It was 2006 when I was looking for a way out of my marriage. At the time, my first child was on the way – but I knew things were off kilter. There were so many red flags that had built up over the years (and an affair the first year).
Somehow, I was too fearful to leave. I felt a sense of duty to try to work to keep the marriage together – the Christian mentality kicked in. I was expecting our first at the time, and I didn’t particularly want to be a single mother in a large city with a high cost of living.
Somehow, 18 years passed, and the situation got more challenging with 5 children. My days were constantly demoralizing… like anything, there were days that I tried to hang in there. But then most days, I felt almost hopeless, I was suffocating. There was no hope for rescue, and no avenue I could take that would lead to a better outcome.
I was trapped.
Financially, I was somewhat dependent on his income. We lived in a high cost of living city, we had five children. It was hard for me to envision that I could ever achieve single motherhood on my small, self employment income. Not to mention legal fees – how would I pay for a lawyer?
Legal costs in a traditional, amicable divorce are somewhat predictable. But this would be anything but amicable. I knew he was going to drain me financially and rip the carpet out from under me as to paralyze my ability to re-emerge with any amount of strength.
- I felt like my life was over. I was in my early 40’s and I had absolutely nothing to look forward to each day. Even the good things — our beautiful kids, career successes, personal achievements – they were all marred by a lack of a partner to truly share them with. Certainly I had a partner. But I did not have a vested partner. I look back at all the years I wasted trying to make a loveless marriage work, when I could have been building my life and finding happiness apart from him.
- When I looked around at other happy couples, I wondered why and how I got where I was. Then I spent a great amount of time feeling like “I’ll never have that.” It really hurts.
- You’ll know you’re with the wrong person when you lack motivation in your life. Our lack of a relationship bled into everything else in my life – killing my enthusiasm.
- I dreaded long periods of time spent in the same room/house without distractions. I started to fill my free time with meaningless activities (business ventures) because being alone was very draining.
In my experience, people who stay in unhappy marriages get depressed in the process. In turn, they are unable to give their children the love and attention needed. If the woman is unhappy, she fails to see anything positive in herself because of her husband’s behavior – this, in turn, leads to lovelessness passing on to her kids.
Daily, I was losing my self worth trying to be with someone who did not compliment me.
Why do we (why did I honestly) stay with the wrong person?
- Fear of being judged, or ridiculed
- Fear of being laughed at…
- Fear of losing everything
- Fear of not knowing how to handle the challenges that come my way
- Fear of not knowing where to go or what to do with my life
- Fear of not being able to survive it all alone
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