Shook up

[cjsmith]

A while back I mentally searched the list of women I knew, to see if I knew any who were happily married for a long time. My criteria were simple. The person had to be:

• Female
• Married
• In this relationship for TEN YEARS (I picked this because of statistics on divorce before and after the ten year mark - ten years is "pretty stable")
• Happy (not just biding her time until the kids are old enough for a divorce, not wondering what life would be like if, not trapped but grinning-and-bearing-it, not Working Through A Rough Time Right Now, but GLAD she's there)

I came up with one after a fair amount of thought. I have several other possibles. For most of these possibles I have to stretch one or more of the criteria - sometimes the length of time, and sometimes I don't know the lady in question well enough to say whether she's grinning and bearing it. But there was one DEFINITE.

So I thought of my own life, and I thought, okay, I'll try to stick it out. One out of hundreds of women I know -- hey, I can match those odds. I'm willing to work at it. She exists, so I know it's possible.

Last night I learned she's filing for divorce.

Y'know, I hate to sound like a cynic, but some days the cynical answer really does fit what I can see.

Comments

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thank gawd. I am very glad to hear you say that.

Thing that really gets me about this gal is that she actively praised her husband. She'd send a note to her friends saying how her day was, and somewhere in there would be something he did that she really appreciated. This was a pattern that went on for years. I have never seen another woman do that! And now, after being out of touch for several months, this. One of them's had some kind of personality shift, I keep thinking.

I'm sad to see a good thing die. :-(

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

And yet sometimes it's the right thing to see something die. Some friends of ours recently had a completion ceremony for their marriage. They held it on their 5th anniversary. Most of their friends were devastated when they heard the news, because these folks were "poly poster children." But helping them write the ceremony, and being there while they experienced it, while they gave this gift to their community--it became very clear that they were completing their marriage in the most loving way possible, that this was the right thing for them to do. In choosing this step now, they could leave each other with all the gifts that they had given each other over the years, and not descend into pain and bickering and nastiness. Perhaps your friends have also chosen to change the form of their relationship in order to preserve the love.

Just because a relationship ends, does not mean it's a failure.