The 'but it's not that bad' marriage

And other things people say to justify staying

Photo by Joshua Sukoff on Unsplash

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When you get divorced, an interesting thing happens. People, mostly wives in my case, start to tell you things. They tell you about their marriages, how their husbands don’t do their fair share at home or with the kids, how they are exhausted from being the default parent, the flexible one, the one doing most of the emotional labor in both parenting and in the relationship.

But in the same breath, they tell you they could never leave, that even though they aren’t happy, they aren’t exactly unhappy, and besides, their husband isn’t abusive, right? This last part oftentimes spoken as a question rather than a statement, as if the absence of whatever they define as abuse is good enough.

So they double down on why they stay. For the kids, for the dual incomes, for the fleeting moments of joy, because they don’t want to break up the family. And almost always with the caveat that they don’t mean me, because of course I had good reasons to leave, yet the caveat lays bare their judgement or pity, whichever it was, however well-intentioned. The irony, of course, is that I didn’t have better reasons, I just didn’t want to live like that anymore, didn’t want my marriage or who I was in it to serve as a model for my son.

But beneath it all, there’s also the fear of being alone, of being stigmatized, of losing the safety and protections that a “traditional” marriage in America provides, where your relevancy is too often based on your proximity to and participation in a system that grants a certain type of status to married women, and to white women, in particular.

So staying is framed as a personal choice rather than the byproduct of a society that makes it hard for women to leave, meaning it’s not really a choice at all, at least not in the broader context. But it’s easier to accept unhappiness if you choose it than it is to feel stuck in a system that was designed to get and keep you stuck.

This is, of course, a broad generalization of my experiences and observations, so there are outliers. I know women who feel quite supported in their marriages, who feel that the mental load is fair, that they got lucky. And I know women who do not feel that the division of labor is fair but that the relationship is still overall balanced, or who are quite content conforming to traditional gender roles.

I don’t know how to explain the differences in these conversations other than to say that the former feels different, the tone a little more tentative, the pace a little more punctuated, the need to backtrack any dissatisfaction immediate.

It is this default to defensiveness that I find so interesting because I remember being there. I can vividly recall moments where I oversold how well things were going in an effort to deflect and convince myself that it was true, where I pretended all was okay, willing my life to look and feel like the highlight reel on Instagram. (Side note, I’m actually convinced that the more happy couple photos you see in a feed, the more unhappy the poster is in real life.)

Photo by Paul Skorupskas on Unsplash

The problem is that from the other side of divorce (and with the help of a great therapist), I can see through my own bullshit with searing clarity, how hard I was trying to convince myself that I was ‘happy enough’. How I did this because I actually didn’t believe I should have better. That because I also fell short as a partner in a lot of ways, I was not worthy of more. How I stayed for far longer than I should have because I, too, feared the stigma and shame of stepping out from under the cover of marriage’s many societal benefits.

As a self-proclaimed feminist with her heart set on challenging the patriarchal systems that govern us, learning this about myself was a tough pill to swallow. And while I’ll never assume that another person’s experiences are the same as mine, I can’t help but notice that the women who tend to struggle and default to defensiveness in the same ways I did also tend to be self-proclaimed feminists who have their hearts set on challenging the very same patriarchal systems. 

Tracy Clark-Flory wrote about this recently in Beware hetero-exceptionalism (On 'good husbands' and 'divorce memoir' backlash.), saying:

“But I’ve also seen how these books can make married people feel a mix of defensive and accusatory. That is in part because, while these books are individual and specific, several also wrestle with systemic issues. Even if you’re happy in your marriage, you are likely to find something in these books that resonates, which is uncomfortable!”

And so I get where they are coming from, understand the instinct to hunker down and hope for the best. But I also want to sit them down and tell them that they don’t have to pretend it’s all okay. That whether they choose to stay or leave, they do deserve a partner who is physically and emotionally present, supportive, and participatory.

That it’s okay to dig deep and figure out whether they are staying out of fear, and to sit with why that is, however uncomfortable. To consider their options and imagine a different life, whether or not they ultimately take the leap. To acknowledge that talk is cheap, and a partner that says the right things but doesn’t do anything differently is no better than the one who never even bothered, the false hope perhaps harder to bear.

That while there is no one-size-fits-all solution, they don’t have to minimize their experiences or shrink themselves for the comfort of their partners.

And perhaps most importantly, that it’s okay to be mad as hell.

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