Annie Lalish left a marriage to a good man because she didn’t think she was ready. But what does that even mean?
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As my first marriage drifts off into the horizon, there are a lot of issues I’m trying to sort out. I left a very good man for a very vague and pretty selfish reason: I hadn’t had enough time on my own. I felt as though I was not yet fully formed, that I didn’t know what I wanted or how to discover that from within the marriage. We had gotten married young and fast; we were best friends. I knew I had more discovering and self-exploration to do but the framework of a marriage felt too confining for me to really be able to enact those (vague, unnameable) things.
I got caught up in all the things I felt I had missed out on: living on my own or with girlfriends, studying abroad; being a single, independent adult, and traveling on my own. Admittedly, I was blinded by self-pity. And now, outside of the relationship I have been going over and over in my mind about whether or not I could have figured out a way to grow and change and explore my sense of self from within it. I have been wondering about the actual value of independence, of the Self, and of being single.
Marriage is clearly changing in this country, it is diversifying in form and process. Is a sense of independence now a requirement for a lasting marriage? Do we really consider a decade or more of being single as a prerequisite for being able to commit to one person for the rest of our lives? Clearly people enter into marriages from all sorts of backgrounds and experience, but the trends are also clear in this country. We are putting marriage off in favor of establishing ourselves first as individuals. I am not suggesting that this is a bad trend, only questioning its ultimate value. I think about the fact that there will be less and less 50 and 60-year marriages, like some of us have seen from our grandparents’ generation. And maybe that means that we have healthier, happier married people now than sixty years ago. I hope that’s the case, anyway.
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During my marriage I returned to college after a hiatus of two years, took on a second major in Women’s Studies (in addition to Sociology) and became a feminist. I am still, not surprisingly, still discovering what that means for me. I do not believe that women need to “take over” the world from men, or that we should simply replace men in traditionally male roles and careers. Equality is more important to me than gaining some sort of power in society.
Becoming a feminist, however, did lead me to question the fact of being a wife and having become one fairly young, at 22. I thought a lot about my grandmother, how she got married in the 1940’s at 21 because that was basically her only option. Marriage was expected of her at that age and she didn’t have much access to other opportunities. The little I’ve been able to get her to talk about in regards to being a wife and stay-at-home mother does not indicate that she regrets her life. She misses my grandfather deeply; he passed away about ten years ago. They had one of those 50-odd-years long marriages. She does, however, talk repeatedly about her year in Washington. She moved there to work as a typist for the FBI, she lived in a house with a handful of other young women and went dancing nearly every night. Sailors and soldiers were plentiful, and she loved to dance.
The story simply conveys a feeling of wonder, of excitement and adventure. She doesn’t say she regrets moving back to Duluth and getting married and pregnant in the same year. But when I was married I would think about her story and all of the opportunities I had access to compared to what was available for women in the 1940’s. I felt like I had not explored all of the advances for women that the feminist movement had opened up. I felt like I had squandered a fortune. I had the opportunity to live and travel on my own, to create a life for myself and yes, to establish myself as an individual and I had given it up. I had given it up for one of the best men I’ve ever known, I have to say, but it was given up nonetheless.
Marriage felt like a trap to me, a trick coffin for a lousy magician. I panicked, and I got out. As I write this I am not proud of that fact or how it all went down. I feel some sense of relief, but I also have so many questions and “what-if’s” running through my brain. I am not cynical towards marriage. Someday I hope to be able to create a healthy, loving and long-lasting partnership. My goal is to be more knowledgeable about what it takes to foster such a relationship the next time I attempt such a feat. I am mourning the loss of a great love, a wonderful man, and risking possibly never meeting anyone as truly good as he is. I have to believe that my desire to learn, to do better, to be as good of a woman in comparison will lead me to another chance.
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photo: CdnMathTeacher2009 / flickr
One person’s bravery is another person’s stupidity. Making a big life change on vague and unnameable feelings has the potential to blow up on people who tend to focus on the negative things in their life and not the positive things. What too many people haven’t figured out is that whether you are happy or not is completely within your power and it all depends on what you focus on. During the worst times of my life (like the week I was forced to go without seeing my kids), I have remained calm and relatively happy by focusing on the… Read more »
Annie,
It is a very courageous thing to do- to leave when the relationship is not “right” for you. You mentioned feeling trapped and the promise of being single as motivation for the change. How many people live deflated lives because they follow the path that their families, societies or religions tell them, without considering what there soul and spirit need to be complete and whole as a human being.
Bravo for your courage to “jump in” and to “get out” before any permanent real damage could be done.
Hi Annie You write: ✺” I am mourning the loss of a great love, a wonderful man, and risking possibly never meeting anyone as truly good as he is.”✺ Maybe you shall go back to him. You still can turn around and go back. Many of us marry to young,when we are too immature for marriage. Marriage is for “grown ups.” I can remember my cousins ,that married at 18 once said to me many years later:” If I had been my parents I would never have permitted this marriage”. Her husband is a kind man of high integrity,but she… Read more »
What a brave story. A younger and more eloquent version of myself would have written something very similar. I speak from experience, Annie, yes…if you desire to be as good of a woman as you possibly can be and most important, if you simply stay authentically true to yourself (once you completely find her!)…you will attract love like you never imagined. There are millions of people in this world. There isn’t just one for you, there isn’t scarcity. Know yourself and when you’re ready to jump into love again, fly your flag proudly. The right man will love it. One… Read more »
If you ex-husband was as great a man as you say, then why did you feel trapped? I really wonder how trapped you were versus thinking about things that you might have to sacrifice to thrive within the marriage. The key is really understanding what you want and then figuring out a way to get it within the framework of your relationship. A great man wouldn’t be threatened by his wife wanting to grow. Heck, a great man would be his wife’s biggest fan and try and support her every step of the way. I hope your story doesn’t end… Read more »
“I have to believe that my desire to learn, to do better, to be as good of a woman in comparison will lead me to another chance.”
You probably won’t. There is a good probability that you made a huge huge mistake. It isn’t brave. Its awfully stupid. And you may have a desire to be good but I see nothing good in what you have done.
Ouch. I do believe people can grow. But she does take responsibility for herself instead of blaming men, the latter being what society today often teaches women to do.
I think encouraging this responsibility is important because women initiate 2/3 of divorces, and the typical response is that it’s men’s fault. But the most extensive study of long-term gay and lesbian relationships found that lesbians are twice as likely as gay men to break up – but there’s no man to blame here. So there’s something about what society teaches women that has gone awry.
Reference:
http://www-same-sex.ined.fr/WWW/04Doc124Gunnar.pdf
Your story, Annie, it’s a brave one, and a sad one. In so many ways, it is good that you jumped out sooner than later, especially before any children came on the scene. A lot of people stay in unhappy marriages for years with no changes made for the better. Can they work it through and still create a happy marriage? Maybe. I feel that our upbringing (mine in the 70’s) and the message of “you can achieve ANYTHING if you work hard for it” and the feeling of fierce independence it bred almost made marriage more of a shock.… Read more »
Thank you for sharing this, Annie. You are a brave woman, not only for choosing that route but also for writing about it. I know that you will find what you are looking for when the time is right. Much love to you.