of these versions is: Please no. Please don’t do this. There has to be another way. Even if we’re unhappy, even if we’re angry, even if we’re strangers who once loved each other, that’s better than the exhaustion and agony and fear and anger and change that is going to come if we end this.
But…is it? We can convince ourselves of anything, that doesn’t make it true. When I was sixteen, I crashed into a wall in my Dad’s car and convinced myself that, as long as I didn’t get out of the vehicle, it never happened. When we’re desperate and terrified, we will believe any lie we tell ourselves. But the reality is, if you have reached the point where divorce is actively on the table, there’s a strong probability that it is necessary. Divorce is not an option we toss around loosely; we know what it will require and what it will do. We know we’ll need crash helmets for the financial, psychological, and emotional impacts. But trying to avoid pain never works. There is no easier, softer way, with anything in life; the detours we take in an attempt to avoid something are often just winding paths of confusion that lead us right back to the same situation or worse.
Only you can determine if divorce is truly “necessary”; because only you know what “necessary” means. That is a subjective word when used regarding emotional and/or psychological situations.
Above all else, listen closely to the following: you are not a failure. If you are facing divorce, considering divorce, going through divorce, this is not a statement about your character or integrity. You did not lose your moral compass or fail the tests of human decency and resolve. Yes, you really did try. You likely tried with every ounce of strength and giving inside of you. You are not a horrible person, parent, or partner. It just broke. You made something with someone, and it was lovely for a while, and time and pressure weakened it and then it broke. Sometimes these things can be glued back together. Sometimes there are too many pieces missing. It’s alright. We all break things. We don’t mean to; it just happens. Take a deep breath. You’ll make something new, in time.
-Joy Read, Co-Founder/COO NASDF
