Your Long-Term Marriage Doesn’t Mean You’re an Expert on Happy Relationships

My divorce taught me far more than my 16-year marriage.

My friends Tim and Jill have one of the longest lasting marriages of any of my peers. They’ve been together 28 years and consider themselves to be a successful model of what marriage can be.

Yet they’ve been on the brink of breaking up since the moment they met. Bickering, complaining, criticizing, avoiding and competing are the cornerstones of their relationship. Nary a day goes by when Jill doesn’t refer to Tim with disdain or Tim doesn’t work late to avoid Jill.

Though no one has black and blue marks, they are both clearly scarred from the constant deluge of emotional abuse they’re inflicting on each other in this long-lasting marriage.

Simply being around this couple is enough to make one believe that happy marriages don’t exist.

Our culture celebrates long-lasting marriages. We believe that couples who’ve stayed together for 20, 30, 40 years or more have wisdom to share with the rest of us about what it takes to make a relationship work.

You wouldn’t take advice on losing weight from someone who’s overweight, the argument goes. So why would you take marital advice from someone who is divorced? The assumption is that if you’re divorced, you’ve failed, while if you stay married for any length of time, you’ve succeeded.

I don’t buy it.

I got divorced after 16 years of marriage, and I think our marriage was a “success” for many years. There were many things we did right in that time, from successfully navigating meddling in-laws to coping with having children, losing jobs, changing careers and moving three times.

Managing those stressors taught me many things about what can work in a relationship.

On the other hand, we did not successfully support each other in ways that each of us needed. And that, too, taught me many things about what can work in a relationship.

Divorce can be a healthy, loving act

Divorce can be wrenching. There’s no doubt about it. Then again, so can marriage.

Divorce can also be amicable, functional, healthy and wise for everyone involved. That’s how my divorce was.

Good parents, we both had the kids’ best interests at heart. From the moment we agreed to divorce, something switched. We stopped trying to change each other. We let go of years-long resentments. And we became a functional, effective team in parenting our kids.

I am well aware that this is not the case for many divorces. For every amicable divorce, there is one that is treacherous.

Of course, marriages are the same way. Many long-term marriages are healthy and supportive, while many are toxic.

We don’t demonize people for breaking up before they get married. Why do we do it after?

Marital longevity is the wrong barometer

Clearly then, it makes no sense to use longevity as the barometer for measuring the “success” of a marriage. Perhaps instead we should simply use the emotional, intellectual, spiritual and physical health of the people involved.

Oddly, this seemingly simple concept is incredibly challenging for many people to accept.

I don’t get it. We don’t demonize people for breaking up before they get married. Why do we do it after?

Sure, there are shared possessions to divvy up and kids to care for after a divorce, whereas those issues may not exist in premarital break-ups. But those challenges are relatively short-lived. Even the nastiest divorces are finalized after a few years.

Then it comes down to what emotional toll the divorce takes on the people involved.

Yet I can say the same thing about marriage.

In Tim and Jill’s case, Jill has a habit of making financial decisions without consulting Tim — even when those decisions involved tens of thousands of dollars.

And Tim refuses to speak to Jill’s mother — even when she stays with the couple for weeks at a time.

Far from being a model of marital success, their relationship is instead a competition to see who can get the most without the other person knowing or complaining too much.

The question then becomes: Is it better to stay married and be deeply unhappy than to divorce?

I am sure that religious, social and familial pressures all play a role in keeping unhappy couples together. That’s a shame. I believe couples who cannot learn to support each other should end their marriages.

They — and their children — just might find they are far better off than before.

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