Happy Enough

Nobody gets married to get divorced. Nobody. This is not what I had envisioned when I walked down the aisle nineteen years ago. Four days after September 11th. I was taught marriage is happily ever after. My parents have been married for nearly forty-eight years. Divorce was taboo. The only thing that echoed in my house regarding divorce was the neighborly gossip about whose marriage was coming to an end. And it was never in a positive light.

I am going to share my story with you. This is my story. I am not advocating the single, married, or divorced life. I am only advocating for your happiness. Life is short. Before you comment, please take a deep breath and remember this is my journey. Life as I have come to experience it through my lens.

We are all sold a bill of goods. Get married, have kids, find a great job, settle down. I remember my mother asking me when I graduated from college, soooo who are you dating? Is he marriage material? At twenty-four I didn’t even know how to balance my checkbook! But I knew I wanted to be married AND I knew I couldn’t wait to have children.

After two kids and starting my third business, I began to realize how much I neglected myself for the sake of making everyone else happy. Instead of communicating my unhappiness. I worked harder. I poured my heart and soul into work while avoiding the pain of dealing with the issue at hand, my marriage. My attention was elsewhere and the walls of my relationship slowly began to erode. The longer I pretended everything was ok, the worse I felt. Although it looked as if I was off gallivanting around the world. I see now that I was running away, finding any way not to face the music. I knew I had to seek therapy. But would opening my closet door to dig through skeletons of my past save my marriage? Or would it open my eyes to problems I have been avoiding for a long time?

I quickly learned all of us have baggage. Whether you had the worst childhood or the best, we ALL have shit. It doesn’t just go away. It lurks around inside. Until you begin working on yourself, you will carry this shit from one relationship to the next. It’s the reason why people have more than one failed marriage or can’t commit in the first place. They never worked out their childhood mishegas

After three years of unlearning everything I learned as a child (i.e. “you stay together no matter what”, “you stay for the kids”, “surviving is living”), I dug deep inside and decided I did not want to wake up in the same place five years from now.  It was time to stop living an inauthentic life. It would be easier to stay in my comfort zone with my pretty home, fancy car, 2 kids, and a dog. I could pretend everything was perfect, just like my Facebook pictures appeared or I could do the hardest thing I would ever do: face my fears, step outside of my comfortable world and start a new life with the person inside whom I lost so long ago.

I did not want to be the girl who sacrificed her happiness for the sake of the kids. I was going to be that mom who was straight with them. Divorce is about the parents. Not the kids. It was extremely important my kids knew there was no fault here. We all have the same hopes and dreams but sometimes plans do not work out the way you expected. 

I told my 14-year-old, “I am here to teach you many things in life. Most of all, what it means to be happy. I would not be doing my job as a parent if I stayed in a marriage where I was not thriving. I would be teaching you how to survive, not how to live. If you can remember anything on this day it’s that you have a mother and a father who love you more than anything. We will be your parents forever. Our issues are not your issues. Just because we will not live together does not mean we are not a family. A marriage certificate does not make you a family. We will always be a family, only living separately. I know this is not easy but I promise it won’t be so terrible either. Your father and I will make sure to it. All you need to worry about is doing the best you can in school and continue to be the amazing big brother you currently are.”

Telling my kids was a lot easier than telling family and friends. Why? Because everyone judges. How could anyone understand how it feels to be alone in a marriage even though you are “married”? How can anybody understand why I would want to change the family unit? I mean everything looks perfect on social media, right? It was when my friend asked me, If you did not have children, would you stay? I had my answer. I knew then if I decided to stay, the lesson I would be teaching my children is if you are not happy, you stay anyway. Sacrifice yourself for their happiness. Grin and bear it. Your feelings do not matter. And now that I am on the other side of this I see it clearer than ever. I see how much easier it is to stay in your comfort zone than upset the apple cart.

After speaking to so many people who have struggled with this decision (including myself), I learned that people usually stay for three reasons money, lifestyle, and kids. They are happy enough. If I leave I will have to live in a shack, my kids will hate me, I will fuck up the kids, I will have to go back to work, I will lose my couple friends, my parents will be disappointed, I will lose the family unit, and on and on. All of these reasons are understandable. I had every one of those thoughts. It’s what kept me stuck for so long.  But what I uncovered is that all of these thoughts were based on something deeper. Fear. And fear is a fucker. The truth is, the reality was not close to any of my fears. They were just stories I made up in my head.

These fears of fucking up the kids, losing the family unit, changing your lifestyle, etc. keep us stuck. And what do you think ends up happening? We look for every way to stay IN the marriage than to actually leave it. Our routine keeps us there. We live on autopilot avoiding how we feel inside. We join 100 clubs, bury ourselves in work (bingo). Sometimes people resort to having an affair. We will do anything to avoid the D-word. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t, right? But what is the price we are paying for this? We are sacrificing our POTENTIAL happiness for a sure thing that makes us unhappy. This is all we know. This is all I knew. My life coach said to me “it’s like a person who works the same job day in and day out. They don’t like going but the paycheck is great.  They have no clue what it would be like to actually go to a job they love and possibly make more money! They have a list of excuses for why they will never find a better job. They stay and feel bad every day complaining to all their friends how much they don’t like their job instead of taking any action to feel better and leave it. They tell you they will look for a new job in a year. One year becomes five and before they know it, they think to themselves, how the fuck am I still here and why do I feel worse??” The reason is that our feelings stay inside of us. They don’t just disappear. I mean we can try to avoid them as long as we can but until we deal with them, they are not going anywhere. “I will wait until my kids leave for college.” You are going to put your life on hold and feel bad every day waiting out the inevitable? Is this a lesson you want to teach your children? Is this how YOU want to spend your life? “My kids will think I am abandoning them.” In reality, you are only abandoning yourself by pleasing everyone else while you suffer inside. Is this your happy enough? We got one shot at this. Just one. Doesn’t your partner deserve someone who is all in? Aren’t they entitled to a better relationship if neither of you is getting what you need? 

Am I scared? Fuck, yes. I am alone for the first time in over twenty years. It is alone, though, that I must grieve my former self, my old life, my family unit. It is alone I must face all the firsts. The first Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Birthday, and holiday dinners. I look forward to the day we can come back together as friends and possibly share these events in a different light. I understand it is not possible now. (Although I may crash the Selling Break Fast at Luger’s).

I was recently at a party and a girl who I know from town walked up to me and told me she was sorry to hear about my divorce. I thanked her for her kind words but then she said something else. She whispered in my ear “I’m jealous.” I wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol but it really struck me. How many other people are unhappily married? How many people are staying until their kids leave for college? How many people are going through the motions day after day prolonging the inevitable? And for what? Life is so short. I can tell you first-hand how hard it is to step out of your comfort zone. It is scary as fuck. Managing a new home, bills, and kids myself is extremely daunting. I am not the single person I was at twenty-something. I am forty-something with two kids and no road map on how to proceed.  But I refuse to survive on autopilot. It’s time to start living. After all, a breakup is a gateway to who we truly are. I have nothing but love and good wishes for my ex-husband. He is an incredible father and a man who would have done anything for me. And in so many ways he did. This is a new beginning for both of us. A chapter 2 of some sort.

For those who can relate, I ask you to dig deep. Our feelings are what make us wise and intuitive. This is why, deep down, you will ALWAYS know what is best for you. We were often taught to ignore our feelings and sometimes we had to, just to survive in our childhood/adult life. But it’s our feelings that will guide us to move towards what feels right and to move away from what doesn’t. This can be extremely challenging because it means making a decision against everything we were taught. But it is in this shift that we actually take our power back. It is at this moment you should ask yourself, are you happy enough?