real life

"The line that marks the end of my marriage"

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I read somewhere once that the secret of long (and happy?) marriages was that the people involved “never fell out of love at the same time”.

Every second marriage seems to be disintegrating around me. Mostly women are deciding they are no longer going to live with the staus quo. As a child of divorce, I have always sworn this will never happen to me.

Well this has happened to me.

We’ve been married almost ten years, known each other for over 20 years and we’re both not sure we want to be married anymore.

We have a 7 year old together.

With much unspoken and assumed intimacy, we’ve grown apart – for want of a better cliché. We’ve been unable to go along, get along or be able to make life better for each other for over a year now.

Where’s the line? The line between compromising, tolerating and making do with a situation that makes us both unhappy, in the hope of creating a new normal for our family, one that we can both live with and thrive in.

I know I’ve changed, grown, and wanted more from our relationship than I’ve ever asked for in the past. He’s not pleased with my asking and has gone from making this My Problem to acknowledging the unhappiness that has been festering for the past few years.

I’m a woman of a certain vintage; yes, I’ve just turned 40, but I’m not convinced this is as simple as the traditional mid-life crisis.

We’ve both been in a comfort-zone of sorts, where neither of us has questioned or articulated our deeply felt beliefs on what our marriage is, should be or could be.

Maybe too much damage has already been done.

Maybe we’re both invested in being Right rather than being Happy.

Maybe we’re both too damn selfish to put our child before our own happiness but if that’s the case, what are we teaching him?

That it’s okay to continue an adult relationship that has no real intimacy?

That it’s okay to suffer in silence rather than ask for what you want and need in your primary relationship?

I don’t know how this will turn out and I continue to work towards and hope for the best.

What I do know is that we all get one life and it’s too short to spend denying reality and being unhappy.

Millie Garrett doesn’t apologise for being complicated and does her best to live with an open heart.