Last year my husband and I were having a conversation about marriage. He mentioned how a customer had shared with him a really heartfelt story about the end of her marriage to her husband. That, after many years of marriage, she had left because she wasn't fulfilled and that she wanted to show her daughters that they didn't have to settle for being unfulfilled in a marriage they were stuck in.
And then I said a swear word at him.
It was more of a swear-phrase really.
It's one I never say because it's outside of my first-tier swearing wheelhouse.
It was bull$#!*
Maybe I'll regret this later.
Maybe I'm an idiot.
Maybe I'm totally naive
and just plain wrong.
But I feel like it's kinda bull$#!*
Now, obviously there are marriages filled with abuse and affairs and other atrocities. But that wasn't what this woman was describing. She was describing growing apart. Not agreeing on things. Not "filling each other's needs".
If I ended my marriage after a really awful year (or years) of feeling really unfulfilled then our marriage would have ended in mid 2007. Our kids would have been torn between their parents and their lives altered forever.
Does my generation (where so many still have married parents) realize that the point at which your parents told you they were divorcing lives forever as the defining moment of your entire life?
Do spouses realize when they end their marriage that their children have to tell this as part of their story. That every first date, every life sketch, every new roommate they meet...they will include that sentence, no matter what? "My parents divorced when I was insert age here." Because it will. I don't think we take this seriously enough. I'm not sure my generation realizes that their divorce will effect every. single. relationship. their children have from that moment on. It's kind of awful.
I'm not trying to be judgmental of this group of divorcees. I'm just kind of baffled and heart broken by this (seemingly) new generation of my peers ending their marriages because they aren't happy anymore.
Sometimes marriages are miserable.
Sometimes marriages are miserable for a long time.
Sometimes you look at your spouse and think,
Holy crap. Is this the biggest mistake of my life?
Sometimes you look at your spouse and think,
I hate this person. A lot.
But I don't think you have to leave.
My husband and I have been through the depths of hell. Yeah, it's figurative, but it almost seems like this could be a moment when I make Millennials proud and say "literally".
But we keep going.
Because we said we would.
We said we would stay married even when it was hell.
Even when we were each other's least favorite person on earth.
Even when we felt completely "unfulfilled" and even "unhappy".
Even when we thought we couldn't go on.
Even after 2007.
I hope we always keep going.
I hope we never give up.
