The Flaw in the System When it Comes to Marriage
Imagine getting your first job offer and being told that one of the conditions of your employment is that, upon signing your contract, you may never leave the job.
This requirement exists despite the fact that:
You may not know everything there is to know about the job.
You may learn things about the job over time that you really don’t like.
Your co-workers may not treat you well
The number of responsibilities you have will continue to grow.
The job may turn out to be completely different than you thought it would be.
You are only 26.
Your interest in the job may wane significantly over time.
You may realize that you are not actually very good at this job.
There may be other jobs for which you discover you are a much better fit.
You likely wouldn’t take the job. And your friends and family would likely discourage you from taking it.
And yet, when faced with this exact scenario in the form of a relationship, we not only sign on, we are over-the-moon excited to do so. We are encouraged by our family and friends. We spend tons of money to celebrate it.
Don’t get me wrong; there are plenty of people for whom marriage works and works well.
But, if you find yourself in a scenario where your marriage doesn’t seem to be working anymore, it can be very helpful to stop looking at yourself and your relationship as a failure and consider that there are flaws in the very concept itself.
The hope of marriage is that two people grow and change in the same direction and that the people they become continue to be compatible and make each other happy.
But a) sometimes it takes time to recognize that we weren’t as compatible or happy as we believed ourselves to be in the first place and b) growing and changing is an individual process and it should not be seen as failure – even if it means growing and changing in a direction that brings a relationship to an end.
Whatever the reasons that have led you to be contemplating or experiencing a split, whether you’ve been hurt or are doing the hurting (or both), whether you’ve been betrayed or have betrayed your partner (or both), whether things just no longer seem to be working and you can’t figure out why, remember that people are always growing and changing and that isn’t a bad thing.
We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make our marriages work forever.
Removing some of that pressure and allowing ourselves to see breakups and divorce as the healthy ending of one chapter and the beginning of the next, can help ease some of the anxiety around this very emotionally complex time.
A lot of the energy we expend during this time – the anger, frustration, sadness and the need to place blame – can all feel less intense if we stop looking at the end of our relationship as something bad or something that has gone wrong and start looking at it as the natural conclusion of one chapter of life.
And if you don’t feel like you’ve done much of the growing and changing yourself, now is your opportunity to focus on your own journey and what you want this next chapter to be.
