Time to Leave
When two people get married they promise each other a life of mutual love, care and giving. For better, for worse until death do them apart. Along the way few things go wrong and then comes a point when at least one of the two feels that it is time to leave. But nothing happens, for multiple reasons; the strongest of them being the lack of courage and the fear to hurt other people by doing it: children, parents or the other person in the couple. A bit more time passes by, few more things go wrong and then the separation becomes unavoidable. No matter what the consequences are on the children or any other person connected to this couple, it is time to leave. One of the two decides to leave, abandoning the promise they made at the beginning of their journey and making to themselves another promise: it is time to live again!
All this happens in such a predictable fashion, and yet no one has found a way to avoid this sad and disappointing outcome! There are so many reasons leading to that anticipated outcome. While not trying to be exhaustive, below are the most common ones. I excluded the pathological reasons, often anchored in addiction to some substance, leading to a violent, abusive, and destructive behavior.
Early marriage. Both are young and infatuated. They got married in their early 20s, when they were still adolescents. Little by little, as each developed to become an adult, the passion fled away, and the “irreconcilable” differences emerged.
Lack of life experience. It is not the same as an early marriage. It could be a late marriage of two people that didn’t have the necessary life experiences to learn how to deal with the complexities of certain situations: first, as two individuals living under the same roof, and then more importantly as a couple bound by an oath of love, friendship and the illusionary promise of preserving an ever-lasting mutual physical desire.
Immaturity or foolishness. This is again different from the two previous reasons. You can marry early or late, have experiences or not, but never really mature in your thinking and behaviour. As if certain people don’t learn anything from their experiences. Or they just indulge in their current state of immaturity, and they decide to continue their lives permanently in that fashion. This is a perfectly legitimate choice of life, but one that doesn’t involve serious responsibilities, such as creating and raising kids, or building a family. These responsibilities can only be part of a different life, anchored in values that require maturity to uphold.
Inexistence of a "marriage model" to emulate. Some people are lucky as they see during their lives, other trustworthy people close to them, succeeding in their life together. Not only do they witness this, but also, they are given the chance to learn about the ingredients necessary for this success. This is a beautiful gift of life. Unfortunately, it is a gift that many of us never receive, and therefore as we get married, we navigate blind, in full discovery of what it takes to make the most complex relationship between two humans work. Unfortunately, the end of this road is often failure.
The continuous search for a better someone or a better something. This is a very typical human mind set. We are always asking ourselves the same questions. Could we have done better? Are we putting more chances on our side? What more can we aspire to, if we start a new relation? These types of questions, when they are repeatedly asked and expecting answers, despite a level of established goodness in our lives, are among the unhealthiest things we can do to ourselves, our couple and our family. Sometimes, some of us become wiser, understand the harmfulness of always seeking better, and stop asking these kinds of questions. But the rest of us continue, most of the time unknowingly and with the best of intentions, to lay down the bricks of the demise of their relationship.
The constant need and pursuit of stronger emotions, with passion being the most obvious, talked about and sought-after emotion. It is extremely difficult to maintain a high level of strong emotions between two people that have gotten to know each other so well. The element of surprise, the thrill of discovery, the fear of the unknown, and many other emotion-generating situations cease to exist, or at a minimum become very rare. Constantly seeking strong or stronger emotions is a legitimate goal, but it might be incompatible with a long-lasting relationship.
Certainty of having conquered the other, eliminating the doubts that fuel the effort of seduction, and eventually leading to disinterest, which is one of the main roads to the “land of boredom”
The other becoming totally revealed, leaving no place for mystery, renewal, or surprises. Again, this will carry the couple, slowly but surely, to the famous “land of boredom”
Deep mismatch between the two members of the couple, at all levels, physical and mental. From the smallest details, such as early risers vs. late sleepers, the music they like, the books they read or not, or the kinds of conversations that bring them pleasure, to the more fundamental mismatches, such as repulsion that one can feel from the sight, the hearing, the smell, the touch, or the taste of their companion.
Lack of communication. When silence becomes the main ingredient of their togetherness. I am not talking about the kind of silence that accompany two passionate lovers staring into each other’s eyes or souls, but the silence that reigns in church where everyone is focused on their own prayer, to ask of God the fulfilment of their own needs and wants.
Lack of inventiveness caused by a sense of reassuring security in the daily routine. This is the case of one member of the couple feeling good about the quiet, easy life where things are humming nicely day in, day out; while the other member is at the opposite side of this steady state, suffering from a lack of renewal in their household, where every day is more predictable than the other.
Some people are not made to commit the bigger part of their lives to one person. No matter how good, interesting, caring, and exciting the other person is, these people like change. They face a lot of difficulty in assuming the responsibility of sticking in the same relationship, over a relatively long period of time.
High expectations, systemic disappointment. Many couples live their joined lives with a very short-sighted view of their time together. They put their expectations at the level where they were during their first months of shared life and they never accept that things evolve and the passion they felt in the beginning, cannot and will not carry on indefinitely. So, they enter into a persistent, nostalgic and bitter comparison between the beginnings and now. And surely, they become continuously disappointed with their findings.
Loss of motivation or strong pretext. The kids are big and they left the nest, or there were never kids. The house is empty. They try to do things together. Go places, visit countries, share things, but it feels temporary, ephemeral and sometimes forced and fake. No matter how hard they try, they are not able to find the right pretext to carry on, together.
The feeling of missing something in their lives leading to an emptiness inside that cannot be filled by the other or is impeded by the current relationship. It could be the lingering memory of an unfinished love, or aspirations in their personal or professional lives, whose fulfilment is hampered by the relationship or its dependencies, such as kids and family. It could just be the feeling of lost “hypothetical freedom”. A freedom that they never really had, but they feel they’ve lost, because somehow the current commitment makes them aware of the possibility of not being able to have it at will. This case is really very subjective and can drive either member of the couple mad in trying to find out how to fix the problem.
Egoism or selfishness. That is a real killer. Being selfish sits at the core of anti-relationships attributes. You can’t be selfish and make a relationship work for long time. A time will come, when one cannot bear anymore the selfishness of their partner. They will seek attention and care elsewhere, and when they find it, they will feel the strongest repulsion towards their selfish partner. All the years during which they bore the egoistic behaviour of the other in the name of family preservation or some sort of higher purpose, will seem like wasted years, thrown before the swine. And we all know what the pigs do with what is thrown before them, they trample them and then turn on the giver and rend them.
A lot of these reasons can be dealt with, even when they occur simultaneously in the same couple, and they often do. But realistically some of the reasons listed above cannot be overcome, and in these cases the couple is doomed and separation in the only wise decision.
For the marriages that are remediable, typically what would be needed to fix them and carry on for a longer while are two things: care and wisdom. And in many cases, you would need both of these qualities, in both members of the couple.
The opposites of these two qualities are – selfishness and foolishness. When they exist together, in just one of the two members of the couple, the relationship is untenable. There is nothing the other member of the couple can do to salvage the situation. Selfishness means that one doesn’t care about the other person wellbeing and foolishness drives stupid behavior that harms that other person and the family that both are trying to build together. The best solution here, kids or no kids, is an immediate separation, for the good of everyone involved.
When one of the two qualities exists, associated with the opposite of the other quality, in both people, relationships can be salvaged and last a bit longer, under certain conditions. There are three possible scenarios:
When selfishness is associated with wisdom in both members of the couple, wisdom dictates that the married couple stay together, if they have kids, and if not, wisdom implies separation. It will not be the happiest couple of the world, as no one is willing to give from themselves to the other, but they will find their happiness elsewhere, in their kids or outside of their marriage. When the kids are big and gone, their marriage will follow suit, and it will be then time to leave and live again. Most likely another short-lived relationship, as selfish people are not made for lasting relationships.
When foolishness and care exist in both members of the couple, it is less problematic at first, as the fundamental ingredient is there. They care about each other, in a clumsy way, but they care nonetheless. This couple is definitely better off without kids. Chaos will be a big title in their life together, and chaos is not the best condition to raise kids. There will be ebb and flow, there will be situations where they both feel stuck without any good answer to what they are going through, but because they care, they will mend the differences and carry on. The danger here is that foolishness, over time, with repeated and growing mistakes, could end up killing care, and it will be then time to leave and live again. If they are lucky they will find someone who cares, and hopefully with enough wisdom for both of them, and then they might end up living again in a long and happier relationship.
When on one side you have wisdom and selfishness, and on the other side foolishness and care, then it is unworkable. It is almost the same situation as when the two opposites of both qualities exist in one of the two. Wisdom will continuously clash with foolishness and care will constantly suffer from selfishness. After many fights, where each of them thinks they are right, because the other doesn’t give enough or doesn’t understand enough, they will have to part, even if they have kids.
There are two other possibilities, where both qualities are in one person, and only one quality in the other one.
If wisdom is missing in the other person, but care is there, things are workable, and for the long run, as long as the wiser of the two keeps making the important decisions at home.
If care is missing in the other person, it will be a temporary solution, until the children are big and gone. If there aren’t any kids, then the best solution is the separation, even though the one who cares will suffer. They will eventually overcome it and more importantly they will avoid making kids together and being stuck for a longer period of time with someone who doesn’t care about them.
Only when care and wisdom are in coexistence that a couple has a real chance to live together, long and well, giving each other what the other needs, intelligently. Their wisdom will help them overcome the delicate situations and build a new and improved reality upon which their care for each other can fully express itself, allowing the couple to thrive in their joined life.
For those who decide it is time to leave and live again, the obvious question is: “what does “live again” means?”
In that context, “to live again” could mean to live for ourselves, without the constraint of the other person. To be able to imagine, dream, decide in one second, without worrying about anything except that it is a good decision for us. To stop feeling guilty for not thinking about the other person. To regain a sense of lost freedom (I am careful with the choice of words because freedom as such is a mere illusion, but we can definitely feel freer, sometimes). To come back home (or not) at any time, sleep at any time, drunk or not and never have to explain anything to anyone. To spend twelve hours a day working or twelve hours reading, or simply doing nothing, just because this is what we feel like on that given day, on these days, and we can… Unfortunately for most people who decide it’s time to leave to live again, “living again” eventually leads to getting involved with someone for yet another round of fun, love, promises, joy, sorrow, constraints and often full circle back to “it is time to leave to live again”. Nothing is wrong with that, as long as the “living again” part in a relation or in-between relations remains the biggest share of our lives. For some of us, the “time to leave” part is where we waste most of our lives, and we only realize it when there is no time left to “live again”.