Yesterday I talked about one of the aspect of married life I don’t like and that is the unfair repartition of domestic tasks.
There are several other sides of marriage that can make it unbearable and lead to divorce. But apart from domestic violence and sexual abuse, I don’t think there is any ground for divorce as far as I am concerned.
I am speaking for those of us who can’t leave alone and can’t do without the companionship. If you are divorcing and intending to live alone for the rest of your life, I can completely relate!
But other than that, I am highly sceptical!
If you are divorcing because your partner has badly betrayed your trust. Good. But what makes you think that your next companion will be trustworthy? As everybody knows there is good and bad in each of us and I don’t believe in the ideal man.
You are not perfect either. So why not work around your respective flaws and qualities to bring the best out of each of you?
I am a firm believer in the two columns list: column 1: what I like about him, column 2: what I dislike about him. Which column outweighs the other? Your task is to make sure column 1 always overtakes column 2.
My take: divorce only if you are sure you can bear to live alone if not don’t bother! Make your marriage work instead! How? Speak to your husband or partner. I know it is easier said than done. Some of them are very short-tempered or on the mute side!
Nevertheless, always let your feelings be known! Speak out for yourself. Nobody else will!
The familiar question is why staying in an unhappy marriage? As I have already said before, why should your marriage be unhappy? You can change that!
Ask for advices and read, read books on relationships, love and marriage. You will find very useful advices in books. That is how I got through 26 years of marriage, and parenting also, and the result is not so bad!
However, I understand that it is the nature of every human relationship to be unstable. See your relation with your parents, your brothers and sisters, your friends; it gets strained at some point or the other. You have to constantly work at it.
On a scale of 100, my perception is that 60% of a man is incompatible with a woman, and only 40% is compatible. But this for me is true for each man you want to have a relationship with.
So, you can divorce all right. But you will still have to contend with those 60% in the new man you will meet, in one form or the other! So, why bother?
As I have said before Marriage for me has been like hell, not because of my husband, who is a decent man, God bless him, but because of the institution itself that requires a patience and a kind of submissivness that I don’t really agree with. That is why I can’t contemplate going through this “ordeal” again with a new man!
I think that’s what an old Aunt of mine, who has divorced from her husband because she couldn’t stand him marrying a second wife, was trying to explain to me: I quit my marriage because I didn’t want my husband to disrespect me like that, and I ended up being the second wife of a married man!
Love, physical attraction or kitchen skills, as important as they can be, even combined together, can’t sustain a marriage. The only thing that can is the will to keep it together and to be happy together.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not idealizing marriage. To say the truth, to me, it is the most unnatural thing. And I always warn my nieces about it: your sweet boyfriend you know will turn into a horrible human being on your wedding day. He will become your husband! And no matter how sweet a guy is, there is no such thing as a nice husband! Husbands are just horrible people!
But we love them anyways! Because, they are also supportive, funny, loving, at times!
And then, for me, marriage has quenched a thirst for stability, and has anchored me in life.
When I was younger, I was like drifting, with no clear direction in sight, and I was quite restless. Marriage and children brought me the quietness I needed, to be able to carry on.
Glory Matthews'blog 