Is it Really Over?

She sat in my room barely breathing through tears. Each exhalation was followed by deep heavy sighs of sorrow. She hadn’t eaten in 12 hours. She hadn’t slept even longer. Her eyes carried heavy bags that only added to the obvious display of her pain. She was sad, depressed, and desperate for answers from the universe. She mumbled under muttered breaths that one could barely hear. I sat there unable to do anything but keep a supply of tissues in her palm. After 10 years, she and her husband’s rocky marriage seemed to have drawn its last straw. It was time for a divorce.

This was the scenario almost two years ago on a dreary Monday morning as she and I sat in my tiny room during a healing session after their last explosive argument.  I was disheartened to see her suffering when once upon a time she was blissful with happiness. Over ten years ago someone was helping her into a beautiful wedding gown as she anxiously awaited the moment to walk down an isle to and equally anxious groom.  And now, the “I do’s” are being replaced with “I want a divorce”.

When we were young it seemed so simple. We go into our first relationships with great expectation, thinking that it will last forever. What really happens is we experience that first break up which taints our image of relationships all together. The unfortunate truth is that most individuals in relationships walk around knowing that there is a possibility the relationship will end. They go into relationship with the mindset that if all fails, break up. Lately what’s been bothering me is the very fact that we all subscribe to this dogma.

I was once asked why so many marriages end in divorce. And with little thought, the answer was simple: It’s because we can.

Breakups, divorces, separation are all sneaky words for options. Since that first experienced breakup the lesson learned was that when things don’t work out, use your options. In other words, you are not obligated to stay with a person if they are not your idea of perfection. In our youth, it truly is just that simple to cut ties with someone who simply no longer shared our interests. But in our twenties and thirties, does this same philosophy apply? Just because breaking up is an option, is it really in our best interests to utilize it?

It may seem like this post is heading down the direction of taking a certain bias towards clinging (aka settling) with whatever current relationship you are in, my point really is challenging the idea of breaking up. What if breaking up were not an option?