Why I wish I had walked out of my previous marriage before my ex did
Written by Amanda Briggs | Originally published on Medium on February 16, 2022, now updated and archived here for ongoing access
I never expected to get divorced. I’m a mate-for-life, faithful-till-the-very-end, monogamy-loving type. I’m also a romantic who believes in the concept of big love. I consider marriage vows a cosmic contract, and I’m a realist about the ups and downs of life and view life-long partnership as a collaborative effort and evolution.
But I did get divorced after an eight-and-a-half-year marriage and 18-year friendship-turned-relationship with my ex.
My story
I knew my ex-husband for a decade before I married him. We were 10 and 12 when we met, and we were best friends by the end of high school. I went off to college in another state, controlling parents got involved in our budding romance, and there was a whole saga with our families that led up to our wedding.
I remember looking into his eyes during our wedding ceremony, my vows pouring from the depths of my heart, my face splitting with the biggest smile I had ever smiled, and feeling deep joy. This was it. I knew what I was getting myself into. I knew how serious the decision was. I knew it would take work, but I also knew I was looking into the eyes of my best friend, my partner, my person. He loved me, I loved him, and he made me feel safe and seen. I stood there under a cotton candy pink sunset by the gently lapping shores of Lake Michigan and committed my heart and life to him.
Unfortunately, the person with whom I left our wedding reception several hours later was not the person I had known for a decade before. The change was that fast. He slept through our honeymoon, barely interacted with me, and I, a new bride, sat in my lovely new lingerie and cried in the living room of our suite wondering what was wrong with me and why he didn’t want me.
The truth came out in phases over time. Eight and a half years, to be exact. In the end, it was the story too many of us have experienced:
He told me he married too young.
He told me he needed to play the field.
He told me he needed to see if he could do better than me because I was the only woman he had ever dated.
He told me he did not love me romantically; he had confused his friendship love for me with romantic love.
He told me he wasn’t attracted to me.
He told me he realized in college that if he didn’t marry me, someone else would and he would no longer have access to me in the way he enjoyed as my best friend. So, he married me so he wouldn’t have to share me with someone else.
There was a lot of lying along the way to our divorce. Tons of porn. Strip clubs became his preferred coping mechanism after a tough day at the office. He’d spend weeks wearing me down, trying to get me to agree to accompany him. He made it a condition of love. If I loved him, I’d go with him. I didn’t want to. I cried, make-up running down my face, leftovers from my attempt to be pretty enough to interest him instead. I begged. I explained how degraded and disrespected it made me feel. One time, I just walked out of a strip club in the middle of New Orleans because I couldn’t take it anymore. I walked across the city back to the hotel alone in the middle of the muggy night trying not to attract attention as I cried.
Externally, I carried on as if we had the perfect marriage. That’s what I was supposed to do as his wife, right? Love him unconditionally and protect his reputation. But behind the scenes, I was dying inside. I wrote him letters. I sat with him and poured my heart out and explained how his actions were hurting me and our marriage. I tried kind and gentle. I tried yelling, name-calling, and raging. I tried mean and sarcastic. I tried logic. I tried compromising my values to try to accommodate his and make the marriage work.
I once found a woman’s shoe in his car after I was away for work. It was a black ballet flat, and it looked like a shoe I had seen one of my best friends wear many times. It was her size. He had told me he wanted to sleep with her a few years before. When I asked him about it, he claimed someone must have accidentally gotten into his car and left her shoe there.
I never had any concrete evidence of cheating, but there were the normal signs. Away at the office until late at night. Deleting his entire text inbox daily. No sex for almost a year, no matter how much I threw myself at him.
And still I stayed. I stayed for several reasons:
I loved him desperately.
I had made vows to him.
You aren’t supposed to give up on your marriage.
You aren’t supposed to give up on your person.
I thought the real him was the person I grew up with, that he was just going through a phase, and that one day I’d get back the man I thought I was marrying.
I had given up my career to follow him around after he took a job (without my consent and against my request not to) that required a lot of moves, so I didn’t have my own insurance and my income reflected the job-hopping represented on my resume. I had a hard time landing jobs that would pay the bills if I left.
The porn and strip clubs took a severe toll on my mental health and self-worth. No matter what I did, he did not want me as much as he wanted them. I explained how much his choices impacted me, and he saw additional evidence in my meltdowns, my depression, and the hours I spent locked away in the bedroom or bathroom hiding and crying.
I would bring up divorce sometimes, telling him I couldn’t take it anymore. I never followed through, though. You aren’t supposed to give up on your person. You aren’t supposed to give up on your marriage.
In the end, he did. He called me one day to say he didn’t love me and wanted a divorce so he could play the field and see if he could do better than me. After eight years of marriage, he said he had realized he wasn’t ready to be married or even in a relationship. After years of asking him to go with me, it was at this point he finally agreed to try marriage counseling.
I think we only made it through three or four sessions. Because I had told him everything on my heart and mind throughout the entire marriage, the counselor didn’t have anything to dredge up. It didn’t take long for us to identify what was needed to make the marriage work. We sat there, on separate sofas, while the counselor posed the final question to my ex: “Can you love Amanda, prioritize her, and stop the porn and strip clubs?”
My ex’s answer was concise. “No.”
I looked at the counselor. The counselor looked at me. We all knew it was over at that point.
The counselor turned to me. “Amanda, I think you need to get a lawyer. He is going to run over you.”
I looked at my ex. My person. The man who was supposed to be my partner and best friend. Again, his answer was concise. “He’s right. You should get a lawyer.”
What I Learned
I’ll say the two most important things I learned right up front:
1. If your partner is treating you in a toxic way, the most healing and empowering thing you can do is stand up and walk away.
Walk. Away.
This is what I wish I had done. I wish I had not tolerated my ex’s behaviors until he decided he was ready to leave me. If you are not the one to walk away from your partner’s toxic behaviors, your choice to stick around will be one more thing you have to process and heal in the aftermath.
2. Everything comes back to loving and valuing yourself.
When you love and value yourself well, you won’t tolerate being treated poorly by a partner. And here’s the big secret: You are your person. Not someone else. You are your person. You are the love of your own life.
It has been a long, hard road to heal from that relationship. It was hard to come to terms with the narcissism my ex exhibited. It was hard to come to terms with how I stayed and let him disrespect me like that for almost a decade. It was hard to come to terms with my erroneous belief that you stay unless your spouse is physically abusing you or flagrantly cheating on you. It was hard to come to terms with how little I had loved and valued myself during those years. It was especially hard to come to terms with how I compromised my values attempting to “make it work.” I spent many hours curled up on the floor in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in my closet crying my heart out and facing the truth.
Those realizations sting. Hard. But if you sit in them and make friends with the truth they hold, they also set you free. And you learn things like:
-The most important relationship you will ever have is the relationship you have with yourself.
-You can’t fix anyone else. You can’t fix your partner lying. You can’t fix your partner cheating. You can’t fix your partner acting out in toxic ways due to their own unhealed hurts. You can’t fix your partner’s inability to love themselves or you.
-No one is perfect, but a true, healthy partner will apologize when they are wrong, show true remorse, and act collaboratively with you to repair the relationship. They’ll take ownership because this relationship is theirs, too.
-Someone who continues to engage in behaviors you have told them harm you does not love you. That one is tough. Sit in it for a minute if it stings. That one broke me for a long time.
-If your partner doesn’t know how to prioritize you when it matters, they are not actually your partner. Yes, there are times when a person in a relationship has to prioritize something else, but that should be communicated and time-limited.
-A safe partner knows how to love themselves. They also know how to prioritize nurturing their relationship with themselves so they can show up to the relationship energized.
-A safe partner respects and honors your boundaries. They don’t gaslight and manipulate you. They also have healthy boundaries with you.
-One person cannot hold a relationship together. If one person is holding the relationship together, it is not actually a relationship.
-If you turn into the worst version of yourself with someone or because of their actions (see what I said before about name-calling, raging, sarcasm, and compromising my values), it is not a safe or healthy place for you to be.
-We do the best we can with what we know at the time we make important decisions. It’s ok to forgive yourself for picking the wrong partner.
-Picking the wrong partner doesn’t make you a bad person.
-Leaving a toxic person is an act of self-love and healing.
-You cannot love someone into loving you.
At the end of it all, I learned how to love myself. I fell deeply in love with myself and learned to recognize my inherent value, my worthiness. It changed everything for me. I’ll write another article someday about how these realizations combined with learning I am the love of my own life brought me to a place where I could have a healthy, safe, passionate, fulfilling relationship.
If you find yourself in a toxic relationship or marriage, I am sending you love and light. Find a moment where you can be alone somewhere quiet and have a little talk with yourself. Say:
I love you.
You are worthy.
Your boundaries are important and should be respected.
You matter.
I’ll take care of you.
I’ll give you the love you need.
You’re amazing.
You’re valuable.
You’re precious.
You’re my priority.
I made the best decision I could at the time I decided to get into this relationship.
I’m allowed to leave a toxic situation where I am not loved or respected.
Fall in love with yourself. Do what you need to do to show yourself love and respect. Walk away from your toxic relationship or marriage. Tell a safe person the truth of what’s going on. Take a stand. You are worthy of it.