Last night, my 11-year-old and I sat down for a solstice meal. It was pretty silly: I made "lanterns" that I put together with four Mason jars, printer paper, a hole punch, and tape. I made winter solstice soup, but I had to substitute all the ingredients I didn't have for what I did.
Over dinner, we talked about our goals for next year, and I asked him to choose one thing to make happen for himself in 2021. He wants to have the Dungeons and Dragons-themed birthday party he missed out on in 2020, and with our current bubble precautions in place, it's probably feasible.
We ate our soup and thought about ourselves and one another; we talked about the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn and whether or not we could see it. I was a little anxious; his dad is the one who usually finds the various cool space things that fly by in the night. But a lot of my friends were posting photos, so I asked one how to find the planets, and she walked me through it.
We hopped in the car with the dogs, because I thought we'd have to go somewhere dark to see something so rare, and our street has one lonely streetlight that I thought still might be too bright. But it turns out we could see the planets just fine by walking only a few feet down the road, with our own two eyes. It was easier than I thought it'd be.
I decided to leave my marriage at the beginning of this year. The details aren't important; they aren't the internet's to own, but it's worth noting that it took me several years to build to this moment. There wasn't one obvious horrible thing that would make everyone else go, "Oh, OK. I see why you did it." My ex is a good guy. He doesn't yell. He's responsive and mostly able to communicate what he feels. He's not a mean guy or even a bad guy.
There are a lot of reasons I wanted to leave, and most of them are the kinds of problems I could have chosen to continue to push to the side if I had wanted to. The trouble was that I didn't, and I couldn't come up with any good reason to keep doing so. A friend finally asked me The Question that nearly every mother who is contemplating ending her marriage is asked, if they have good friends: If your son came to you with the same problems and the same situation, what would you tell him to do?
We want the best for our kids, right? Why is it so impossible to extend that want to ourselves?
We put a lot of emphasis on long-term marriage in our culture, as if it's The Prize Above All Prizes, something to celebrate no matter what was given up to get there. For every 50th wedding anniversary that was truly preceded by 50 years of genuine partnership, there are likely two or three that were filled with the kinds of problems you just … push to the side. I realized that it didn't matter to me how long I was married if I wasn't happy in the marriage; it didn't matter to me that I had a ring on my finger or another adult in my home if the relationship between us wasn't one that made me feel alive.
We also like to scare ourselves into believing that if we walk away from a partnership that is OK enough, we'll never find anything more. Inside, most of us have to know this just simply isn't true. There are a lot of people out there. I personally think the idea of finding love at all ages is pretty special.
I'm a firm believer that simply wanting to feel alive is a good enough reason to end your marriage. If all you want is to feel happier, softer, gentler, more capable, and stronger, that's enough. You can choose to walk away just because you want — you need — to feel more. You can choose to walk away, and if you approach it right, your children can even emerge happier, softer, gentler, more capable, and stronger, too.
I was a wedding photographer for over 10 years. I took photos at hundreds of weddings — there were two or three years where I shot nearly 40 weddings in each one of them. I learned a lot about people during that time, and it got to where I could accurately predict which couples would make it and which would not. I don't mean make it 30, 40, 50 years — but it's easy to see which couples shouldn't have ever gotten married, or to know who will divorce in the first five years of their marriage.
Similarly, I knew for most of my marriage it wouldn't last. I don't mean that it was horrible, or that I spent a lot of time dwelling on this fact, but it often felt like we were doing our best to jam pieces of ourselves together because that's just what you do when you've already been doing it for so long. That's not a way to live a life; it's not fair to anyone who is intimately involved.
We're not all together in the same way we have been for so many years now. Very soon, there will two homes, each with a bed for my kid and a place for dogs to sleep. My kid doesn't know it yet, but there are even about to be two video game consoles (Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal). Our family is different; the physical space we each occupy has changed. Some of the feelings and the way we label them are permanently altered. But we're a family no matter what, and we'll be a family for the rest of our lives. We have to be.
To me, right now, it seems that whether or not we are a "broken" family comes down to two things: circumstance and how we respond to it. My son is the kind of kid who responds to situations the way he sees the adults he trusts the most respond. I've never been happier and more at peace with who I am and who I am becoming, and as a result, he's pretty happy and at peace these days. He has a strong relationship with two parents who do their best to remove their egos and to get along.
My son gets to enjoy new relationships with two people who love him more than anyone in the world, and whom he trusts beyond measure. He gets to have his family in a way that means everyone in it can be who they want and need to be. No one on this planet could convince me that it's not better this way. No one could convince me that he will be harmed because I made a choice that is ultimately better for both of us.
We're only broken if we let ourselves be.
