Five months removed from telling my wife I wanted a divorce, I can safely say, “Yes, my marriage failed and I’m OK with that.”
For years – and I mean, years – I equated Divorce = Failure. It may be why I hung on as long as I did. As I searched my soul these past five months and read numerous articles online, it finely dawned on me that divorce doesn’t mean you’ve failed.
Like many, I thought the success of a marriage was based on its longevity. How many times have you heard that So-and-So have been married 35 years? 50 years? It is like confirmation that the couple had a successful marriage. Were both of them happy or did they just live together for the sake of having a successful marriage (longevity)? If longevity is our only criteria, what happens when it ends like mine? I was married for 29 years. This is almost three decades with the same woman! Has my marriage been a failure because I terminated it five months ago?
Apparently so…if you listen to some of my friends. A very close friend of mine told me to go back to my marriage. Her plea was based on longevity as she exclaimed, “You have been married 29 years! Go back.” When I told her again that I left because I was miserable and unhappy in my marriage, she became adamant that I continue. The sole basis of her logic was longevity, not my happiness nor the other reasons I was not about to tell her (which are no one’s business nor should they ever be aired in public).
I made an honest attempt at my marriage. The bottom line is that the love we shared ran its course. That sounds cold and harsh, but these are the facts. I no longer had intimacy, compassion, affection, and warmth in my marriage. The details are not important; the end result is.
My marriage served its purpose as it did what it was meant to do. The marriage brought many happy experiences, two wonderful adult sons (one just got married!), and the opportunity to share my love. The fallacy is that the years I invested in my marriage are an investment. The time spent is wasted if I “throw the marriage away.”
Wrong! The emotional “investment” I made is history; it is not something that can be transferred or carried forward. They are happy memories – history. One cannot recover memories; one can only treasure them. What has occurred is done. C’est fini! My good times should not have any bearing on me going forward.
As an online friend of mine stated, “Energy invested in the past doesn’t promise a return in the future. When deciding if a relationship should continue, look at the value it brings to the present and the predicted value in the future, not the investments already made. Those costs are already sunk. Sinking more ships won’t make the first ones rise.”
Everything in life comes to an end. The fact is divorce happens, and to good people and to good families. The CDC / NCHS National Vital Statistics System says that in 2012 (the latest figures available), there were 851,000 divorces in the United States. Are these 1,702,000 men and women failures? No!
I did not make my announcement lightly on that November morning. In fact, I was damn scared to tell my wife that I could no longer move forward with our marriage. We all know that the idea of ending a marriage doesn’t happen because we are perfectly content with the current situation. I had been unhappy for an extended period of time. The negatives on that November day easily outweighed the positives in our marriage. Obviously, it was not that way when I married my wife, but we had changed. It is not a cliché as people are always changing, but there are times that a couple’s paths do not parallel each other. One of our paths veered from the other. It happens. It is life. Marriages end.
Most marriages end in divorce thus I am okay with my marriage “failing”. I only use the word, fail, because it is a common and loosely used term to describe people like me who have their marriages end. I look at my divorce not so much as the end of one chapter, but the beginning of the next one. New relationships will be created as I am only in my fifties. I am a physically healthy man with a healthy attitude. There is no doubt I will meet a woman (most likely divorced) who thinks marriage is a “journey together to the same horizon.”
Because of my divorce, I am getting that second chance. As the Austrian composer, Franz Peter Schubert once said, “Happy is the man who finds a true friend, and far happier is he who finds that true friend in his wife.”
Yes, my marriage failed and I’m OK with that.
It is now time to tell my wife, “Thank you for that experience – all 29 years of them!”
More From DivorcedMoms:
Romantic feelings wax and wane in a longterm marriage. I think it’s normal to go for extended periods of time feeling little or no passion for our partner. Unless there is infidelity or other abuse, I think it’s wise to stay the course for a while and see if the tide turns. I’ve read your other posts and I have to say I’d be interested to hear your wife’s point of view.
Looking back and analyzing my 34 year marriage to my husband who walked out only 18 months ago, without ever disclosing that he wasn’t happy and he never said a thing to me. The time I have had alone, many nights teary eyed, not over him, but the anger, and regret that I wasn’t aware of myself, or who I was or needed, made me cry. Yes, 34 years of marriage is a very long time to be with someone, but basically, I wan’t his wife, but a “roommate with benefits”, catering to only him, his wants, dreams and aspirations of his life.
But who knows really who they are when they marry at age 22 and 23 years old? Certainly not I. Since my boyfriend at the time and me, were both on avtive duty Navy, with him assigned on a nuclear submarine, and me drving tour boats out the the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial, giving tours to the tourists in Pearl Harbor, HI. The military kind-of forced us to get married, because he had gotten orders to transfer to the East Coast of SC.
Hind-sight is always 20/20 as they say, and regret will eat you up alive if you don’t box it up and put it behind you for good, I cannot change the past, cannot change my husband’s behavior and learning again, how to live and move on, much happier too.
Dear Deborah,
Let me first say I am sorry to hear that your husband of 34 years left without disclosing he wasn’t happy. I did tell my wife numerous times, including addressing my concerns that fell on deaf ears. Because this is a public forum, I would rather not air them all here, especially as I attempt to get my ex-wife to begin a conversation of “equitable distribution of assets and liabilities.” Besides, I do not think the Internet is the place to air one’s dirty laundry.
Both of us suffered from communications problems. I do not know you nor what happened in your marriage thus I shall not shoot from the hip and with careless abandon like many do with online comments. Both of my adult sons have been told by me that communications takes both parties talking and listening. Though I feel my ex-wife is mainly to blame, she is not entirely at fault. “Obviously, I did not communicate my concerns well enough for her to understand,” I told my sons. If I had, maybe she would have listened and attempted to help resolve our marital issues.
But, maybe not as the point of my post at DivorcedMoms is that we can be completely different people at 55 than at 25. I have definitely changed, and those changes were being squelched and nullified in my marriage. Honestly, I do not think it was done out of evilness, but wanting to have things her way. Call it, a control issue. Last fall, I decided I wanted no part of it anymore and left the marriage.
It is time to spread my wings and do I want to do. Last weekend, I went on a three hour hike in a beautiful state park. In my marriage, that was not possible. She had no interest. Since I have left my marriage, my photography taking has increases substantially. Because of this, I have three new photos hanging up in my apartment. In my marriage, that was a difficult thing to do as my picture taking was met with lots of complaining on her part.
Like you stated, “Regret will eat you up alive if you don’t box it up and put it behind you for good.” We cannot change the past, but we can control our future. Find what makes you happy. Pursue it like a like a child who has lots of energy and joy. Once you are happy with yourself and your life, you open up many doors. This includes a possible husband. At the least, it helps you find new friends. Neither of us can change our spouses’ behavior, but we can learn from our past to “live and move on, much happier too.”
You could have gone on a hike while in a marriage – it was not your wife’s responsibility to hold your hand and give you permission to live your life while remaining in a union. This is new for you, you are angry, but you are likely to see that divorce is a mistake at this point – unless of course, she is destructive, abusing you emotionally or financially and undermining your security.
Dan: You need help. I’m being serious. Your writing clearly shows that you have serious issues away from which you’re trying to run. You compare your decades-long marriage to planting bushes. You take marriage advice from an actor. You equate married life to a basketball game. Seriously? I initially thought that your articles were actually jokes. Your wife could be a horrible person; we obviously don’t know. That wouldn’t give you the right to destroy her life now, though. Based on your egotistical, selfish (yes, you’re right about that) excuse-making, I don’t know that anyone could presume, though, that it was your wife who was at fault. Please: Get help. Fix your marriage. Stop being a child.
Do you truly believe that’s the 29 years you were married were a good investment? I have to ask this question because I was married for 18 years and reflecting back, honestly it’s an investment I wish I never made. My husband had an affair when I was pregnant with our son and years earlier, when I found out I was pregnant with our first child, he shoved a piece of paper in my face telling me where to get an abortion. He was very absent when I was in the delivery room giving birth to our son and he came up with all kinds of reasons as to why he couldn’t be emotionally available as I was giving birth. After learning of his affairs, why would I want to say yep I would do that experience all over again to be cheated on and lied to by a man who very likely never loved me in the first place.
And you stayed after he urged you to abort your child why?