My friend is separating from her husband. It’s my first “up close and personal” contact with marital breakdown. My parents have been married for thirty-four years; most of my friends’ parents, the same. To actually witness what seems almost like the spontaneous combustion of a relationship has shaken me to the core. They seemed…perfect for each other; twin souls unlike any other. They looked…happy and complete, like nothing could ever break them apart. There was no cheating, no “other party” involved that would probably have gotten a good egging from me. It just happened…one morning…she woke up…and felt…nothing, zilch, nada, niente. It was downhill from there.
Right now it’s difficult for me to think of romance, read romance and especially blog about it. All I think about is the end of her marriage. I don’t know what to tell her. We talk often and I’m always left wanting for words. I know she only needs someone to listen to her views and not judge, but it’s hard…it’s hard not wanting to save her marriage, not wanting to change her mind about her feelings, especially since they looked so happy once upon a time. How can someone wake up one morning and lose all feeling for one’s partner? How can some fairy tales not end “happily ever after?” What went wrong? How could disaster have been prevented? Did she marry the wrong “one?”
I’m not naive enough to think that all loves last forever, not stupid enough to believe all marriages performed last ’til death do them part. Today, you’re lucky if your marriage lasts 10 yrs. One that lasts forever is considered a rare find.
I guess that’s why romances are such a joy to read. You know how they’ll end. You know the hero and heroine will live happily ever after; there’s no doubt in your mind. It’s a given. The heroine doesn’t wake up one morning and realize the hero never fulfilled her emotionally. On the contrary, each day she realizes how much the hero means to her.
If only life could imitate art.
I have no questions to post. If you’d like to offer insight, 7 year itch experiences, be my guest. My heart breaks for anyone who’s ever been through this.
No related posts.
Daniela’s love for books began as a child in her native San Francisco, where she lived a block away from her local library. The love (some call it OBSESSION) followed her to college where she studied English and History and soon developed a passion for Britain’s Victorian and Regency periods. She loves Jane Austen and considers Austen’s lesser known PERSUASION one of the greatest romances of all time. Daniela reads any chance she gets; her favorite romance authors are Lisa Kleypas (she claims to be her #1 fan), Mary Balogh, Loretta Chase, Julie Anne Long and Candace Hern.
It’s kind of funny, but my experience is the opposite. My mom divorced twice, my biological father three times that I know of (we lost contact with him when I was like five), my stepfather four times (well, three divorces and an annulment, and that one’s a story in itself) and cetera. I’m told (although I don’t remember) that at some tender, preschool age, when most little girls were talking about how they were going to get married, I told my grandmother that I was going to get divorced when I grew up.
It just sort of seemed like the thing to do, I suppose. [duck]
I didn’t get married until I was thirty-three, but I’m still married and still very much in love. My husband divorced twice, but he was just practicing for me.
I literally can’t imagine being married to anyone else, no matter who showed up on my doorstep and proposed, including any of my incredibly hot and rich fantasy celeb-crushes. They’re for fantasizing, my husband is for reality.
My two best friends, one my age and the other a couple of years older, have both been married only once and are still married. So although the rising trend for divorce is there, there are still ongoing fairy tales.
And I’ll say from having been a close observer in several divorces, that as horrible as they can be, they’re usually for the best in the end. If one or both parties voluntarily decided to go through all the mess and stress and expense and emotional upheaval of a divorce, then staying must have seemed worse. I’ve been a kid through two parental divorces, and IMO even when there are kids, it’s better to get it over with.
It’s like amputating a limb that’s been irreparably damaged, rather than letting it hang there and fester. The surgery sucks but the alternative is worse, and the surgery will be over will soon. Well, relatively soon.
I hope your friend’s split is as fast and clean as it’s possible to be, and that she gets on with her life the better for it. Virtual hugs to her, and to her husband, who probably needs them too. And some for you, just because. {{{}}}
Angie
Sometimes when a person says “they just woke up”, has really been awake for quite some time. No one just, wakes up. There’s more to it than your friend is willing to share with you. And you know what? It’s her path, her journey. When it’s all said and done, there’s nothing you can really do but love her. We all want to rush in and try to fix things for our friends, but you can’t. They will find their way. Just love and hug. Sometimes that’s the best medicine you can give.
Marriage is tough.
It takes work. Lots of work. It has ups and downs. Sometimes you can ride the low spots, sometimes you can’t.
I’m sorry for your friends. I’ve been there…both as the divorcee and the friend of divorcing friends. hugs to both.
As far romances, I love remember the first blush of love. The first kiss. The first embrace. That we’ve all experienced and I enjoy revisiting my experiences through romantic fiction.
When I was divorced, one of the hardest things to deal with was all the people who said, “But you two were so PERFECT for each other!” The problem is, even the closest friends see only the outer layers of a marriage. And like Donna says, there probably is more to it than “I just woke up…” – but that’s a common response when people have been repressing unhappiness for a long time. The epiphany may finally explode, but there will have been a lot of unhappiness going on underneath, possibly not even consciously – when someone is invested in making the marriage work, being a “good wife/person/daughter/etc”, they may not be able to consciously admit to themselves that they are miserable or frustrated inside. This was true of several people I know who ended up getting divorces after apparently picture-perfect marriages. Every single divorce was horribly painful at the time, but in the case of the people I know, every single one of them was the right decision, and they ended up happier and more fulfilled because of them, and (eventually) in partnerships that were much better for them, truer to who they really are, inside.
Maybe focus on Jennifer Crusie romances, for a while? I know during my own divorce I had a hard time reading most romances, but Crusie’s divorced-for-the-best heroines, finding their better second husbands (and especially her novel Fast Women, which is a romantic comedy about divorce) were great reads during that time.
And ditto to Donna: hugs and love are the things your friend needs right now. Her decision is one of the most painful ones anyone can make, even when it is for the best – second-guessing her would be the least supportive thing you could do for her right now. And luckily, I can tell you know that, since you’ve said you’re trying not to do that. Really, she just needs to know that you still love her and care about her, whether she’s married or single – that you love her for who she is, warts & all.
When my parents broke up
(after over 20 years together),
everyone was shocked.
They were supposedly the “perfect couple”
and we were the “perfect family.”
What no one (not even my Mom’s best friend) knew
was that my Mom was always one wrong word
away from that wooden pine box.
My siblings and I were also living that nightmare.
It was such a relief when it was over
(though it never truly is).
The thing is
you don’t know what is going on in their marriage.
Even now, with all the talking,
you don’t truly know.
Odds are, if it was really bad,
you’ll never know.
So all you can do is listen
and give her space to find herself again.
Change is never easy.
She wouldn’t be instigating change
if the situation didn’t warrant it.
Divorce and separation is hard . . . but people do get over it eventually. Your friend will, too. Knowing you’re there for her will help a lot.
My parents divorced when I was about six, then both remarried a year later. Though painful and difficult at the time, they both did their best to make sure they kept it amicable for the kids. They never drug us into their fights or regrets; in fact had sore tongues (from biting them) for years. The result was that even we children of divorce grew up fairly happy and well-adjusted.
My sister and brothers have had at least one divorce a piece (one brother is on his fourth marriage) but my hubby and I have been married, happily, for 20 years. I really don’t know why some things work out and others don’t.
A close friend of mine divorced her husband after a year. When we were talking about it, she confessed that she knew on the day of their wedding, as she was getting ready to walk down the aisle, that she didn’t want to marry the guy. After just staring at her for a few minutes, I asked her why the heck she went through with it. Her answer? “We’d already spent so much money.”
My parents split up when I was eight. My mom’s never remarried, but my father’s remarried three times since then.
I’ve been married for almost eleven years (eek! how did that happen??) to a guy who makes me laugh harder than anyone else ever has, and I think that’s one of the reasons why I love him more now than I did then. There’ve been rough patches, but the fact that we laugh together helps every rotten thing that comes our way. My brother’s been married almost six years and I think, for both of us, it would take a lot to make either one of us end our respective marriages.
Been there done that. And your friend has probably known for quite some time that it hasn’t been working for her and she’s just been putting on a show for herself and everyone else around. I know my ex and I did just that.
I’m so much happier now, and so is he. He’s happily remarried to a really nice girl and I’m happily being single. Our daughter is happy too. She gets her happy mom, and her equally happy dad.
Be there for your friend. Just listen and give lots of hugs.
Well, for an utterly different point of view–and not to say that anyone else is wrong–the truest advice I ever heard about marriage is that you can fall in and out of love with the same person many times. For us, working through, or just living through, the out of love times has been worth it, because the love always comes back. After 22 years together, I now have a lot of faith in it.
I married “late” (in comparison to my sisters and friends) at 23, and thought I was quite happy. I was, in fact. But I changed a hell of a lot between 23 and 30, and my husband, who was 4 years older than me, changed in different ways. Our parting was mostly amicable (and I can’t fault him for the parts that weren’t, because I was leaving him and he was hurting very badly–I respect him so much for not lashing out even more). And, yeah, part of the problem was another man–but what I discovered was the difference between “happy” and “incredibly happy.”
I find myself being more and more of a fan of “starter marriages”–make all the mistakes in the first one, part after a set period of time, then go out with all that knowledge and find your soul mate!
Both my husband and I come from divorced families (we had four parents tables at our wedding!
). My mom has been married three times. Dh and I have now been married 9 1/2 years. At the 7 year mark I thought it was over, seriously would never have believed that 7 year thing, but we hit a spot so bad I thought we’d never come out. We did and a surprise baby also made an appearance! 
We have three kids and some days marriage is a HUGE struggle. I hope we will always be able to work through it. Many of our friends who married when we did are divorced or separated now. For all of them I’d say it is a much better choice. I know my best friend has lost that sad look she always had in her eyes. Her husband gave her a lot of “things”, he never abused her, he loved her, but he was never really “there” for her or her kids. Not a bad guy – just bad for her. Now he is happily engaged to someone else and she is happily dating someone else.
Despite the fact that I think divorce is sometimes the right solution, I am still a sucker for a forever HEA .
The seven year itch is real and I sincerely thought we wouldn’t make it through. But we did, and now on year 14.
I think that year was the year I realized love is a choice, not a feeling. Not that it’s ever smooth sailing. Marriage is work. It’s a verb.
Sorry to hear about your friends.
The difference between “Happily Ever After” in Real Life and in Romance novels is that in Real Life it requires *two* unselfish people willing to do the work to make “Happily Ever After” happen.
I read somewhere that the seven year itch is more like five. It seems the forecast for marriages get worse. I’d like to be positive and believe in HEAs. I hope I’m not naive in believing in fidelity and loyalty.
I have no close experiences with divorce, so can only say how sorry I am for your friend. I’m sure she’s glad to have your support. And yes, I love the HEA in romances, but I think that in real-life, HEAs can take a ton of work and willingness on the part of both parties to put the other’s desires ahead of one’s own.
My husband and I have been together for over 7 years but only married for just over 1. We’ve been through it all before we got married…I mean everything. We met young – I was 19. He was 20. We fell in love at first sight, moved in together almost immediately. Then we got engaged. Long story short – I kissed another guy while he was away at school for 3 months. He played with me and talked about marriage and planning our wedding several times only to pull back away. We lived together, then we lived apart. He went out and partied while I worked 2 jobs to pay my rent. After 5 years, he called me and broke up with me. 9 months later, he called me and told me he had a ring and this time, he was serious. He wasn’t stopping until I was back in his arms. We’ve hurt each other, we’ve witnessed all of our stupid mistakes and decisions, and we love each other more than ever. I can’t tell you how much we love each other. We are under no delusion that love is easy or that love makes our life together easy. LIke I said, we’ve been through it all, done it all, hurt each other and loved each other. We understand it IS a decision you make, to wake up and love. It’s not just a feeling, and it isn’t enough to make a relationship work.
My parents are divorced. His are still married but I often wonder if they still love each other. Sometimes it seems that they kinda do…others it doesn’t.
Anyway, I’m sorry that you’re having such a hard time. It’s so sad when love fades.
Human beings are very complicated organisms; put any two of them together for an extended period and it’s anyone’s guess how the relationship will evolve. And marriage? Aiyiyi.
Apparently my husband and I worked through our messes in the five-and-a-half years we knew each other before he proposed (he was even briefly engaged to someone else during that time). I was in my mid-twenties, he in his mid-thirties, when we married. We just celebrated our 29th anniversary.
How have we made it work? Mutual respect and appreciation, a good sense of humor, common goals and core beliefs all go a long way to smooth over the inevitable rough edges. We simply LIKE each other, as well as loving each other. But it definitely takes two — one person can’t keep a relationship going by him or herself, no matter how committed he/she may be.
I write romance because I truly believe in the ideal, whether that happens first time out or as the result of previous trials and errors. But then, I’m a glass-half-full kinda gal: Instead of bemoaning the fifty percent of marriages that fail, I celebrate the fifty percent that stick.
It’s already been said, but the only people who know how perfect the marriage is are in it, and they might not even agree.
I was one of those people who had the epiphany. One fight about dinner and two weeks later I was gone. It was months of me wondering how much longer I could live with feeling like an option and not a priority, feeling like a single parent whose child was her husband, and feeling like roommates who happened to share a bed.
There’s really not much you can say. She really just needs you to listen.
I’ve come to the conclusion that there would be fewer divorces if everyone didn’t think that marriage and kids was some sort of human obligation.
No one in my family ever divorces. Parents have been married for almost fifty years. Grandparents lasted 65 years. My parents are joined at the hip and always have been–they were so very romantic that all of our friends liked to be around them. (No big surprise I became a romance writer.) My grandparents, on the other hand, were not happy. I mean, who knows why people stick together, but IMO, they would have been MUCH happier apart.
I am divorced, not easily (aren’t all divorced brutal in one way or another?). The hardest part was being from a family that never divorced and didn’t get it, and living in a town that was very Catholic and very, very married. It took awhile to realize I would have to leave the city and create a different kind of life elsewhere. (And I’m very happy in my new, much more adventurous and active life.)
The effect on my writing, however, was interesting. I’m still interested in love and romance and how people come together and what, exactly, a soul mate is, but I’m also interested in marriages in general. Why DO some last and others don’t? Is there maybe more than one soul mate in a person’s life? It’s also fun to write about falling in love a little bit later, when people are a little more wary, a little less inclined to fall head over heels.
And I’m also really happy about writing courtship books again. For awhile, they were a little bit beyond me.
Well, as someone who has been divorced for almost four years now…I honestly wouldn’t want to repeat that hurt, or hell, again. Not in this lifetime. I, too, was the one who asked for the divorce and while a few people were shocked, my very close friends weren’t. They knew what happened behind the scenes and the public smiles and dinners out. My book Flirting with Forty was the direct result of my divorce, and while I’m glad so many women have found it uplifting and encouraging, I wish so many of us hadn’t ever been hurt so badly in the first place.