Making sacrifices...

[Entropist]

When I was much younger, and much more emotionally insecure, I got married. We were married for almost ten years. Two years into our marriage, various cracks were starting to show, but I thought these were just things to overcome. She was a very temperamental person to say the least. Without going into details, I did try to make compromises for her sake-- looking back, far too many. Four year into our marriage, my doubt grew and I felt increasingly isolated. I wanted to do "The Right Thing" and so I toughed it out. Six years into our marriage and I was feeling suicidal. I felt I could talk to no one about it. What I realized is I was remaining married to keep up appearances to my family and to my friends, but mostly, to my ex-wife-- I didn't want to hurt her feelings (thankfully we never had children). At one time she left me and yet, out of guilt of my own, I came back to her in order to right things. It was really getting out of hand-- it was tearing me apart inside and I didn't have the courage to really do anything about it.

I never did find the courage. Instead, one night, I was horribly depressed (again). The next morning, she asked me what was wrong-- I never meant to say anything, but I blurted it out that I wanted to end our marriage. It was the worst day of my life. She was in shock and horror and I didn't even know where to begin. I think, like me, she knew it, but neither of us dared to admit it to one another, or even to ourselves. I felt so terrible because of what I was doing, but now that I inadvertently had said it, I wanted to follow through with it.

What made it worse was that, in my own mixed up thinking, I remained at the house for another five days, packing things and thinking it would make the transition smoother somehow, rather than just walking out that day. What a stupid mistake. I had a headache for the next several days. For all those years, I had been lying to myself in order to make someone else happy. I'll never do it again. It is one thing to be a totally selfish bastard, but that doesn't mean one ought to sacrifice their life for someone else either. It doesn't have to be an either/or situation, but it isn't an easy one either. It took me a few years later to really understand this.

The worst lies you can tell are to yourself.

Ironically, when I told family and friends, they had already known that our marriage was a rather rocky one-- and I thought I had hidden these things so well!

The divorce itself went smoothly and eventually I gave her the car as well. The She has since remarried (two years later). We might email each other a few times a year. I am not joking when I say that all the years of my back going out and constant heartburn STOPPED within a month after I left. It was stress!

Leaving her was the best decision in my life that I ever made, and at the same time it was one of the hardest. Maybe the best decisions in life are the hardest.