Back in late spring, I bought a clearance Easter wreath at Target. It was made of paper flowers, and was nice bright Eastery pastels. It pleases me TREMENDOUSLY that in the summer sun the flowers faded to be PERFECT for fall: now they’re mostly white, with tints of golden yellow and barn red, and the leaves have faded from spring green to sage green.
I realize this is going to sound very silly to many of you, but I have been blowing my own mind recently by WEARING DIFFERENT EARRINGS. Wait, have I already mentioned this? I’m getting deja vu. Well, I will go ahead, and you can stop me if you’ve heard it before. I tend to wear MATCHING earrings: if I am wearing a BLUE shirt, I will look through the pile of BLUE earrings. (The late ’80s were a good time for me: so much matching!) Or else I will wear silver or gold or otherwise neutral earrings. But today, I am wearing a dark purple shirt, and I put on the DARK TEAL earrings I usually wear with shades of teal. IT’S SHOCKING. Yesterday I was wearing a dark teal shirt, and I wore GREEN earrings.
The nice thing about being sort of timid and non-adventurous by nature is that it doesn’t take much to really SHAKE THINGS UP. No need to have an affair or buy a sports car: I can manage my midlife crisis by CHANGING EARRINGS. Or BUYING A NEW KIND OF CRACKERS.
Speaking of affairs, I dreamed last night that I had a long-standing arrangement with my ex-husband, that once a year at a big family reunion we would sleep together. It was all out in the open: that is, both spouses were fully aware. THAT part of the dream was, I’m relieved to say, just UNDERSTOOD TO BE THE CASE (in real life, the one where my ex-husband and I have had zero contact of any kind since our divorce, I would not enjoy this arrangement). The part that was interesting (interesting to me, I mean: other people’s dreams are understood to be Not Interesting, which is why I’m keeping this mercifully brief) is that I was standing around with the ex-husband’s wife, who was very nice but of course things were a little awkward between us and we were fiddling with our drinks and trying to think of what to say, and I said, “Did you ever realize, back when you were imagining marriage, how many accommodations you’d end up making?” And she said, “NO!” and we were both laughing a little crazily.
This dream isn’t hard to figure out: I’ve been thinking a lot lately about marriages, and all the accommodations that get made over the years. Some people happen not to change very much over the years, or happen to change in ways very parallel to their spouse, so that they end up saying, “Well, SURE, marriage takes EFFORT, but you just MAKE THE DECISION to…” or whatever. Meanwhile, other people get married to someone who is not AT ALL the person they would (or should) choose twenty years later, and/or they change a LOT. I’m at the age where a batch of divorces are happening among my peers, as people stand at the midpoint of their lives and say, “This is silly. I’m not spending the rest of my life like this.”
This post is taking a bit of an unexpected turn, for one that started with paper wreaths and earrings. But the dream has got me thinking about something I was already thinking about. I grew up in a religious tradition that says there are only a few reasons divorce is allowed. Misery is not one of those reasons. Wanting to live in two completely different and incompatible ways is not one of those reasons. HATING EVERYTHING ABOUT YOUR LIFE is not one of those reasons. As I get older, I find it harder to understand this system. One of my friends comes from a similar tradition, and her parents honestly hate each other but have been married over fifty years because they feel they are not allowed to divorce.
I am, as you might imagine, on the side of NOT doing that. Which doesn’t at all mean I take marriage lightly. Don’t you hate it when people act as if the only possibilities are the two extremes? Like, either marriage is UNTIL DEATH, NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU HATE IT, or else obviously you are someone who divorces someone after one small argument because you are a frivolous idiot who doesn’t take commitments seriously and thought marriage was supposed to be all fun all the time. I am in the middle somewhere, as I’m guessing most of us are. I think there are a lot of good reasons to stay married even if it’s not going well; I also think marriage is a useful social contract and that there are a lot of good reasons to end that contract if it’s no longer useful, just as there can be good reasons to end any other kind of contract. I like the Judith Viorst quote: “One advantage of marriage, it seems to me, is that when you fall out of love with him, or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you maybe fall in again.”
So many things to respond to in this post!
1. I am also the sort of person who gets a thrill out of buying a new kind of crackers. I look at other people who require A LOT more excitement and/or who are always mired in (often self-created) drama all the time, and it makes me so tired. I am very happy to exist on the nice, quiet side of that particular fence.
2. I, too, have been reflecting on marriage and divorce lately, as we seem to be hitting the Age of Divorce (having moved through the Age of Weddings and the Age of Babies already). I DESPISE the binary thinking that you identify (frivolous idiot vs. together at all costs). I am intensely curious about why any given marriage works or doesn’t. We know SO LITTLE of what goes on between two people. Outward appearance tells us almost nothing, and being friends with a married couple when they were in the throes of newlywed bliss likewise doesn’t say much about how they’ll be 15 years later after a bunch of kids and job changes and relocations and who knows what-all else. But I do find it a fascinating thing to think about. I always want to have a sit-down with a divorcing couple and be like, “Ok, so WHAT EXACTLY happened? Walk me through it.” Because, I don’t know, marriage itself is very interesting — it’s so incredibly optimistic in its way — and dynamics between people are incredibly interesting, and we’re all so different and so DEEPLY weird in our own special ways, and that is the kind of stuff I just enjoy learning about and thinking about. Also, I’m kind of nosy.
3. I like hearing about other people’s dreams.
I, too, am curious about people both their marriages and divorce. I think I’m just curious in general and I know that mostly what people “put out there” is often so different than the reality. Every time my husband hears about someone we know divorcing he’s always, “I didn’t see that coming!” and I always think, “well of course not! You don’t know what goes on behind closed doors!” But I’m also intensely curious about marriage in general: the historical context, how society or religion imbues it’s own agenda into this commitment between two people. I’m not a “Till death do us part” kind of person and I’ve always sympathized with people who left marriages because they were unhappy, because life is short and you should be happy! But like Swistle says, it’s not as if I don’t take my own marriage seriously because of that belief.
I remember being in high school and a psychology teacher said something that I still think about when we were discussing marriage. She said, “Honestly, some couples grow together, and some couples grow apart. And maybe it just comes down to luck.” I think about this all the time because I married pretty young and I’ve grown a lot in the years and people do change and they should be allowed to do so even if it means that growing meant shedding a marriage that wasn’t a good fit for this new person.
Elizabeth Gilbert published a book a handful of years ago called, “Committed,” which is devoted to the subject of what intriguing subjects marriage and divorce are. She goes a bit into the history and evolution of the institution (which the Church was actually against until it realized it wouldn’t win, at which point it went to the opposite extreme and embraced it to the point of embodiment.)
Really interesting read.
I love this comment, especially this:
I always want to have a sit-down with a divorcing couple and be like, “Ok, so WHAT EXACTLY happened? Walk me through it.”
I’m curious and nosey and people are fascinating and marriage is complicated.
In our circles, we haven’t hit “The Age of Divorce” yet but I feel like, statistically, it must be coming.
Yes, I always want to hear the WHOLE THING. And it’s frustrating because a lot of times when a marriage ends I only get one side of the story. I want BOTH. Possibly we would enjoy being marriage counselors! Except I don’t want to do the counseling part. Just the “Asking questions and taking notes” part.
We know very little about what happens between any two people in particular, but sociologists have figured out a few things about marriage and divorce in general. I read this interesting Atlantic article about John Gottmans’s research a while ago, and now I think about the concept of “bids” all the time when I’m interacting with my wife. (And when I’m watching other couples interact poorly with each other…)
I love that quote! I’ve never heard that before, and I kind of want to embroider it on a pillow. My husband and I were 20 when we married (WOULD NOT RECOMMEND) and have been married 24 years, and there have been many fallings in and out of love over that time for both of us. But I can’t imagine staying with him if I hated him every day, even though like you we grew up in a religious tradition that strongly discourages divorce.
Seventeen years ago, my grandmother died and my dad and his siblings split up the money that was left over from her “estate” and my dad split up that money between me and my brothers and my sister, so I wanted to do something with it to remember my grandmother and I bought my sister and I diamond earrings. It was the first time I had earrings with those screw backs and I don’t know what the hell happened but I can’t get those earrings off anymore, it’s been at least 15 years and they are not budging. I’ve had surgery and not taken them out, I got married in them, they are just – it’s me and those earrings, forever. I used to have three holes in each year but I stopped wearing second/third earrings once I had grabby babies and now I guess they’ve closed up? So anyway I never wear any earrings and I am always hella jella when I hear about people mixing it up, good for you!
I am a religious nut and I really think of marriage as being for this life and the next (this is where i think dramatic music would start playing) so I want to stay married forever, BUT I only think this for me, AND I was a pretty good age when I got married (36) so I feel like I knew what I wanted and neither of us have really changed too much in the last eleven years. And, I suppose, who knows what the hell will happen, maybe I will be married twenty years and think ugh who is this rat bastard? but I hope not. I can’t imagine being married and having kids, which I find to be such a drag in some ways, AND hating the person to whom I was married. I think people mostly take it seriously, though, don’t you? I have several friends who are divorcing and it seems, to me, to be just like a death, so complicated and so relentless. I figure if going through that is better than staying in it, they are really taking it seriously, so I don’t put much stock in people who go on and on about how capricious people are about marriage, I just don’t see it. That IS an excellent quote and it makes me think of my friend whose husband said he was leaving her, like ten years ago, when their kids were like seven and five. She said you can’t, I can’t do it with these kids, just stay here and you can do whatever you want and then when these kids get to high school I’ll give you a divorce. So he agreed and then eventually they just – I don’t know, fell back in love or whatever and now ten years later they seem just fine.
Don’t you wonder how often the whole “do whatever you want and we’ll get divorced later” thing happens? That blows my mind but I’ll bet it’s super common! I read once that women who are divorcing often underestimate how hard it will be to be a single mom, and men who are divorcing often underestimate how much they will miss their kids.
ME AGAIN. I wanted to add that in the case of joint, 50/50 custody (me and a few of my friends), my experience is that the above is reversed: women underestimate how much they will enjoy having 50/50 custody, and men underestimate how hard it will be to have their kids on their own half of the time.
I sometimes think the only appealing thing about divorce, to me, is that sometimes I could not have the kids and my husband always says, live it up, lady, but the rest of the time you’d have them with just you,! I can see how it happened with my friend, I mean, if my husband told me he wasn’t happy right now, I’d tell him to get on line because I’m not what you’d call happy either, who can tell? We have four little kids and LORD GOD one of them is always yelling or screaming or waking up early and ugh it is not a recipe for happiness, right now. But if he wanted to leave me right now I’d really freak out. Right now it takes two people, full time, to take care of this loony bin, so if I had to work a deal I probably would.
Like a “sleep with other women” deal? I am so totally not judging; like BKC I would like to read a large-ish book about someone who has done this! Do you agree that each person has to be around a certain percentage of the time? FASCINATING.
I would read a large-ish novel and/or memoir about your friend who refused to get divorced but capitulated on the specifics. I have so many questions!
YES ME TOO. I would want to read allllllll about it. All the specifics. All the feelings. I want the WHOLE NOVEL. Because I can half-picture doing something like that. I’m not opposed to “stay together for the sake of the kids” deals if everyone can avoid acting like crazy people so that the kids WISH the parents WEREN’T together. I can picture separate bedrooms, easily, but have more trouble picturing, “Bye, honey, I’m leaving on a date.” Also I am interested in things like, does the husband buy his new girlfriend gifts out of the joint budget? Things like that. Want to know allllll of it.
No I couldn’t take an open marriage type situation. What I mean is, and I think what my friend meant, is to just beg your indulgence and think of the children or whatever and the once we get through this we can reevaluate.
It’s so true, no one ever tells the truth about marriage or kids or anything that is seen as one way but is another way entirely. I think so many people marry because they want the wedding and talk themselves in to everything else.
you know, I’m sure this happens, but I honestly think way more often, people want to be married without thinking about what that actually means. like, they see red flags, but they’re picturing not just the wedding, but the white picket fence and the adorable children and soccer games and vacations and date nights and always having someone, and not fully realizing that you might not always want THAT PERSON around.
I am always AMAZED when I hear about stories like LeighTX’s, where people get together very young and manage to stay together. Not because I take marriage lightly or think no 20 yr old can make a decision; I just think back to MYSELF at 20 and holy cow, that is an entirely different person with entirely different priorities and opinions on life. It seems to me that people must be very lucky to grow into their Adult Selves in ways that still are sill compatible with the new Adult Self of their spouse too.
My mom (who was married at 21) very sternly advised both me and my sister to never marry before 30.
I married my high school boyfriend, and we have been together since we were 14 (we are now 42.) I often think how lucky we are that we both grew in the same direction, as was mentioned earlier. I think one thing that was key to our relationship was that we spent 5 years dating long distance after college, so we were able to be independent and figure out the type of person we were becoming, but also were still part of a couple (we talked on the phone every day for the first 3 years, then every other day after that. If only cell phones with free long distance had been around then!) We didn’t date other people, but we were able to be our own person and figure out what and who we wanted.
I got married at 19 (husband was 23). We’ve made it through 18 years of marriage so far…you never know what’s going to happen but I still like him an awful lot.
I used to be deeply religious and felt that staying together was the ‘right’ thing to do but I have seen too much life to think that way any more. Now, it is very freeing to stay together because we want to.
I certainly don’t know any secrets nor am I a fount of marital wisdom (although I really *do* think I have interesting insights into marriage and people but I am going for modesty, here), but I do know that he is my very favorite person in the world with no exceptions. I’m not sure if that’s something that we have cultivated or if it’s dumb, blind luck. We love our kids but we like each other more. He’s looking over my shoulder and said that we have kind of grown up together.
I, too, am fascinated by people’s relationships and would love to hear an honest retelling of the story of a marriage although I cannot seem to come up with a three-sentence descriptor of my own that doesn’t sound ridiculous and trite.
Same here. I was 19, he was 24 and 35 years we are still (happily) together. When we first got married we said we would never mention the “D” word, and yes we have had some big fights. I think the thing that has been good for us, is that even during the argument and fight we work to resolve it, not just end it. Also we like each other (we were friends first) and enjoy each other’s company. Doesn’t mean we do everything together at all, but that we do some things together.
g~I think the key to what you said is “I still like him an awful lot.”. That is exactly how I feel about my husband, we have been married for 21 years, but I was 32 when we got married-so I had sown my wild oats. I think for us, we have very basic things in common, like we love and enjoy animals, love to cook and eat, like to travel. Our differences aren’t divisive- for example, he never reads, and I would read all the time if I could. The biggest thing is I enjoy seeing him every single day-he makes me laugh.
I love that quote. There are several divorces I know of which were marriages that never should have happened in the first place, and if they’d just waited another 6 months, or lived together first, they wouldn’t have happened.
There are also several divorces I know of that were caused by one partner being very unhappy and blaming the marriage for their unhappiness when, in fact, the unhappiness was inside of them all along and so they are still unhappy (and sometimes still blaming the ex-spouse or the kids for that).
There are the divorces I know where one spouse was abusive and the other ended up leaving the state entirely to escape the stalking and abuse.
And then there are the divorces where the couple both agrees that they just can’t stand living with the other person anymore and that they’d be better parents if they lived in separate houses and that’s exactly what happened.
But it’s damned hard to get divorced, especially when there are kids involved, so it’s not something ANYONE can go into lightly and in every case listed above, divorce was an improvement on marriage.
We are in a Divorce Stage, for sure. I’m told there will be another one once we get to be empty nesters and those couples who were hanging on “for the kids” (or for career reasons, for financial reasons, etc) finally let go. The older I get, the more I see that there are SO MANY REASONS people stay married, and getting along and enjoying each others company is not a very common one. I actually think finances is the most common reason couples stay together, followed by fear of what others think and fear of being a bad parent. It’s the old “50% of marriages end in divorce, and another 25% SHOULD”.
That being said, I’m totally pro-marriage and even though I’m divorced I definitely believe I could still have a til-death-do-us-part marriage in the future, IF I get lucky and IF I continue to build my relationship skills. I SURE AS HELL am a better partner now than I was at 25 when I got married the first time.
THAT being said, I’m also pro-divorce (in many circumstances), and I don’t know ANYONE who regrets their divorce (I actually think that’s much more common for men).
Can’t wait to read more comments!
I have two examples of marriages that have made it past 15 years, and in both I would say the couples spend the majority of time apart; in one he is a long-haul trucker and in the other she travels for work 45 weeks of the year. Both couples married in their 30s. In each, one person had been married before–the person who is not the traveler. I find these similarities interesting.
I’m fascinated by how people can make relationships last so long. Knowing so much about a person and loving them for ever and ever…and ever?! I never married my daughter’s father, but I always imagined that the ensuing custody battle would have been So Much Harder if we were getting divorced on top of it, splitting assets and such.
Ha. Early in my marriage, I was working in a job where my husband and I lived about 10 hours’ drive part from one another for about 9 months of the year (with visits during the times we were apart, maybe 2 weekends/month). When my coworkers — I was new to the place — would ask me the standard questions (you know, “What does your husband do?” etc.) and this would come up, I noticed that people generally reacted in one of two ways. Those who had been married fewer than 5 years or who had small children at home would generally get a horrified look on their face — how/why do you do it?! — while those who had been married more than 5 years and did not have small children at home would not infrequently get a dreamy look on their face. “Oh,” they would say wistfully, “… so, sometimes you live WITH your husband and other times you live FAR AWAY.” Cue dreamy happy music right here. Though for the record, at the time we had been married FEWER than 5 years and when we resolved that arrangement and started living in the same house together full-time, I had no idea how we had managed it for so long (3 years) without going crazy. And though I’m now way past that (17 years and counting) we have a kid at home, so …
Though the hubby is a stay-at-home spouse, and I do sometimes wish he weren’t because HELLO! A little time in the house TO MYSELF would be nice THANK YOU VERY MUCH. But this is just one of those things and not, in fact, a big deal, the CAPS LOCK notwithstanding. Really!
I only wear silver/ white gold jewelry, but my kids have been buying me Pandora charms that have colour on them and that feels like CRAZY TIMES. Like, look at me, I’m a peacock! So I get what you’re saying. No need for midlife purchases of Porsches or having affairs. I have a colourful bracelet.
“. . .I’m a peacock!” keeps making me laugh. :)
Haven’t read the comments (yet) because I don’t want to forget what I was going to say.
Interesting about the earrings. What does that say about me, who wears the same pair (along with the same watch/bracelets/rings) every day; only switching out necklaces? Hmmm, maybe I need to branch out a little.
The marriage bit…I’m sure I have something to say on that end, but want to take the time to mull it over.
Ok, read the comments and am back…
I will admit I got married very, very young (22-ish?) and we are facing our 25th anniversary in January. I would NEVER recommend getting married so young (I remember crying afterward thinking, “what have I done?) but we have been lucky in that we have grown in the same way, more or less. Has it been easy? No. But it helps during the lows to remember that we actually LIKE each other.
Would I stay with someone that I couldn’t stand the sight of? No.
Today I was listening to a radio show that was discussing marriage and the fact that people walked down the aisle even while knowing it wasn’t going to work. And that is extremely interesting to me…why would you commit if you aren’t positive? But then again, can you EVER be POSITIVE of an “until death do us part?” No. It’s a conundrum for sure.
Part of what’s hard is, I don’t think people realize (or maybe it was just me!) how long “forever” is. I mean, like 7 years into it, I was hit with the idea that, “Whoa, this…this is going to be IT. For the Rest Of My Life.” It’s one thing to be all in love, happy, yay! I will love you forEVER!” It’s quite another to be 40 and looking down the tunnel of the rest of your life and realize you committed to this one person. Not that I would change it! (Most days.)
I’m not putting this well. I’m just saying, it’s one thing to know the theory of “forever” or how hard something is going to be, versus the reality of living it.
I agree with PiperG – it’s been a recent revelation to me just how LONG life is, if you stay alive. Long enough for everything to evolve, long enough for things that once seemed unforgivable to be forgiven, long enough to move far away from trauma you thought you could never ‘get over’ – you don’t ‘get over’ it, but you find a place for it in your life, and eventually you see things from a distance… That has come as a profound surprise to me.
I’m fascinated by marriage too – especially (like Alice noted above) people who marry quite young and are still together. I think that’s pretty amazing, but maybe this is because I shudder (SHUDDER!!) to think of having married any of my late-teen/early-20s boyfriends. I have a hard time thinking of even one that would not have spelled doom. Perhaps we would have grown together in delightful and mutually pleasing ways, but…I have serious doubts.
I would be interested in reading this no-divorce/open-marriage novel too, but I really don’t think I could ever do it, no matter how much I adore my kids. I tried to share a house with a boyfriend after we broke off a long-term relationship and it was a disaster – or rather *I* was a disaster. Nothing particularly terrible happened, but it felt like chronic, inescapable, low-level misery even though I did not want to be back together.
Please forward your post to Oprah or some big time producer who can make a real-life intimate look into the details of divorce. Maybe a Netflix series? Or something akin to A&E’s “Intervention”? Judging by this sample audience, it would be widely viewed. Commercials for lawyers could run between segments.
I feel lucky my husband and I found each other at ages 15 (he) and 17 (me–older woman!) and have been together ever since. I would make the decision all over again, exactly the same, and I love this long history of us growing up together in some ways. As another person wrote in your comments, our relationship was strengthened by intentionally living long distance throughout college and early careers. We talked daily and saw each other once a month or so before a.) getting married after 7 years of long-distance and b.) moving in together after the wedding and working out what THAT would look like.
If I were to be dating NOW as a 30-somethinger and making such a huge life decision, I would be daunted to the point of near-paralysis, whereas back then it was just this huge, naive exciting adventure that felt completely right.
I’ve hear this book gives a lot of details on how different couples make an open marriage work. I haven’t read it myself. http://www.amazon.com/Opening-Up-Creating-Sustaining-Relationships/dp/157344295X/ref=pd_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=01DWT3YHP6VGW87869TY&dpID=41V-zAQaZbL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR104%2C160_
I’ve had a few couples split in my circle, one of them was in their 70’s which surprised me as I thought “why bother” but I guess you could also say, “why wait”.
I’ve been with my husband for 20 years, married for 8. I have never found anyone I liked better than him, not even close and fortunately he feels the same way. We definitely have had our ups and downs but usually laugh together every day. It makes it hard that no one really does talk about what their marriage is really like. I don’t either and over the years I wish I’d had someone to talk to besides a therapist.
I kind of like Dan Savage’s take on marriage, that it is a weird sort of institution when it only “succeeds” if … one person dies. That said, I have told my hubby (who was married twice before) that one of us is leaving this marriage in a box (i.e. a coffin). However, I have not specified who, nor how they’ll get there (also, I don’t really mean it. My mother divorced my father and it was the best thing she ever did — for her (and us, her children, though we were grown by the time she did). So, you know, I absolutely believe divorce can be a good idea relative to the available alternatives.))
At the risk of embarrassing and horrifying my dear daughter Swistle by unlurking, I’d like to say for the record that her mother and I have been married for 46 years and are still madly in love with each other. (Yeah, even the sex thing. I know, gross.) We were married at 19 and 21, have lived through a lot of good times and bad, and have found our marriage and family tremendously fulfilling. We know it doesn’t work for everyone, but we’re so grateful that it has for us.
DAD.
Ha! :) Poor Swistle. ;)
Awwwww… :D
I’m still enormously cheered by people that have made it work. Congratulations on your perpetual fornication!
OMG. OMG!!!!! Swistle’s Dad, we like you so much already.
Haha. I like your dad already.
I am extremely pleased I returned to this post to find a celebrity appearance by Swistle’s Dad.
That was the best!
This was my favorite comment section ever, even before Swistle’s Dad showed up.
I am also in a mini-divorce stage and also want to know ALL the details. I have two friends who have three small kids and got divorced and when I heard the news, I actually cringed, because I also have three small kids, and all I could think was, I can barely handle these three with a husband, so to make that decision to split at this specific stage, things have to be Really Bad. Or I would think, anyway. I mean, I don’t subscribe to the idea that people divorce lightly, for the simple reason that it is extremely difficult and extremely expensive. I still think, though, that we all have different thresholds, and I’m just curious what some people consider dealbreakers.
OMG Your Dad is the BEST. This is going to make me smile the rest of the day.
Haaaaaa Swistle’s dad.
So I tend to lean towards the til death do you part thing, or maybe until empty nest do you part. It’s a little bit from my tendency to be risk-averse, a little bit because I come from a catholic family where no one gets divorced (I’m not catholic myself but it was how I was raised), a little bit because I can’t imagine having the kids only part time (well, I CAN imagine it being absolutely glorious to have free time at first but then I think about missing out on their lives and go back to not being able to imagine it at all), and a little bit because it turns out that deep down I love my husband enough that I can work through some pretty serious stuff. I’d like to think that if I were with someone and it really wasn’t working to the point that everything was terrible all of the time and it was more harmful to the kids being together than apart I’d get over my pride or whatever and do it though. I love that quote you posted, it sums up my marriage pretty nicely, haha.