I was thinking about divorce the other day, just randomly. If you line up the grandkids on my Mom's side (myself included) two out of the three of us have been through a dissolution or divorce. 66% isn't a great percentage in that regard. My sister (the only one who has not been in this situation) once told me that she'd rather bury her husband in the backyard before she'd divorce him. If you add my cousin's significant other into the equation, that brings in yet another divorce situation, which would bring our divorce rate up. What does this say about my generation and relationships? It seems to me as I've gotten older (and somewhat wiser) that relationships are largely disposable. People from my parents generation and my grandparents generation (in general) tended to stick it out in their marriages. People in my generation seem to take divorce as an easy out, and I think that many (not all) people go into a marriage in the current day and time thinking that they can always get out if things don't work out in the marriage. In my situation, I didn't use divorce as an easy out. I was with my ex for 10 years (from our Freshman year in college-1997-until our divorce in 2007). We were married for over 6 of those 10 years. What happened? you may wonder. Well, we did end up growing apart but DH also had someone else on the side that he "fell in love with" and just wouldn't give up. Did I try to make it work? Like hell. I threatened, I cajoled, I begged, I cried. I stayed up nights wondering what I had done wrong and what I could do to make him love ME again and not the SweeTart on the side. Of course, looking back now if you try to make the fruit even more forbidden the more tempting it becomes. My ex was so addicted to the forbidden it wasn't even funny...I am sure that my disapproval made his affair all the more fun for him. We went to couples counseling (per my request) for two sessions before I decided it was an exercise in futility and that we needed to stop wasting time (and money). We talked, "tried" to re-connect (all of this was pretty one-sided, IMO), and tried to work things out so that they didn't end up in a divorce. Alas, after months of pretending that things were going to work themselves out, I finally grew weary of the entire situation (I had found out about SweeTart the day after Thanksgiving 2006 and I officially decided to call things off the day before Easter 2007) and just end it. Due to circumstances that were somewhat out of my control, we had to put off our divorce (which was actually a dissolution) until December 2007. To make a long story short, I had taken a voluntary leave of absence from my teaching job from January 2007 to June 2007 in order to complete a 600 hour internship that I was required to complete for my Master's degree, which led to no income and no health insurance. Unfortunately I had to depend on my now ex for that at the time, so we weren't able to end things until I was gainfully employed again. Not to defend him, but to be fair he was very generous with paying bills and helping out with other household and insurance related costs during that time. Hell, it was the least he could do since he was busy stuffing SweeTart on the side. My dissolution (divorce) was not the easy way out. It was my way of saying that the relationship had met its end and that I wouldn't put up with my husband having his SweeTart on the side and eating it too. I know that my cousin's divorce wasn't the easy way out either, nor was the divorce of my cousin's significant other. I just wonder how many others look at divorce or dissolutions as an easy escape clause though...
Also, you should never say never. In my wildest dreams (or perhaps nightmares) I NEVER thought that I would be divorced. I always thought that my relationship with my first husband was rock solid, nothing could break us apart, etc. Don't ever get too smug about your relationship; you never know, you could possibly be next on the divorce/dissolution train. Don't look down on people who are divorced as failures or people who were "just too lazy" to make their relationships work out. It is when people become overly comfortable and complacent in their marriage that the rug gets pulled out from under them.
In closing, does the high divorce rate of our generation make us strong, independent people who won't put up with our significant other's bullshit? We tend not to turn our heads the other way when our SOs have gambling addictions, alcohol, drug or porn addictions, affairs, etc. Does the fact that many of our parents and grandparents did turn their heads the other way (or just lived in denial) when it came to the above in their marriages make them stronger or weaker than we are? Kind of makes you think, doesn't it?
Just some food for thought. Until next time, I remain,
Jenuinely Yours
No comments:
Post a Comment