Should You Attempt to Save Your Marriage?

When I should have left

I know a young woman who made the difficult decision to end her marriage after a year. I have great respect for her strength. It raises the question, how much time should we invest in saving a marriage?

It’s a critical and complex answer.

I knew immediately I had not married the man I had dated. While it may be impossible to believe, it’s true. Despite spending nearly six years together I was with a man I didn’t recognize. In my gut, I knew something was wrong. But I stayed.

Because I made a vow.

I couldn’t see beyond the altar. I believed I had made a commitment for life. While I may be deeply spiritual, I believe in divorce. I don’t believe we are meant to stay in situations that are unhealthy. Yet I made a sacrament with every intention of keeping it so I persevered.

It was an invisible thread that tethered me to someone.

A man who had I still been dating, I absolutely would’ve left.

Especially once I had seen another side of him. An alarming side. It would be many years later he would be diagnosed with Narcissistic personality disorder.

However, my marriage is an extreme example.

There are plenty of people who get married and the relationship doesn’t work for ordinary reasons. Only we stay long after the close. Long after it’s undeniably broken and we are even crueler to one another.

The way we disgracefully act when love becomes unrecognizable.

And resentments and unhappiness distort the better parts of us.

I endured those first eight years. I focused on the good because honestly back then, it did outweigh its counterpart. The cycles in between left me desperate, my alarmingly swollen eyes filled with tears barely escaping.

It wasn’t a trickle of saltwater.

It was a violent purge.

When our second son was born, my husband refused to pick me up. Our OB/GYN angered him telling him to clear his schedule the day I was to be induced. He didn’t like to be told what to do.

When he was, he would figure out a way to regain control.

Hence, she made a demand.

I would pay for it.

If he would miss an appointment, he would be too busy to get me. I tried to negotiate. I told him we could ask the hospital if they would schedule early or late to not disrupt his day. I said we were only going to have a few children, I wanted him to pick us up.

I cried the rest of the way home.

My husband said my sister could pick us up. The only reason he changed his mind is our neighbors were outside our townhouse. As I got out of the car, one asked me why I would be crying when I was having a baby the next day?

He relented when called out on his bullying behavior, and said he would.

It’s not a surprise one year later, I packed up my boys and left. I didn’t want to be married. I moved in with my sister. I only returned home a month later because he kept calling and said he would go to counseling.

It begs the question, how much time should we invest in a marriage?

Technically, I was on round two of wanting to leave. Those first guttural instincts after our vows, and when I ultimately left after eight years. Not to mention the crying and confusion laced in between.

Counseling was a Band-Aid but it worked for approximately six years.

Until I turned the behavior returned.

I was ready to leave for the third time. Unbelievably, I allowed myself to be talked into staying. My husband tried hard for two years to win me back. I didn’t think it was possible.

I wasn’t sure I loved him anymore.

I was now forty years old. Looking back why did I stay and make so many ill-fated attempts? Yes, part of it, a large part is due to my enabling personality. Another to my feeling I had made a life-long commitment. And another because once your children turn a certain age, you don’t feel like two individuals who married each other.

You feel like a family.

And a family is much harder to break up. When I left with my little guys who were three and one, I still felt independent and strong and believed this would shape their lives not deconstruct it. Maybe because I had known a dad who left when I was five and that’s how I viewed my own experience.

Eventually less traumatic and more a part of who I was.

I don’t regret staying because I wouldn’t have my three beautiful boys. They are my greatest joy in life. Only I feel like I failed them in many ways. I should have left sooner.

Staying in an unhealthy situation didn’t benefit them.

And that newlywed wife who couldn’t see beyond the altar was smarter.

That feisty young girl had better instincts.

The kind you have before you remain in an unhealthy relationship long past the close. She knew she should leave. She just kept believing she should try. Because an invisible thread tethered her to a man.

When she should have broken free.