When to Give Up on a Marriage

It’s hard to believe (even for me) but 12 years ago the woman in that inflatable donut could’ve been me. Okay, a little curvier but in that same wicked good shape.

I had more bikinis than outfits.

Anything goes at the Jersey Shore.

This isn’t a story about youth because even then not all women my age were wearing bikinis. Or what I now refer to as my Barbie clothes. I was that kind of thin.

This is less about age.

It’s more about mentality.

And…

The question we ask ourselves while trying to save a marriage.

“How long do we stay? Aka, How long do we keep trying?

It’s a critical question.

Unfortunately, few of us ask it of ourselves. Let alone come up with a distinct timeframe to monitor our feelings individually, and jointly.

I wish I had asked myself this question.

I neglected it and the outcome was a vacuum of unmeasured time. It was years lost to good intentions. The hope of rescuing love. The desire to keep my family together.

It was the deterioration of time, love, happiness, and healthiness.

I often think I should’ve left the moment I told my husband I felt lonely being married to him. By that point, I’d already envisioned myself leaving. I’d already invested a lot of effort.

I initially confessed my feelings to a few friends.

“No,” they gasped. “You’ve got to stay, blah, blah, blah.”

They couldn’t envision the two of us being divorced. Why would they? We’d spent decades together. And by all outward appearances we had a very good life.

Their words didn’t make me stay.

But they did make me hesitate.

Divorce is frowned upon.

And people genuinely do hope the people they care about remain together.

It was my husband who convinced me to stay. I didn’t feel that I loved him anymore. I wasn’t only lonely in my marriage. He wasn’t necessarily good to me.

It’s such an absurdity to write what I’m about to write.

But here goes.

Even though I was smart enough to know my relationship was not healthy or happy. Even though I was fed up. Even though I knew I deserved to be treated better. Even though I knew I wanted out.

I dismissed my own feelings.

I felt terrible that my husband was taking it so badly.

He was incredibly stressed and sad.

I worried what would happen to him if I left him.

The same man who never cared about me. The guy who had no emotion for anything I felt. The man who didn’t even hold me as I cried myself to sleep when my mother died 6 months to the day after my father had died.

He turned over and went to sleep.

I was an orphan at 28, devastated, and alone even though I was married.

There was an absurdity to my own personality.

I should’ve carried through with leaving my marriage.

I shouldn’t have remained because I felt bad for leaving.

I lacked self-protective instincts, boundaries, and had an innate desire to fix things. But it would be years before a psychologist marriage counselor would explain those things to me.

I’m not alone.

There are many of us out there.

Men and women who remain because they feel terrible about leaving. They feel they shouldn’t be permitted to do something that causes hurt and change, even when love is unhealthy and unhappy.

Let alone a terrible example to set for our children.

But back to the critical question…

“How long do we stay? Aka, how long do we keep trying?”

We should absolutely attempt to save a marriage. It’s not okay to take the easy way out. We lose that luxury when we take those vows and create a family.

I’d felt lonely for a long time and I had tried.

My husband wasn’t interested until he feared I was actually going to leave him.

It’s why my conviction to leave was so strong.

I was ready, I was done.

In other words, we should try to rescue our marriage. But often it’s one person who’s been trying to get the other spouse’s attention. Or a spouse who refuses to show interest in the problems or counseling.

I do not believe we should spend years attempting to resuscitate it.

If we do, it becomes a vacuum.

It sucks up everything around us…time, energy, positivity, motivation, happiness, healthiness, ourselves, and even the family unit that we desperately tried to save.

The changes in the shape of my body were the outward result of the changes within my interior. They were not caused by age. They were caused by the absurdity of my own choices.

In sales, we used to say, “Don’t stay past the close.”

I had remained in my marriage past the close.

Because of this…

I was no longer in conflict with my husband.

I was in conflict with myself.

Just as you can’t fix a marriage alone, you can’t heal from that type of pain until only you are in a relationship with yourself. I delayed any healing. In favor of remaining in a situation I knew that I wanted out of.

I wanted to leave my husband.

He spent 2 years trying to win me back.

I didn’t think it was possible.

I no longer loved him but eventually love returned. He then spent 5 years furious that he had to regain that emotion. We separated. He told me he wouldn’t send our son to college if I didn’t let him back home.

10 years passed.

A vacuum.

I’m not alone.

I’ve written about love, relationships, and divorce for years. It is not uncommon for people to remain in unhealthy marriages for 5 plus years after the moment they instinctually knew better.

It’s a common regret after a divorce.

Divorced individuals already feel they’ve wasted years in an unhappy marriage.

It compounds that sense of loss.

And to the ability to rebuild an emotionally and financially stable life.

“How long do we stay? Aka, how long do we keep trying?”

It’s not an easy question to answer.

But it is a critical question to ask.

It’s imperative to make a plan and a timeline. It’s important to seek the counsel of a good therapist, and family and friends. A supportive individual or individuals who keep us to some personal accountability.

If not, as the marriage continues to deteriorate so do we.

We switch from thriving to surviving.

Once that happens, time gets away from us.

And vacuums up everything.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.