It Doesn’t Matter Why Marriage Ends
And dissolving a marriage is not always as failure.
Five years ago I married for the second time, to my second husband. This was the marriage that was going to be right. We were equipped with the correct pieces which we arranged at the correct time. He was a vast improvement from my ex-husband: caring and thoughtful and responsible. He wanted to get married, and in an expected series of events, that’s exactly what we did.
And now we are separating.
The logical question that follows is why did it end? What happened?
I’ve been unsure of how to write about the dissolution of my marriage for some time now, which is both surprising and frustrating in light of the time and research I’ve put into the decision. I spent years in couples counseling, individual therapy, self-reflection paired with the inability to think about anything else (for those who have ever considered a separation, you know about this weight and how insidious it is). With all that work behind me, it seems like I should have a neatly packaged answer. An abstract or a lab report.
My other studies have told me that humans have a strong desire to be similar, to imitate. I followed suit, engaging in the same marriage experiment as those around me. Until the raw yearning to go and be alone…
