Divorce

I have been married for 10 ½ years and not that that makes me any kind of expert, but I do think that I can definitely say I know a thing or two about marriage. And since I’m a big believer in keeping it real to others about my marriage, I felt compelled to share a revelation I recently had on divorce.

Early in my marriage, everything was honeymoon-ish; we were so in love and never wanted to be apart, blah, blah, blah. When I got married I believed that we would stay together forever, but being the realist that I am I knew that it would take work—not just love. Afterall, you can totally love someone that you could never be married to! Over the years we’ve survived two pregnancies/births, several moves, career changes, college, having money, having no money, and.....well, just life. We have sad depressing memories, but we also have really, really happy memories too. Someone once told me there is a natural ebb and flow to marriage and I totally see that now. Anyway, over time I found myself feeling more resentful about things, getting angrier during arguments, feeling more hopeless about resolving them, and I started throwing out the D word. I didn’t so much threaten divorce as I just started bringing it up as a resolution. I was so frustrated and exhausted from arguing, from having to cope with stress as a couple, from having to work on being a wife. The problem solver in me couldn’t get past not being able to nip the arguments in the bud; no matter what we came up with and tried we were still arguing about the same things, and I was still walking away feeling resentful. The only thing left was to not be together. But when I thought that option through, I realized all the things I would be taking away from life and it made me sad. I was heartbroken over the thought of divorcing, yet I didn’t know what else to do. As time went on I found myself bringing divorce into the equation more and more. My husband seemed to be against it (thankfully) but I was starting to look at it as a very real option, no matter how heartbreaking it seemed. I couldn’t understand how we’d continue on arguing so much and never finding resolutions. I prayed for an answer and finally one came. It wasn’t like a big light bulb going off, it wasn’t some great epiphany, it just slowly crept up on me and really just now as I type this I’m realizing that it was the answer to prayer that I’d been looking for: I had to not only stop playing the divorce card, but I had to retire it completely. It had to be scratched off my list of options. As long as I kept divorce a plausible solution in my head, I would get closer to making a reality. I mean if it’s in your arsenal you’re going to use it eventually, right? And let’s face it, deep down it’s not ever what I really wanted. I just wanted to be free from the arguments and the stress, but divorce is not the only way out of that! Once I promised myself that I would stop considering divorce, I knew that I was in this for the long-haul. That meant making it as happy a marriage as we deserved. I still don’t have all the answers of how to do this, but that’s just it—marriage is a work in progress. He’s the man I chose, he chose me, and God blessed us with two amazing children….that gives us all the reasons we need to make our marriage a beautiful thing.

Now I’m not saying that no one should ever divorce, because I know that there are always exceptions and there are lots of circumstances that could warrant divorce. I’m simply saying that it’s no longer an option for me. If I put just as much energy and love into being happily married as I did to coming up with plans on dealing with the hard times (i.e. divorce) then I don’t think we’ll have many reasons to not stay together. We will always have arguments, we will always annoy each other at times, and our bad habits aren’t going anywhere; but the bottom line is I wouldn’t want to go through this life with any other partner.