When Divorce is Your Best Course of Action

How do you know when it's time to end things? Like most complicated life choices, that depends. Let's talk about it.

Image/C’est La Vie Wellness

Let’s get my biases out of the way: I don’t like divorce. As a general rule, I perceive it to be a negative thing. In fact, in the only book I’ve ever written, I called divorce “the greatest social crisis of our time.” And meant it. Still do.

My parents divorced when I was a little kid and lived 500 miles apart from each other from ages four through right now, and I’m not afraid to tell you I had a lot of emotionally complicated moments in childhood because of it.

My ex-wife and I divorced about 10 years ago when my son was 4—just like I was. His mom and I don’t live 500 miles apart, but there was still an unpleasant symmetry to the entire thing, and I spent my early thirties crying more than I imagine is typical or considered ‘manly’ because of it.

There are no doubt a bunch of shitty human experiences in the world that many people will calculate to be worse than divorce, and I might even agree on a case-by-case basis. But I would also assume that they tend not to begin with a celebrated, expensive, voluntary, and high-stakes activity like marriage, which is often intertwined with that which we tend to value most—our quality of life, the wellbeing of any children we might have, our money and possessions, and our health.

The Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale tells us that divorce is the second-most stressful experience that humans can have, just ahead of separation and followed only by the death of a spouse (meaning that losing a spouse by any means is far and away measured to be among the most negatively impactful things on our mental, emotional, and physical wellness).

In light of the context that marriage is mostly a volunteer activity in the 21^st century involving people who WANT to do it, only to discover 10 to 15 to 20 years down the road that they’re miserable and feel trapped and misunderstood in their lives by the person who promised to love them the most, and totally fearful about what will happen to themselves, to their children, to their money, to their friends, to their way of life when they sever their closest connection?

That seems bad to me.

And it seems even worse to me when I think about why.

Why is there so much divorce?

“But, Matt!!! IS THERE so much divorce?! Is it really the problem you’re claiming it is?”

Decide for yourself. Here are a few odds and ends from my book “This is How Your Marriage Ends” where I attempt to explain why I think the divorce rate is so insane:

In the United States, 99 out of 100 accepted marriage proposals begin with the future groom popping the question. He’s just a young man with a dream. He’s statistically likely to be 29 years old and to have spent more than $6,000 on the engagement ring.

The happy, optimistic couple begin to plan the wedding. They will typically invite most of the people they know to their wedding ceremony and reception—a one-day party on which the couples or their parents will shell out—wait for it—$30,000.

The sum of money and guest-invitation list might seem superficial in the context of two people exchanging wedding vows, but it’s important to consider what it means when people are willing to spend that kind of money and make a public declaration of that magnitude to one another in front of everyone they know.

It demonstrates sufficient evidence that these two people are serious about their intentions. That in the months leading up to their wedding, and on the day itself, they considered their many options, and settled on promising to faithfully love one another for the rest of their lives. They say so in front of an audience—often hundreds of their closest friends and family members, and in addition to that, typically enter a legal marriage contract filed at a nearby courthouse.

These two don’t believe they’re going to get divorced someday even though it’s a well-known fact that marriages end that way about half the time. 

In the United States alone, there are about 6,200 marriages per day. The inverse is that there are about 3,000 divorces per day. Think about that for a moment.

More than 6,000 people (a marriage usually involves two participants), plus their children, extended families, friends, and co-workers are dealing with a new divorce every day. Just in the United States. I’d work out the math to calculate all of the shitty marriages and miserable people in other parts of the world as well, but I don’t want us to start drinking this early in the book.

Yet, the human spirit is a tough thing to squash. We are resilient and demonstrate a biological or cultural predisposition toward advancement and improvement. So even though divorce is life-shaking and soul-crushing, some dig deep in their bellies down where our guts and courage reside and decide to try again.

“I’m in love again! Oh, happy day! I’ve learned so much from my stupid mistakes of the past! I’m going to get married again, and it’s going to be everything I always knew marriage could be! I’ve finally found my soul mate!”

Perhaps there is less pomp and circumstance the second time around. Maybe people don’t usually spend $30,000 and invite a ton of people to their second weddings. I don’t pretend to know.

I just know one thing: After all of the life experience and wisdom gained from the previous marriage, and after all of the pain, sadness, and anger felt from the divorce, people in second marriages end them even more often than the inexperienced first-timers who didn’t know what they were getting themselves into.

Second marriages in the U.S. fail 67 percent of the time.

That’s insane, right? That people can go through all of that, and then actually do a shittier job of being married the second time? Those questions are rhetorical. OF COURSE it’s insane.

These aren’t people with guns to their heads, or even people whose cultural norm is to be subjected to arranged marriages. These are people who, fully understanding concepts like forever and monogamy, are VOLUNTARILY entering marriage with a partner of their choosing.

This is something they want to do and they possess a decent sense of what’s at stake, and then it doesn’t work half the time. The reward for those who bravely try a second time? About 2:1 odds that they’ll be having divorce papers notarized sometime in the not-too-distant future.

…

But back to the key question: Why? Why does divorce happen as often as it does?

Someone might want to argue with me about it, and I’m happy to engage them if so, but let me see if I can sum it up. It tends to go like this:

One partner in a relationship attempts to communicate a problem they’re having. Often, on the surface, a seemingly minor problem, like low-level frustration around the position of a toilet seat, or around communication habits and promptness (or lack thereof) around shared plans, or maybe about some discomfort they’re feeling at work or around an acquaintance or family member.

More simply, one partner tells the other: Something is wrong. How else are they supposed to know? Generally, the aim of this conversation is to recruit the other person to help them with the problem, or to inform the other person that something feels bad.

And this is typically when the first relationship-killing domino falls.

The other person thinks: Hmm. I don’t agree with something they’re saying or feeling. I don’t experience this the same way as they are, and I wouldn’t respond to that situation in the same way they are. Maybe I can explain to them my superior way of thinking and feeling and behaving so they can do things the way I would do them.

This often goes poorly.

And then that cycle literally repeats itself forever. I call it The Same Fight.

No one is intending harm. No one is out to hurt the other. But this subtle experience is where it all begins.

Let’s say it’s a relationship between a man and a woman, and he has a habit of leaving the toilet seat up after using the bathroom. And maybe after six months together she speaks up about it.

“Hey babe. I would really appreciate it if you would put the toilet seat down for me when you’re done in the bathroom,” she says.

And maybe he grunts some acknowledgment of it.

And then maybe over the next couple of years, she often continues to find the toilet seat up when she enters one of the bathrooms. Maybe some of the time she says something about it to him.

And maybe one day he decides he doesn’t like it. “You know, I don’t appreciate you getting on my case about leaving the toilet seat up. It’s really not hard to put the toilet seat down. It takes—what?—a whole second? Maybe two if you take your time? There are a whole bunch of bad dudes out there, cheating on their wives, hitting their wives, committing crimes, doing drugs, unable to hold down jobs. And I’m not like them. It’s like I never get credit for the good that I do, but you’re always looking for reasons to be upset with me? Just get off my back, okay?”

Maybe a fight ensues. Maybe she walks away, defeated. Everyone handles these things differently.

But in the final analysis, here’s what happens to this relationship:

Every time she walks in the bathroom to find the toilet seat up moving forward, she feels a painful sting. Why? Because the toilet seat up after this many years together, and this many conversations about it, can only mean one of two things.

Possible meaning #1 – He left it there, because fuck her! She’s not my mom, and she’s not my boss, and I don’t really care how she feels about something as stupid as the position of the toilet seats!

Possible meaning #2 – He left it up by accident. He just forgot. And so she thinks: Maybe he left this up on purpose because he wants to prove that his feelings will always matter more than mine. Or. Maybe he left this up by accident because I am so invisible and unimportant and forgettable to him that he never thought about me at all.

After this happens for enough months and years, the hurt person concludes: They’re either hurting me on purpose, or they’re hurting me accidentally, but regardless, I have every reason to believe that it’s going to happen again tomorrow, and next week, and next month, and next year. I’m going to keep being hurt by what they’re doing.

And if I try to speak up about this, they’re going to remind me that they think and feel way differently about this than I do. And no matter how many times I try to explain, they won’t accept that this is hurtful to me. They think I’m wrong, or they think I’m stupid, or they think I’m totally irrational. So there’s never anything I can say or do to actually earn their help toward making any of this better.

How much longer should I stay? What evidence is there that this will ever change?

The ticking clock is now ticking quite a bit louder to the partner whose relationship needs and wants are constantly overlooked or ignored in favor of whatever the other person wants.

What leads to divorce? In summary: One or both partners literally cannot trust the other partner to help them try to eliminate pain or injury. All attempts lead to arguments and/or zero evidence that whatever hurts is ever going to stop.

What does divorce feel like?

For me? It felt like unwanted heart-removal surgery without anesthesia.

For my ex-wife? I haven’t asked her, but I imagine she would have used words like “relief” or “liberating.” A weight off of her shoulders. Escape from an environment that felt stifling and toxic and unloving and never-ending because every one of her attempts to recruit my help with some problem she was having was often met with those types of responses.

Experiences will vary.

I was frequently leaving evidence in our shared life together that I was either doing something on purpose to enforce my will over hers, or I was thoughtlessly, carelessly doing things hurriedly and accidentally—all of which indicated that I wasn’t considering her needs and wants at all.

On purpose or by accident, the conclusion was the same: I would always choose what seemed important to me over whatever seemed important to her, whenever our criteria or preferences weren’t the same.

And so I ask: Is that honoring marriage vows? Is that keeping promises? Is that consistent with what you imagine concepts like Love and Care to look and feel like?

Is it okay for one partner to unilaterally decide that his or her thoughts and feelings are superior to the other’s, and then always behave accordingly?

…

Which takes us back to: When is divorce your best course of action? When is divorce the right thing to do?

Everyone is going to have a different answer. A different pain tolerance. A different threshold for when an emotional experience will be so painful as to become intolerable.

But it will be in that moment—when the level of hurt reaches a tipping point—that one partner will choose to move on.

Was that person “right” to do that? Is that the smartest or best thing they can do? Everyone will have a different take on that, based on things like children, and their financial situation, and the degree to which they have a support system in place outside of their marital home.

Perhaps the biggest difference between me 15+ years ago and me right now is this: I used to believe that divorce was pretty much always bad, outside of the super-awful things like overt physical abuse and infidelity. And now I don’t.

People should have a means of escaping living conditions that are endlessly painful and debilitating for them. People should love and care for themselves enough to not allow others to hurt them, even if those other people are hurting them accidentally.

I mean, knowingly or otherwise, how many times am I allowed to offer a person with a potentially fatal peanut allergy peanuts before they’re allowed to wonder whether I’m intentionally trying to kill them? Even if I think they’re delicious and harmless, and I don’t seem to understand what all the fuss is about?

After 12-ish to 13-ish years together, my wife had reached the tipping point. No more, she thought. And she was gone.

Was leaving me and ending our family “the right thing” to do? I don’t know how to answer that.

But I’ve come to believe that it certainly wasn’t the wrong thing.

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Matthew Fray is the author of “This is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships”, a relationship coach, and formerly the blogger at Must Be This Tall To Ride.