I was reading a blog of someone who has been through divorce. It’s been two years and it still breaks his heart and I, as a reader, wanted to know more. Wondered when it happened, wondered how he felt when his wife told him she wanted to divorce him. So I read through his archives and found: 

2012,

2011,

2010,

2009,

and finally a post in 2008 that said: “(I love you honey.)” 

I wondered, then, when it started happening for his wife: when the relationship started to feel different, when she started to feel differently. I wondered if he knew; if she told him. Maybe she did. He would have asked, and she would have told him why. Or if he felt the marriage breaking apart bit by bit himself. 

He is a stranger on the Internet for me. Hopefully it isn’t rude that I’m asking these questions (to myself). 

I think about marriages and relationships that break down, that end (eventually). Some seem to have ended, but maybe they have not. Like I told my friend, things don’t have to remain like this forever (with parents separated). You still wouldn’t know what would happen in the future.

Somebody my friend knows gave her mom advice, “In marriage you make a vow: ‘for better or for worse,’ and this is just the ‘for worse.’ You have to be strong for both you and your husband, especially when it is darkest for him.” 

I wonder at what moment someone in a marriage decides to give a final “no” to that vow. I know it is different for everybody, but at least for that guy, the author of the blog, I wonder how much different it would be for him (and his ex-wife) if they didn’t get a divorce. Were things really irreparable? 

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(My views on relationships that aren’t in marriages are different. Boyfriends/girlfriends/dating, no matter how serious, is still a stage, I think, when you’re trying to discern if the other is the best parter for you. Not perfect, but the best is subjective and if it’s a healthy, happy relationship then it’s good. For me, it is less hard to break up from a relationship when you’re not yet married as compared to an after-vow commitment.

Meanwhile, although I realize that there are situations wherein divorce may be the best for both — i.e. an abusive partner, etc. (there can be so many cases and situations), I wonder about the other reasons that people have for divorcing wives/husbands. If one of them would have wanted to try to save the marriage but the other did not — I wonder if it was such a heavy reason for divorce that they cannot try to work the issues out.)