Failing In Marriage and Winning In Life

The upsides of divorce

I committed malpractice in my first marriage.

I didn’t make time for the relationship and found lots of things to do at work. I had work events, social events, and community events that I attended. I prioritized all aspects of my life except for the one at home.

While she wanted to communicate often and share things with me, I shut down when I came home. I had expended all of my energy on work and social activities.

There was no gas in the tank for sharing with my partner. All I wanted to do was stay in a room by myself and watch tv or listen to a mindless podcast. I needed some time to restore my energy.

I fought unfairly when we argued and continued to bring up the past to make my points. I would cherry-pick past arguments or events from our lives and bring them into our current arguments.

I took one disagreement and painted it with a broad stroke. I would say “You never did…” or “You always do….” I would make broad sweeping generalizations about my partner which were meant to hurt.

I would become a recluse and shut down when we did argue. I would go for hours at a time or even days without talking because I was upset. I would use my silence as a weapon in fighting in an unhealthy way.

To top it all off, I regularly mentioned the word “divorce” in marriage when we had a disagreement or a fight. Imagine being threatened with “divorce” when someone didn’t want to do what you wanted to do or didn’t agree with you over something.

Royally screwing up in marriage

It hurts so much to write these things because of how painful I showed up and how toxic I was to my former spouse.

A marriage like this couldn’t last very long. It lasted longer than one would imagine a marriage like this one could last: 7 years. Our wanting to hold on to this relationship plus the cultural pressures to stay married made us stick it out for much longer than we should have been in it.

So many of my actions were harmful and unhealthy to creating a healthy relationship and good marriage. I was poor at speaking her love language, poor at communicating, poor at arguing, and poor at making up. I put about 30% effort into our marriage if I was completely honest.

I regret the way that I showed up in this past relationship and all the things that I did to derail this marriage.

When the marriage ended, I even thought that she was the one who led to our marriage ending. It was her fault!

The Container for Self-Discovery

The interesting part about being married is that you don’t even know what issues you have until you’re in a full-time, committed, and licensed relationship (marriage)!

Marriage is a container where you can fully explore the depths of a relationship. When you’re dating, you’re moving towards a deepening relationship and wanting to get married. You may not be living with the other person or you may have been in a long-distance relationship prior to marriage.

You may not fully know what’s involved or see your partner for all that they are. Only when we got married did all of our qualities and characteristics come out for the first time. There were things that we saw in ourselves and each other that we had to become acquainted with for the first time.

Not only was the relationship between each other challenging but we had to confront our responses, reactions, and emotional triggers that we were experiencing as we were in a relationship with each other.

There’s no turning back in marriage. Everything is out in the open. Everything is seen. The person you’re married to comes to know everything about you as you do about them.

It’s a continuous discovery about each other and not everything is a positive discovery either. You’re getting to see your partner raw and for the person they are behind the mask they wear in public.

Learning About Myself

After my bad marriage, I did a lot of soul-searching.

I actually started therapy for the first time in my life to see what actually was going on with me.

I explored my past and realized why I was screwed in love because of my family and upbringing. I realized why I hadn’t learned healthy love. I learned why the love that was modeled to me was not one worth replicating.

I learned about the lack of love in my life and why I didn’t have that love towards myself. I got to the bottom of self-worth and self-esteem issues that had been ignored my whole life.

I learned that I didn’t have the tools and skills for marriage. I had never been in a healthy relationship or even knew what that would look like. I had only seen examples of unhealthy relationships up close.

I definitely did not know how to communicate with my loved on. I had picked up some toxic communication skills from loved ones. I learned that I didn’t know what love languages were and different people had different ways of expressing love.

The Upside of a Bad Marriage

A bad marriage will ruin your life.

It will bring up all your emotional issues and shake you to the core being of who you are.

It will make you face your inner demons and your emotional turmoil.

A bad marriage is turbulent, draining and will bring out the worst in you.

But if you are going to be in a bad marriage, there is an upside to being in an extremely tumultuous one. If you’re in a so-so marriage, you’re just going through the motions.

A bad marriage is one that has the potential to turn your life upside down, shake you up to the core, and get to the bottom of all the issues.

The marriages that cause an existential crisis and make you question who are the best kinds.

You can fail badly in marriages that destroy you emotionally and make you go on a soul-searching mission to figure out what the hell is wrong with your life.

This is the key to winning in life though.

After a marriage has gone royally wrong is your chance to right the ship and figure out what actually went wrong.

You can’t change your ex or spend your time wallowing in regret but you can try to understand where things went haywire, what your role in the relationship was and what you can do to be a better partner in future relationships.

You would have only truly failed if you move on from a bad marriage thinking that nothing went wrong and it was just circumstance.

Anyone who moves on from a marriage blaming their ex and thinking you were simply incompatible is likely going to find themselves in similar situations.

The Silver Lining

You can get better in relationships and in life.

This past marriage would have brought out the worst in you and between you two but it was also the masterclass on self-discovery and self-realization that you needed!

Don’t miss the lesson, the self-examination, and the wisdom that a bad marriage can bring.

The worst the marriage and the more difficult the relationship was, the more you have to learn about yourself, about your behaviors and about choosing partners.

When a marriage goes terribly wrong, what you do after is critical.

You can win in life even after a bad marriage if you

• Own your part. Reflect on your role in the partnership and figure out where you dropped the ball in the relationship.
• Do the inner work. See what emotional wounds and unhealed traumas this past relationship opened. Start working on healing these deep life-long wounds. Get counseling, therapy and whatever it takes to heal.
• Keep improving. Learn and practice the relationship skills that you lacked in the previous relationship. Learn what it’s going to take to become a better partner and start doing that with people that you date.
• Chose compatible partners. Improve the type of people you date. Your ex would have revealed a lot of things about you adn about themselves. There are some partners who are better for you and some that are going to make your life as miserable as it was before.

You paid the expensive price of being in an unhealthy marriage. The only way to get your money’s worth from the experience is to reflect, learn and do better the next time around.

Not learning the lesson of this failed relationship only mean you’re bound to repeat it again in another relationship.

After a marriage has fallen apart, take a pause, catch your breath and reflect with the intention of getting better the next time around.

Another relationship can wait.

Your healing and growth cannot.

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