I Think Most Divorced People Agree With Me on This One Thing
It says a lot about our marriages and it’s also kind of sad
I think most divorced people will agree with me on this one thing.
It stems from a single question.
“How long were you unhappy in your marriage?”
The answer will tell you what most divorced people will agree on.
I should have gotten divorced much sooner.
This is a fairly universal feeling among those who have ended their marriages. We waited entirely too long to call it quits. We spent years unhappy. We acquiesced to surviving, not thriving.
Why did we do it?
Why did we stay?
Why did we tolerate the intolerable?
Those answers are fairly universal too.
We made a vow.
We wanted to keep the family together.
We didn’t know if we could financially manage.
We were going to leave many times before but just didn’t.
We didn’t want to give up on the person we loved.
We wanted to give our spouse another chance.
We were afraid.
We got complacent and time got away from us.
I wrote I Was Going to Leave My Husband Years Before I Did because I wasted too much time and too many years on a man and a relationship that frankly, didn’t deserve it.
I have to talk myself out of feeling like I lost years of my life.
Because that’s what it feels like.
But that’s a dangerous mindset. It’s unhealthy to feel this way. I know it yet at times, I still struggle to keep that emotion at bay.
Divorce is sad and unfortunate.
But when we wait too long to get divorced it can feel catastrophic.
As if a cavernous hole inserted itself in the middle of a chunk of our lives.
And we want it back.
But we have to let it go.
We have to see it as a part of who we are. One more of the building blocks in our journey. We have to embrace our mistakes and learn from them. We can’t view marriage and divorce as the one thing that defines us.
We have to see it for the emotional opportunity it is.
They aren’t lost years despite feeling like it.
Even if most of us agree.
We wish we had gotten divorced much earlier.
