I Can’t Believe I’m Just Finding Out That I Was Half-Married for Years

Had I known, I would have left my marriage sooner.

“You’re going to keep going to marriage counseling by yourself?” asks my friend.

“Yes,” I say. “I don’t know what else to do. He says he won’t continue going and things aren’t getting any better in our marriage. If anything, it feels like it’s getting worse. He won’t work with me to fix our issues but he’s not leaving me either.”

This is my own personal oxymoron.

Couples counseling for one.

These are excruciatingly agonizing years.

I don’t remember anyone asking me if I was half-married.

I remember sitting with my girlfriends bemoaning my marital woes. I remember having to bend their ears because my husband seemed to have misplaced his.

But I don’t remember being asked if I was half-married.

I do remember other questions.

“Are you saying your marriage is in trouble?”

“Are you saying you’re not very happy with your husband right now?”

“Are you saying your husband refuses to return to marriage counseling?”

“Are you saying there’s uncertainty in your relationship?”

“Are you saying you’re maritally surviving, not thriving?”

“Are you saying that your husband has checked out?

Yes, I’m saying all of those things and more.

Worse, I’ve been saying them for one too many years.

I am half-married or thankfully now (was) half-married.

Who knew?!

I can’t believe I’m just finding this out.

Technically, I’m making up the term. Bear with me, I’ll explain as I go. I was googling something about breakups and another intriguing term caught my eye.

‘Half-broken up.’

‘Half-broken up’ means you remain in a relationship with a girlfriend or boyfriend that is not going well. There’s emotional unrest between the two of you. One of you may not have the same level of commitment to the other. But neither of you are leaving the romantic partnership.

You linger in the relationship.

Let me dumb it down.

There’s trouble in paradise but no one is actually getting off of the island.

Hence, you are ‘half-broken up.’

Am I the only one who thinks this puts an ENTIRELY different spin on things?

Let’s say you’re dating and things aren’t great but you continue to emotionally and romantically slug it out together. One night you’re out with your friends.

“We aren’t getting along well,” you say. “I’m not really sure if he’s committed anymore and I don’t know how we are going to work things out.”

“Oh my gosh,” say your friends. “That’s terrible. Why don’t you talk to him about it? I’m sure you can work it out. Things will get better.”

NOW consider this convo.

“We’re half-broken up,” you say.

“Oh my gosh,” say your friends. “Why would you ever want to be half-broken up? Why would you ever want to settle for that?! That’s not any type of relationship. You need to get out of that situation.”

Exactly!

It’s a terrible relationship.

It’s a terrible situation to be in.

The simple re-phrasing of a few words makes it abundantly clear.

Hence, I am now saying I was half-married.

Instead of saying my marriage was suffering forever.

Technically, the term (as I am using it) doesn’t necessarily exist. I’ve simply created a variation of ‘half-broken up.’ I did obviously attempt to Google half-married to see if it existed.

Here’s what I found.

There’s an Indian television show called Half Marriage about two spouses who despise one another. There’s also a 1929 Movie entitled Half Marriage with a complicated plot about forbidden love.

I found one direct definition via Google but it was vague.

It didn’t provide an attribution or further explanation.

It simply said and I paraphrase, “Half-marriage is when a man pays half the value for his wife and lives with or near his father-in-law and essentially abides by his rules.”

I did my due diligence to see if there was a married version of ‘half-broken up.’

There wasn’t.

But there should be.

Because I wasn’t a woman unhappy in my marriage for years.

That’s a misnomer. A marriage implies I had a spouse and a partner. That wasn’t true. I was a woman limping along by herself. A wife begging for her husband to be emotionally invested.

I can’t believe I’m just discovering I was half-married.

I’m furious with myself.

I deserved far better than that. A simple rephrasing changes my long-held theory that I was a wife attempting to save her marriage. I was a girl giving it the good old college try. I was tenacious. I was loyal. I wasn’t a quitter.

Screw all of that.

My marriage suffered years of uncertainty.

But neither of us called it quits.

I was half-married.

Even worse, I was half-loved.