UNCOUPLING

This is not okay, I thought. There I was, sitting on the edge of my bed, again, sobbing to my best friend, Smith, on the phone. I'd been doing it for years--crying about how unhappy I was in my marriage. Somehow being "not okay" had become normal. Sobbing on the phone to my sister, Debra, had also become normal, but on that wintery Saturday morning, it became crystal clear to me that this, too, was no longer okay.

In between sobs, I was telling Smith that I didn't want to be divorced, again (this was marriage number two for me and I was only thirty-five years old). She said very bluntly, "Look, Andria, I respect your desire to be true to your marriage vows and not want another divorce, but you're only thirty-five. Do you really want to live like this for the rest of your life?"

I was silent. Not because I didn't know what to say, but because I knew saying the answer out loud would change everything. Finally, I mustered up the strength to respond, "No, I don't want to live like this for the rest of my life." And at that point everything did change. Although it took me another six months to actually leave my marriage, in my mind the decision was made that day, sitting on the edge of my cold winter's bed in a suburb of Philadelphia.

Before that fateful day, I had countless other signs that things weren't right in my personal life and needed to change. I woke up many weekends, looked around me and wondered whose life I was living. In many ways it seemed crazy to me, and yet I recognized that I had made the choices and commitments and I was dedicated to honoring them. At the same time, there was still a nudging inside keeping me very unsettled. I now know it was my intuition trying to nudge me to go and live the life I wanted, one designed by me and not by everyone else I was trying to please and seek approval from.

Several years before that Saturday morning, I became tolerant of my marriage and my personal life. I knew I wanted something different but was afraid to do anything about it.  Why? Because I worried about what other people would think: Divorced AGAIN? What a failure. Two failed marriages were too much for me to even think about because it made me feel like a complete disaster. So I ignored it for a long time, and I became complacent. I buried myself in my career. I became so preoccupied with climbing the corporate ladder that, after a while, tolerating my personal life didn't even register with me, until mornings like that Saturday when something happened that opened it all up for me.

Looking back, I realize that all those times of sobbing on the phone were less about the state of my marriage and more about the state of me. I had lost myself in trying to make a marriage (that I knew wasn't right) work. Yet ending it seemed so daunting. I didn't want to hurt my husband and my stepchildren. I didn't want to hurt myself by going through the process of ending our marriage and our life together. We had a life together. It really wasn't THAT bad, was it? Perhaps not, but I knew that morning it was time to stop tolerating something that was less than what I wanted.

My soul was screaming for something more and if I didn't make a change, I'd risk losing myself completely. At least I still had enough of my identity intact to recognize that I didn't want to live like this for the rest of my life. That answer was the easy part. What came next was a bit more complicated. [Read more...]

Letting Go Of The Status Quo is available for purchase on Amazon