There’s Nothing Easy About A Divorce

Your wedding day is the most important day of your life.

The hard part of a marriage comes after. The days, weeks, months, and years after the wedding day.

We’ve all heard this. We’ve all read it. Chances are if you’re getting married you have heard it from the people you love the most. You know it’s true. Everyone knows a marriage is hard work. It’s common sense.

Or is it not?

I recently read an article that said everyone wants an easy, always happy, marriage like the movies. If we don’t have that, we give up. We are too quick to say goodbye.

The article was awfully presumptuous to say that those who have gone through a divorce didn’t try in their marriage. That we all have this ideal in our mind about how we think marriage should be and then when it wasn’t like that we just decided to give up and get divorced. I suppose the author of the article thought that it was the easy way out.

A marriage is hard work. VERY hard work. Here’s the kicker – both parties have to put in the hard work. All of the time.

Just because my marriage failed, doesn’t mean I didn’t try. I tried a lot. For years. Years of couples counseling. Years of trying to open up the lines of communication with my husband. Years of forcing myself to date nights or intimate nights to try and keep the marriage going. I’ve tried talking in person, writing emails, texting, writing letters… so many different ways to get the communication flowing in hopes of him opening up to me.

Here’s the thing – I can try as hard as I ever could have done anything. It would be inconsequential if he didn’t try as well. It’s very difficult to fight for something between two people; when the other person doesn’t try. And, well, he didn’t.

A note to the author of that article as well as anyone else who thinks that someone who is or has gotten a divorce took the easy way out.
You’re wrong.

Surely there are some who have taken the easy way out. In fact, I may even know a few. But to think that the vast majority of people made the “easy decision” to break up their family, give up on their dreams of growing old with their spouse, separate all of their belongings, feel the guilt after telling all of their loved ones, and feel the loneliness they have felt, could not be more incorrect and perhaps is the easy assumption.