When Love Fades: Divorcing After 15 Years of Marriage

We all want to fall in love and have a lifetime of love. But what happens when love fades, and marriage dissolves? Here’s my story of how my husband and I finally called it quits after fifteen years of marriage.

This article first appeared in The Fibromyalgia Magazine in October 2019.

Soggy Pizza

When I eat pizza, it reminds me of when my parents told me they were divorcing. We lived with my grandmother, and she did all of our cooking. Rarely did we order pizza. I guess that’s why I remember it so clearly – two rare events in tandem.

Divorce wasn’t common among my friends. I don’t remember anyone whose parents were divorced. It wasn’t unheard of, but it was one of those “it won’t happen to me” things. But there it was being served to us as quickly as a slice of the pizza.

The feelings running through me at that moment resonated with me three decades later. The world around me crumbled in dusty piles like buildings during demolition. Everything became blurry as tears filled my eyes. My ears started ringing as my parents explained what divorce meant for our family.

Caught in the War

Over the next couple of years, my sister and I were caught in my parents’ war. At the tender age of eight and eleven, we were exposed to the harsh conditions of two people releasing much hurt and anger towards one another.

Being tossed from one home to another became our new regular. We saw new sides of our parents. All the happy memories of laughter, hugs, and playful teasing faded into a kaleidoscope of fighting, drinking, and constant crying. The uncertainty of where my sister and I belonged was a struggle that never left me.

While my parents were raging, I was forced to care for myself and my sister. Not in the sense of cooking meals and doing laundry, but in the emotional and mental care. We were left alone to process the events and make sense of the chaos.

No one talked to us about any of it. I’m guessing the conversations that should have occurred did not because we were children and “wouldn’t understand.” They were right. We didn’t understand, so we had to draw our own conclusions.

We did attend therapy for a short period. Much of that time is blocked from my memory, but I still have a drawing the therapist drew for me during one of our sessions. She colored me in bed with my favorite stuffed bunny as a fairy, saying everything would be all right.

When Love Fades

Deep-Rooted Issues Resurfaced

Those feelings are still raw. I never got over my family breaking apart and continue to seek therapy periodically. However, whenever a therapist starts to talk about that period of my life as a source of my deep-rooted issues, I immediately stop attending sessions. It’s contradicting, but the truth nonetheless.

It’s been a year since I saw a therapist. It was an intake consultation to see if we were a good fit as a therapist and patient. Within an hour, she traced my issues to that divorce, and by the end of the session, I was over it. I walked out and haven’t gone back.

Now, I am faced with my divorce after fifteen years of marriage. Resentment and manipulation had been building for years. Negativity consumed the whole family. One night, after a particularly bad argument, I had a realization: I had to remove my kids and myself from the toxicity of the marriage. It wasn’t clear how, but it needed to happen.

This occurred one week before the last day of school. I calmly told my kids I was spending the night with my mom and would see them after school the following day. That night was spent talking to my mom about the options of leaving the marriage.

Revisiting My Parent’s Divorce with My Parents

We talked about her divorce and its intimacies. She told me why she left my dad, how, and the feelings surrounding it. Most of it I had never heard. I had a better understanding of the divorce. The feelings of how I experienced it as a child didn’t change, and they sat next to me, holding my hand as my mom and I talked about it.

My dad and I talked about his side of the divorce, too. His experiences were more elusive to me as he was the one who left the home, and we didn’t see much of him. He told me how he felt, what he did and didn’t do, and his regrets. His emotions were sketched on his face as though he still carried the weight of it.

Divorce was a Certainty

Armed with my parents’ experiences and advice, I decided to move forward with a divorce. There were many uncertainties, but staying in a hostile environment was no longer a choice. It wasn’t physically or mentally healthy for me or my kids.

The next evening, as my husband and I sat in our bedroom, I told him my decision to leave. As the words poured out, I expected to feel sadness and a weight. I anticipated some regret or change of mind.

Instead, I felt immediate relief, as though I was stepping out of a shroud woven of lies, manipulation, and hatred. There was only absolution and certainty of what I was doing, and, for a fleeting moment, I felt strength in that decision.

Plucking Strength from Weakness

Once I stepped out of the bedroom that night, I never re-entered as his wife. I purposely avoided it, as the walls held too many secrets, lies, and broken promises. I didn’t want to feel what was stored in the air. It was a reminder of what had been endured and the facade of a happy marriage.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t all lies and pretense. Good memories, happiness, and laughter scattered throughout our time together. I had grown accustomed to highlighting those good moments, focusing on the positivity, and plucking out the strength from the weakness.

I had an idea of what marriage was, and I tried my hardest to obtain it. I smiled when I wanted to cry, covered up the ugly when needed, and protected the wrongdoing with excuses. Ultimately, I justified it all by thinking all marriages were as broken as ours. I thought all families weren’t exactly as they presented themselves to be, and we all had struggles in some form, but we all did as best as we could.

Negative Feelings of It All

The next several months were hell for me. Even as I write this article in late August, the hell continues. Truths have been revealed that leave me feeling used and spat on. The manipulation from the beginning and the web it wove is challenging to break free from.

There is so much anger for allowing myself to be trapped in a toxic relationship for so long and even more for allowing my kids and myself to experience it as long as we did. How could I not have seen it for what it was?

Oh, and the guilt. I feel shame on so many levels for various reasons: the guilt of staying, the guilt of leaving, and the enormous weight of guilt for breaking up the family and not being able to explain to my children the entirety of the situation. Children can only understand so much, which is inappropriate for them to know at this age.

I’m ashamed for telling others to advocate for themselves while I allowed someone to treat me in ways that I would never let my kids, friends, or family be treated. I feel embarrassed, unworthy, and disgusted by the hatred that spills from my mind to self. The inadequacies and insecurities that have surfaced are burdensome and challenging to overcome.

It IS Good From It

Yet, despite it all, I have seen a lot of good come from this. I am grateful for the strength my children give me to get out of bed each morning when I want to stay in bed. I am thankful for the chance to move on from lessons learned from the marriage – it wasn’t all for nothing.

I am grateful for my mom’s experience, which gave me an idea of what would come, and my dad’s advice on what NOT to do. I am grateful for my own experience as a child of divorce, making me mindful of my actions and words. I am thankful for the support from friends and family as I’ve moved through the stages of grief and acceptance.

Mostly, I’m grateful for the chance to change hate into love and find myself in all this mess lying in crumbles around me. I am learning what it means to truly show myself grace and discovering who I am as a woman, mom, daughter, sister, and friend. I’m learning my worth with each feeling of unworthiness.

Being resourceful is taking on a whole new meaning, along with acceptance and courage. Independence and positivity have always been my strengths, and I’m leaning on those more and more each day. My resiliency is being strengthened with each knockdown. There is a quote by Christine Caine, founder of A21 Campaign (an organization dedicated to stopping human trafficking), I remember when I feel as though I have no strength to carry on:

Clinging to the Last Feeling of Normalcy

Later that evening, after my parents told me about their divorce, I remember being in my younger sister’s room with my mom. She was holding me as I cried into her shoulder about the family breaking up. I didn’t know what would happen past that moment, but I clung to the last bit of normalcy before my life changed forever.

I found myself in the same house, in the same scenario decades later, crying to my mom about my family breaking up again. Being older hadn’t changed the pain or hurt, and, once again, I clung to the last feeling of normalcy before my life changed once again.