Today’s topic is going to be – staying with your spouse even when there is no abuse, addiction, or adultery — none of the three A’s or the Three Deadly sins of marriage are present. I have often had clients ask me whether not they think that I should leave their spouse. My response has always been the same – that is that the decision to stay or leave is a very personal one. I am here to facilitate the process if you make the decision to leave your spouse.
However all that being said, I will add this. I personally have been divorced once myself. And when I was contemplating leaving my spouse, I felt a lot of guilt. This is because we had three very small children I was in my late 20s at the time and the bottom line is I just didn’t love my husband in a romantic sense anymore. And so I felt a lot of guilt around the situation because I wasn’t being abused; he wasn’t cheating on me; he wasn’t a drug addict – but I wasn’t happy.
Close to the end of my marriage, I heard a story about somebody who decided to leave their spouse because they wanted their children to have an example of what a marriage should look like…what a loving, giving and romantic relationship should look like.
And at that moment, I knew I wanted more for my children than what they were seeing. I also knew that it wasn’t fair to my spouse to stay with him knowing that I wasn’t in love with him. I felt that it was going to be more fair for him to have the opportunity to find someone who believed the sun rose and set around him. And I felt that I deserved to find that person for myself as well.
Fast forward to years later I am now happily married for 18 years to my second husband. I met him and started dating him when my older daughter was eight years old. Just a few years ago, that older daughter actually gave my husband and I Valentine card and inside the card she wrote “to the most wonderful example of a loving couple that I know.” Now she can never have known what my thought processes were when I divorced her father or the angst that I went through at that time.
But when I receive that card I knew that I had come full circle. I had made the right choice. Her father is now in a loving, wonderful, relationship and so am I – so my children actually have two examples of what a beautiful relationship should be like. That’s how I knew I made the right decision.
So the moral of the story is that if you know when your heart that your relationship is not serving your soul if it’s not empowering you if it’s not making you feel inspired. Then maybe it’s time to move on.
Thanks for joining me today for Monday divorce motivation. If you want a free divorce survival guide – simply go to https://www.rebeccazung.com/courses/ and get relief delivered instantaneously to your inbox.
I’ll see you tomorrow for tactical divorce Tuesday. Tomorrow’s topic is going to be uncontested divorces.
Until then – remember you’re not alone in your divorce – we’ve got this.
