4 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Just Quit Your Marriage

Especially when it’s suggested that you should.

First things first — I 100% agree with divorce.

If the marriage is violent, abusive, toxic, resentful, and outright soul-destroying, please, do what’s right, and get out if you need to. Especially when it involves your and your children’s safety.

Basically, if the boundaries you value are not being respected and your needs are not being met, and your partner refuses to even acknowledge this, then, go for it.

But.

Of course, there’s a but.

My personal opinion is that sometimes we make false assumptions. We think there’s no hope. We lie to ourselves to condone our reluctance for hard work. We take the shortcut without seeing the fall down the cliff around the corner.

We don’t realize how much damage we’re doing to ourselves and our partners by splitting.

I want to focus on the less immediately dangerous reasons for quitting a marriage. Unhappiness, loneliness, staleness, etc.

But before you read on ahead, please note this is simply my opinion, based on a little experience as a married woman, but that I am not a qualified psychiatrist or marriage counselor.

You are absolutely free to agree or disagree with what I am saying, but do not take what I say as advice or factually intrinsic. The thing about the Internet is that we can misinterpret what we read for facts or science, and by no means do I want to add to the confusion.

However, if you have constructive feedback, please comment, I am always up for discussion and learning!

I have considered divorce, multiple times, in the same way, that I have considered quitting a job, moving house, or changing college.

Life is testing. Every day, we make choices to change something or not.

Every marriage has difficulties and those levels of difficulties go up or down depending on the issues and circumstances at the time. Every couple goes through harder and easier times.

But I argue that almost all the problems that aren’t threatening your safety can be solved, for as long as there is love in the marriage. I don’t mean honeymoon, puppy love. I mean deep care for the other person. that you choose to love each day, deliberately and wholeheartedly. This doesn’t equal butterflies and rainbows and movie kind of love. I think you can choose to love someone even when you don’t feel like you do.

We choose our emotions. We can control them just as we can control our thoughts and our circumstances. We can control what we eat, what we drink, what we consume for knowledge, etc. Thus, we can control and choose to love.

Based on this, I argue that when someone says “I don’t love her anymore”, it’s because they have chosen not to. And this is OK — because everyone is free to choose whether or not to love anyone.

I interpret love as conditional as a job offer, and as temporary or as permanent as you make it. Yes, you’re scientifically programmed to love some things more than others, like your children or your parents. But there is more to this bond than just love. There is a primal instinct to protect and care for those to whom you are related.

I made a commitment to love my husband every day when I entered into marriage with him, as did he with me. Naturally, there have been issues, and I have yelled the D-word more than once, as has he. But here is why we continue to choose to love each other.

Not Listening To Each Other

My husband never liked to sit and comfort me when I needed a rant. He felt it was useless and inefficient. This made me feel invalidated and like what I thought or felt didn’t matter to him.

Sound familiar?

However, his reluctance to listen to me complaining wasn’t him being selfish. It was simply that he himself hates complaining, especially about the smaller, everyday kind of annoyances. Negativity, no matter how small, is really powerful and it spreads like wildfire, and he didn’t want to be brought down by it.

But he especially didn’t want to condone my own subtle unhappiness — he wanted to uplift me by solving my issues, or making them smaller. He was trying to help me and I was refusing to understand this.

Additionally, I made the assumption that he should listen to my own demands, on my own time. I made no consideration as to whether he was ready to listen — especially when my complaints were about him.

The compromise?

It’s common for men to want to problem-solve. This is what they’re good at, according to John Gray, author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.

I tell him in advance that I need to let off some steam, and what I need from him. Sometimes, I need a listening ear to make me feel better. Sometimes, I have a dilemma and his input would be appreciated. Sometimes, the issue concerns him and we need to work something out.

In return, he has the choice to say he isn’t in the headspace to listen to my rants yet and asks me to pin them for another time. After all, just because I’m ready to talk it doesn’t mean he is.

There was some self-growth from this, too.

Before voicing any complaints on impulse, I started to really evaluate whether or not I needed to say anything at all. I decided not to voice some of my issues, and work on them on my own. Sometimes, I would still ask him for his input and give him my thoughts and tried solutions, and it made for a much more productive conversation — especially when they were about him!

Sometimes, I dealt with my complaints, quickly, and not voicing them made me move on swiftly. Pick your battles, as they say.

My husband even noticed how much happier I seemed and he couldn't pinpoint why — it was simply that I decided not to let my negativity grow by not making it official with a verbal stamp.

And it’s definitely made for much better conversations, especially when they’re about our marriage. It made him take my complaints more seriously, too, because there were fewer of them!

When you start a conversation honestly and openly, after a lot of thought and reflection on the topic you want to bring up, it gives off a less offensive vibe to the other party. It gives the other space to listen actively, without racing to respond and defend themselves. It makes you more receptive to listen to a “rebuttal”, too, when you’re mentally prepared to talk about something particularly sensitive.

Wanting Different Things

There is a notion that, when you marry, you do (mostly) everything together. You’ll hear about how every decision is joint, and how you’ll live happily married when you go to bed together in the evenings, and how you should consider each other for everything you want to set out to do in life.

And this is absolutely right, I agree.

But it doesn’t mean that it is how it should be for everyone, and it is absolutely not the case for us. My husband doesn't consult me for a lot of decisions but merely informs me. We definitely don’t go to bed at the same time or get up at the same time. In fact, I treasure my 5 AM wake-ups because they are mine and mine alone.

We both have very different career goals that will take us in different directions.

Of course, we consider each other in decisions that will affect us greatly, and especially when they’ll affect our family overall. But we both have very different aspirations.

He wants to leave a legacy and build an empire of a business that he can leave for his family. I want to take care of that family, whilst my career comes second and is more flexible. Yes, I absolutely would love to become a famous author, go on tour, speak at Ted talks, etc, but not at the cost of lots of time away from the kids.

But we knew this from day 1. We communicated our desires and dreams very early on, and it was up to us to decide whether or not to not only accept each other’s goals but support them.

Even when we go through phases of spending less time with each other. Or if it means that one is going to have to pick up more responsibility in an area they’re not used to dealing with.

The “downs” in a relationship, when anticipated, are much more manageable.

Just Because You Ask, You Shouldn’t Expect To Get

Many people seem to think that because they’re asking for something, they should get it. And, to a certain extent, I believe in getting what you want.

But when you depend on someone else to give you what you want, you’re putting the responsibility on them for something they may not be willing to give. This is a breeding ground for resentment.

It would be wrong of me to expect to get everything I wanted from my husband if he wasn’t happy giving it to me. And this is where a lot of relationships break down. People make the assumption that if it’s a need, it must be met by the other regardless of how the other feels about it. But who is to say that the other person has to give what they don’t want to?

For example, my husband *hates* housework, as much as the next guy. But there are many men out there who do the housework anyway, and they do it to please their wives. And when it’s not done — it becomes a thing that they make up for.

He’s just never done it, ever since we moved in together. At least not the bulk of it — he does do little things here and there, like take out the trash and empty the dishwasher, or put the washing machine on. He cooks breakfast on weekends occasionally. There is no official setup, he just does what he wants when it suits him.

This would be grounds for huge arguments in the past. I admit I felt like I was being taken advantage of because I was left to do it all. And it’s exhausting — it didn’t help that my standards for a clean and tidy home are extremely high, too.

But he wasn't going to change and he actually communicated this to me years ago. He said that cleaning is not important to him and that I needn’t do anything I didn’t want to do. He really meant this.

I could have chosen not to cook for him or wash his clothes. But I had to do it for myself anyway. So it was just easier if I took care of his stuff too. This, I’m sure, is interpreted by most people on the outside that he’s selfish and taking me for granted. God knows I have felt like this especially when someone else has said it to my face.

But I had the choice to either accept it or not. And what was the cost of not accepting it? To leave. Was I going to leave a relationship because of his honest but brutal refusal to help out around the house? He still loved me, met my emotional needs, treated me like a queen in all other aspects of our relationship, and we had a great friendship. I thought I could deal with it.

The compromise?

We got a cleaner. He begged for one. He said it was not fair for me to take on the bulk of the housework, but that he wasn’t going to be the one to pick up the slack. He paid for the cleaner. She comes once a week.

The result? A much happier wife. I know I only need to do the tidying up and basic cleaning up after meals, etc.

And — my husband seems to help more the longer we are together. He sees me tangling myself up with the piles of washing and he’ll take it off my hands and carry it the two flights of stairs to our bedroom. He’ll see my son at my feet as I try to get the cooking done and he’ll ask me if I’d prefer he took over the cooking or unglue our son from me. He tidies up our living room as I get my son ready for bed. He gets my son ready for daycare and clears the breakfast dishes while I write in the mornings.

Because he wants to. Because I didn’t ask him to. And on the odd occasion that I do ask him for help, he’s usually happy to oblige because it doesn’t come in the form of a demand.

Differing Standards

There are exceptions to this, but usually, no one can judge your relationship soundly. They lack context and experience, even when they’ve been married for 50+ years.

Because they aren’t married to you or your partner.

The only person I would absolutely trust for advice on is a professional who listened intently to both sides. And not just a marriage counselor, but someone with a great background in psychiatry who took the time to get to know both me and my husband separately too.

When you listen to others, your own standards can become distorted.

There were things that didn’t bother me about my husband, that, when commented on by someone else, would become a thing.

Like having a joint account — when my husband and I decided not to join our finances, I was absolutely fine with it. Until someone made the comment that my husband was keeping things away from me. They didn’t intentionally set out to plant suspicions in my head, they were genuinely caring for me. But it certainly shook my confidence in our decision-making — was I being taken for a mug? Did my husband have ulterior motives for not joining accounts?

Of course not. It still helped to have another conversation with him about our finances. It reassured me that we had made the right decision that worked for our family. But I didn’t go in with guns blazing as suggested by the person who planted the insecurity in me in the first place!

I simply informed my husband of the conflict I was battling in my head between the standards society has vs our own. He knows it is in my nature to question my own decision-making and so didn’t take this personally. He knew I wasn’t questioning his motives, and he was happy to go through our points again to reassure me.

So long as you both agree, it doesn’t matter what others think. If you’re happy with a setup, brush off the comments from others, and most of all, don’t compare your marriage to others, because equally, you cannot judge anyone else’s marriage.

Takeaway

Real, deep, love isn’t naturally romantic. You have to put in the work for the sparks to keep going. You have to nurture a relationship.

When you’re questioning whether or not your marriage can go on, think about the standards you have both set for yourselves and the potential assumptions you have made.

When you stop thinking that the other person is being selfish and take on a less offensive approach to tougher conversations, they are much more pleasant to have. This creates healthier, more balanced standards of each other.

Listening requires a lot of work from all parties involved. Going in without assumptions and pre-made judgments helps to address issues, especially when they involve some self-reflection.

You can be in an incompatible relationship where your goals vastly differ, so long as you’re both happy with the differences and make a point of respecting them.

You should get what you want — but you should not make others responsible for getting it. When you stop expecting so much from others and focus on what you can get for yourself, you’re lessening the pressure on your partner to give you what you want or need.

Don’t compare your marriage to others. Set your own standards, and whenever you’re feeling insecure, talk to your partner openly without accusing him or her of having an unfair setup.

Every marriage is different. But every marriage should be happy. That should always be the main goal.

What do you think?

Sylvia Emokpae, thinker and philosopher, is passionate about self-love, relationships, and motherhood. See more work like this.

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