Letters to the Editor
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The Bottom Line
The choice to stay or go is a particularly tough one, and one that I think every married person has had to make at least once. The comments that I provide are based on my personal experience, of having had a marriage that just barely made it past the 7 year mark, and now is thriving after 10.
While every relationship has its share of disfunction, my own marriage was not physically abusive, although our journey did involve dealing with depression and a physically/emotionally abusive childhood. The way that you described your relationship reminded me a bit of my own, so I felt compelled to write.
I have learned a lot from my co-workers who have (or come from cultures that have) arranged marriages. In these cases, it is very normal to have marriage first, then fall in love over time. They make a decision to be in love and to work together and to be a family. On some level, love is a decision that you make in your head, not just a mystical event that happens in your heart.
The bottom line is that you have to decide if you are willing to make the commitment to make your marriage work. I mean to really work, not just to keep the affairs discreet and to grind it out until the last kid is out of the house. To have a wife who feels fulfilled, a husband who feels empowered, and children who feel loved all sharing a common vision for their life together. In your gut, are you willing to do what it takes to make this a reality?
Some questions to consider:
- Are you willing to nurture your relationship with yourself first, your wife second, your children third, and the rest of the world last?
- Are you willing to stand up for yourself to create a safe, healthy, loving environment for everyone in your family?
- Are you willing to work through your own personality issues and to help your spouse deal with theirs?
- Are you willing to build a life around your identity as a family member?
- Are you willing to sacrifice some of yourself to be a part of the family?
As a Christian, I belive that a healthy marriage and family are of sacred importance. Quite literally a gift to us from God. However, these relationships don't come without a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice. If you can't make the commitment to make your marriage work on an emotionally intimate and deep level then you aren't doing your children any favors. In this case, staying married is just being in denial, and divorce is accepting reality. I don't recommend divorce, but it is better than living in denial.
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I think you should blog about it
And get life changing advice from complete strangers.
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First Off The LW IS the Husband
Poor ittle artist him.
Dear Cary,
I am an artistic soul. I can't earn from shit with my art, so I'm forced, FORCED to earn a living doing something else so that my kids (who were born with NO participation from me) can eat, have a roof over their heads and clothes to wear.
Woe is me. With all my resentments about having to suppress my artistic soul, I don't know for sure if I really love my wife, or ever did. What to do, what to do?
Woe is me.
GAG ME.
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Thanks, Cary
Loved Cary's reply. It's the kind of musing that one can apply to many aspects of life.
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it'll only work if you both work
The situation is a catch-22: if you do not decide to put your heart in and see what happens, the marriage will fail. If you put your heart in and your partner does not, the marriage will fail. However, if you both talk and decide to do everything in your power to sort out what's happening (therapy, time away from the kids and with each other, etc.) then your marriage might turn around.
I say that as a kid whose parents hung in there for over 20 miserable years. My father had zero interest in anything but acting out his mother-issues all over my mother, whereas my mom was paralyzed by the sense of failure and poverty that would come with divorce. I grew up never seeing them as a unified front. They could not even agree on how to raise me, so I saw them fight about that. And now, as an adult in my 30s, I have put in years of therapy (thank god) to transform this core belief that love means longing, suffering, and alienation, and that any conflict means apocalypse.
I feel for you because I have been in your shoes. I will tell you this: when my boyfriend and I had a big fight, and I stormed out of his house, I realized that, more than anything, at that moment I needed to feel what it was like to leave. I had never been able to leave. (He was already over it when we talked later.) Do think hard about why you want to leave. Are you offering up a big fuck-you to your past, as embodied by your spouse? Or is this actually what will launch you into a new life?
Let your kids see you loving and happy. If that means trying it on your spouse, going to couples therapy, going on dates, then do it. If you've got no support in this - if said spouse refuses to budge - then your marriage may be over. But be wary of blaming others, past or present, for where you are. And beware the dramatic gesture. People get married for the wrong reason lots of times. It just is. Life will recover, your kids will recover, just make sure you are loving in whatever you choose to do. Passion-based volatility is what'll burn your kids, and spouse, for years to come.
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Horrible reason to stay together
My brother and I watched for over a decade as our parents fought bitterly. They finally got a divorce when we were in high school.
I would have much rather had two happy but separated parents than the home in which I grew up, where it was completely obvious they didn't even like each other.
Both of them were miserable, which made us miserable.
And to be told that they stayed together for us! Talk about guilt!