It's such a weird thing. And forgive me if this blog is disjointed at all, I'm writing my thoughts as they come. And usually they're not in chronological order. Also, I use lots of parentheses. (see?)
You stand before God and men and promise your undying love to this person, usually in your early twenties (or late teens as I was concerned), which is way too young to make a life choice in my opinion, and you begin your life together.
Our grandparents rarely divorced because they believed in sticking it out.
Our parents generation divorced like crazy (and are still divorcing).
My generation...well it's pretty pathetic, really. (And I'm saying that as a formerly divorced person.)
So you stand up in front of everyone you know, in an extremely expensive dress, with expensive decorations, an expensive (probably gross) cake, an expensive photographer, expensive venue, and you tell everyone that no matter what you will stay with this person.
But then life happens.
Life pulls the rug out from under you. Life slaps you upside the head and laughs in your stunned face.
Marriage isn't for sissies.
Marriage is hard at times. Marriage is the total combining of two separate beings into one super-love-(or hate)-human (haha).
Then a couple+ years down the road you think to yourself, "shit." (and you probably do say "shit" because at this point you're way beyond worrying about what others think of the word "shit".)
Now some people, those admirable ones, the ones who value marriage and the sanctity and all of that, dig their heels in, get real with themselves and each other, seek counseling, and stop all of the bs. (BS can be many things such as, affairs (duh), being a control freak, being an emotional monster, being unloving, uncaring, selfish, being in denial, you get the picture.) These people make it work no matter what. These are the people who will be married until they're old and gray. These people aren't the lucky ones, they're the ones doing it right.
But most people at this point either look for someone else to take the place of their mate (to whom they are still currently married, mind you) and try to assuage their guilt by telling themselves they have needs too, she just doesn't understand, it's not physical, and all of the other hideously stupid excuses they can come up with, OR they give up. They tell themselves they're worth more than this, they don't deserve this, they are the victim, they have tried everything...etc.
[side note, these obviously aren't the only two categories of people or situations, I'm just talking about the two most common that I've seen, or that just popped into my brain as I was typing.]
I fell into the latter category. I was married to a man (and I use that term loosely because he didn't quite fall into the same category as men like Brett or my dad or my brother.) and we got married for some odd reason (to this day I'm not quite sure why he proposed in the first place) and struggled every minute of every day. It was horrible. It was quite literally the worst few years of my life. Still, we got counseling. We had counseling counseling and more counseling. Things got worse. And still I stayed. It wasn't something brewing under the surface, it was actively terrible. I prayed daily to die in a car accident so that I didn't have to live another day with him.
Then one day I snapped. I ended up telling my mom our problems and she told me to separate and see if we couldn't work on things while separated.
Anyway, it didn't work, or, rather we didn't work. I don't think that either of us wanted to jump back in that lion's cage and he sent the papers over and I signed them without flinching.
But we gave it a good college try.
Still, we lied to everyone on our wedding day. We didn't mean to, we just shouldn't have gotten married when I was NINETEEN aka a teeny tiny baby.
What is my point? Ah...well my point is more "points" and not something small and concise. And my points are more personal than life-altering advice (because God knows I am in no place to give advice...I have messed up all across the board in life HA!).
Number 1, I'm really glad (now) that I got divorced. I'm grateful that God utterly and completely forgave me for being a psycho (because I definitely turned into one while married to him), and being a stupid lying teenage bride. He redeemed me. He didn't restore me, he made me new. He created a new life in me and gave me my soul mate and my soul mate of a child.
Number 2, I'm saddened by the amount of divorced people that I know. This is 100% not directed at anyone because I know everyone has reasons they got divorced but it is still sad. It is such a severance. I really find it odd that once you divorce (unless you have kids) you never ever talk to the person you slept next to for years again. It's almost as if it never happened. Except it did because you have the scars to prove it.
Number 3, I hope that everyone finds as much forgiveness, redemption and grace as I have found. And you can, you just have to get real with yourself and God.
Number 4, I hope one day my ex-husband knows that I forgive him and that I hope he forgives me. I don't ever want to be the root of someone's bitterness, I don't want anyone to hate me. I certainly don't hate him, nor do I have bad feelings toward him. It's been over ten years since we were married and goodness how I have changed as a person and I hope he has too.
Now I have no idea why I wrote all of this out and congratulations if you've made it this far. I really can't stand blog entries that are preachy or teachy, that's why I made this more directed at myself. Now that I reread it I'm not sure if it makes a lot of sense but up on the blog it goes!
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