Deciding To Divorce: No Turning Back

Photograph by Mario Klassen

There are things in life we don’t want to happen but have to accept; things we don’t want to know but have to learn, and people we can’t live without, but have to let go.

 My Story

I’d been in an unhappy marriage for many years. My mother was my role model. She stayed unhappily married to my father for over 50 years. Her example was a clear message that that is what you do, that is what is expected. ‘Til death do you part.’ Which is exactly how my mother’s story ended. I remember her washing dishes in the kitchen sink and staring out the window to some far away place. I always wondered where she went in those moments. Perhaps to a life that might have been? After 26 years of marriage, I trudged on….. unhappily.

 Pivotal Summer

One summer the circumstances in my marriage became, what I felt to be, unbearable. For the first time, I entertained the thought, “I don’t have to put up with this anymore.” Little did I know how much power those words would hold in my consciousness. Once thought, they are like a snowball rolling downhill gaining momentum. They seemed to summon a strength and with each passing day, were not going to be silenced.

Point of Decision

Gaining steam in my consciousness, as the days went by, I felt I had no choice but to act on them. An internal knowing seemed to take over and operate from within me. Against everything, I had been told and modeled to me by my mother. Against my fear of what friends and family would think. I finally uttered the words to my husband, “I believe that we should separate.”

No Turning Back

I had just opened a can with a pop out snake. It sprung out and expanded and could not be put back. A potpourri of feelings washed over me – fear, anxiety, sadness AND in contrast, a tremendous relief of a burden lifted off my shoulders. I felt out-of-body watching events unfold. I knew there was no turning back. The internal driving force to push forward never once entertained an option of going back to the way things were.

Divorce is never what we have planned when we take our vows. Our hopes and dreams are of growing old together. Sometimes in relationships, things happen that change all of that: emotional abuse, extra-marital affairs, substance abuse or excessive anger.

I’m a firm believer in the idea of a person having an “inner knowing,” or intuition about choices they make or the direction they need to take in life. When we attempt to quiet the voice of our inner knowing, we sometimes live in intolerable conflict.

Brave hearts. Honor your courage. Honor your knowing.