I want out
I believe it takes a lot of courage to say to your partner that things aren’t working out in a marriage and that they’re actually irreconcilable. It takes a lot of courage and sometimes a lot of therapy to say, “I want out”, and to actually follow through with it. No one will ever know just how badly divorce sucks unless they’ve been through it themselves.
Everyone loses in a divorce scenario because life isn’t always like it is in the movies with its happily ever afters. In this scenario everyone gets hurt. It’s one of the hardest, most saddest, and scariest decisions to make. You lose your partner, you lose their family (holy shit this hurt big), you lose friends, you lose a home… everyone loses. So why choose divorce then? I choose happiness that’s why. So who’s to blame then? We both are. Oh how complicated it all is, I know. Does everyone agree and support this decision? No. Should we have stayed together and fought harder? No, but damn, we tried. People will say we didn’t try hard enough and those people weren’t in our marriage.
This is my second divorce and I said to someone, “I just can’t get love right”. I mean, are my expectations too high? Are they too low? How could two people love each other so much that they choose to get married and vow to be together forever, no matter what. And then those same two people allow so much space to build between them and those words- that there’s a permanent breakdown of their marriage. I don’t have the answer to that. Love feels easy but just like the interworking of any relationship, it’s not. The only way I can explain it is that just how we fell in love is just how we fell out of it. Slowly and then all at once.
“Love is verb”- have you heard this before? We hear people say they’ve found their ‘person’, the one. How do you know when you’ve found them? I think that when you’re 98 and you look over at the person you’ve spent an entire lifetime with and you still choose each other every day, well you’ve found your person. Until then, it’s a daily decision you must make to fight to keep what you have. We can’t get stuck, we can’t get too comfortable, and routine is the enemy. Love takes work, that’s the verb part, it’s the doing.
If you don’t like them than how can you love them?
Look, I don’t know a lot of things but what I’ve learned is that love requires communication and compromise. It’s being selfless and asking questions, it’s not taking the other for granted. It’s not letting hurt or resentment build up by speaking out before shit goes sideways. Love is so many things and I do believe there is a difference between loving someone and being in-love with them. If you don’t like them than how can you love them? Love is a constant and forever kind of thing, as in I will forever love all of my exes. There will be a tender spot that I will always hold for each of them. I think it’s the being in-love bit that we run the risk of falling in and out of. It’s the part that keeps us on our toes, it’s the big work part, it’s the doing.
Integrity is everything and there’s nothing integral about lying to someone for the sake of keeping a promise.
It’s our responsibility to ourselves and to our partners to be honest about how we feel and where we are. So many questions run through your mind when you’re packing your things into boxes. Where did the love go and why can’t we get it back? Did we do everything possible to save what we had and will we have regrets? Integrity is everything and there’s nothing integral about lying to someone for the sake of keeping a promise. The truth is always better than a lie and should never be compromised because of fear. I will never stay in a relationship with someone out of convenience or comfort. I will never lie to someone I love and tell them I’m in love with them when I’m not, or that we’re only bent when we’re actually broken. Too often we’re so afraid of being uncomfortable that we stay in relationships and situations out of convenience. Too often we hurt the person we’re with because we’re too afraid to share with them our truths, so then we become a lie. Where’s the integrity in that?
Psst.. you… I really want to say this to you… if you’re questioning your relationship or if my story landed on you in such a way, if you’re hurting, or if you feel alone or lost or confused: Only YOU know your marriage. Only you know what happens when we close the doors and don’t allow the rest of the world in. You have all the answers you’re looking for and you don’t need me or anyone else to tell you how to feel or what to do. But if I may, I’ll say this- if there’s a fighting chance, take it. If you can save what you have or fall back in love, take it. If there is any hope left at all, if there is any fight left in either one of you… take it. There’s courage in that too. Go for it no matter what. Whatever your decision is, to walk away or to step it up, go for it.
I’m sharing this with you because no one gets to tell our story but us. I hope you hear me and I hope maybe some of it helps you. It’s actually no one’s business what happens in your life and we worry too much about what people think. Who gets to live your life but you? I know I’ve asked you a lot of questions in this post but it’s because they’re things we have to ask ourselves and sometimes they’re conversations we aren’t having.
I chose to finally talk about it because happiness and love… both of which everyone wants and we all deserve. Love is so many things. I refuse to believe that our marriage was a failure. We really went for it. Joe and I will forever have love and respect for one another and we continue to be kind to each other. That to me is a success.
In these kits I put all my go-to items that you just NEED the morning after any kind of partying because survival mode:
