Ever since I got divorced and decided to make it my mission to share everything I learned from it to help others, people open up to me about their marriage.
As one who is divorced, I am immediately seen as a safe person. After all, I have already done what they are afraid to acknowledge, sometimes even to themselves!
Leo Tolstoy’s book, Anna Karenina, opens with the line,
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
I hadn’t realized how true this is until I started working in the field of marriage and divorce.
I have met people who are unhappy in their marriage but unwilling to do anything about it, those who believe that marriage is meant to bring some degree of unhappiness, those staying in their marriage for the “sake of the children,” people who are afraid to leave, and others who don’t know how to go about it or want to know what the fallout will be before they take the first step. They are each unhappy in their own way.
There is one group that is perhaps the unhappiest of them all – those who avoid me because they don’t even want to acknowledge to themselves how unhappy they really are, and are afraid of being found out!
When someone approaches me about getting divorced, the first question we tackle is – is divorce inevitable for them? Divorce is not a panacea for all problems in a marriage. If marriage is rough, then divorce is rougher.
If you have a choice, you should go into it with your eyes open and NEVER before you have tried everything you can to save your marriage. You will have to live with the consequences of divorce and you will best be able to do so if you know in your heart that you made the decision after careful consideration.
If there is one piece of information that is critical for EVERYONE to understand, it is this: whether you are married or divorced, to be happy in your relationship, there are a few skills that you need to acquire.
These aren’t skills we are born with, and they are often not taught to us, yet they are critical to the success of ALL our relationships.
When people decide to get divorced, it is because they are trying to get away from pain –pain in their marriage. However, divorce is an equally painful process, if not more so. You don’t want to go from the frying pan into the fire.
Besides, you will likely enter into other relationships after your divorce, so if you haven’t learned all the skills that you need, in order to navigate your current relationship, you will be no better prepared for the next one.
So take the pain away from your marriage, and focus on yourself in a way that will serve you – whether you decide to stay married or leave the marriage.
If you decide to stay, the skills you learn will enhance your marriage in a way that you didn’t think possible. If you decide to leave, you would have already done the work that most people do after their divorce (and some never do!).
Ultimately, happiness is found within, and we are all responsible for our own happiness.
Find out if your’s lies in your current marriage before you dive into divorce.
