What is a good enough reason to leave a marriage? Please give your pov.

[MyNameIsSpecial]

This is really sparked on by 2 threads which made me wonder.
Background: dull marriage, not fulfilling for me, big communication issues, no shared vision for the future any further than a 2 weeks hols in the summer. No emotional connexion.
But a stable environment for the dcs, financial pressures are minimal, no fights. We are co-parenting in a good way and DH is taking responsibility re HW and childcare.

I feel like I would be very selfish to want to leave and create such a mess/traumatic experience for the dcs for so little. After all, DH is NOT abusive, he is supporting us all financially. He is pulling his weight on re the dcs and HW. He is not having an affair. And he is trying his best to be a good husband and a good father.

BUT, I just long for someone who I would be able to share my dreams with. Someone I could talk about my worries re the dcs, parents, parenting etc... and who would be happy to discuss those subjects with me.
I want to be able to share someone else's dreams, to support them into it. To discuss their worries and emotionally support them in the same way they support me.

Is that a good enough reason to leave a marriage? Or am I in dream land and need to go back to reality?

Frustrated isn't the right word. Not any more.
Feeling dragged down is more like it. As it was trying to fly to new horizons but can't because of a huge weight attached to my feet.

The dragged down feeling is pretty common when couples have different expectations and want different things. The crunch question, I always think, is 'where do you see us in five or ten years' time?' If your answers are too far apart, that's another nail in the coffin.

Even partners who divorce badly calm down.

@ mynameisspecial funny thing is, I had a million and one reasons to leave, financial, verbal and emotional abuse. But I found that in the end, it was easier and more acceptable to just boil it down to a much simpler 'I was very unhappy' & 'we are all happier now'. Even though unlike you I have the umpteen reasons, its' still not that easy to USE them to :-/ win people's blessing to leave. Ha! people will sometimes doubt your account of abuse. some people (ok mainly his relatives!) will think you're exaggerating, you're never happy, nobody could please you blah blah blah blah blah. But after years of telling people the reasons why I left my x, now I realise that 'he made me very unhappy' was enough. AND now, interestingly, now that it's in the past, it is something that people accept with a nod of understanding. If you you start giving them tooooo much information then they start having an opinion on it all.

Obviously though I'm not suggesting that you need to give a shit what other people think. I just realise that sometimes, although you know you have to do what's right for you, and you are brave enough to go ahead and do it anyway, the wieght of other people's opinions and confusion can still be a burden.

Even partners who divorce badly calm down

Even the briefest skim of a handful of lone parent forums on the net illustrates that is not a given.

Nor is it a given that once initial strong feelings have subsided that they will be automatically be replaced with a willingness to protect and support a child through tolerable stress via fairplay with the ex and decent co-parenting. Rather than helping support their kid during a scary, painful childhood event time some former partners end up (on purpose, or accidentally) creating a cloud of toxic stress for the child to live under for several years.

And that's just the parents who stay in a child's life to some extent post separation. There's no lack of kids in Europe grieving for a parent that has gone, perhaps for good.

The OP's children are not teeny tinies. They are at an age where potentially replacing a relatively low tension (i.e. non abusive, not full of constant screaming rows or quiet bitterness dripping off every sarcastic word exchanged) family reality with one of high tension via conflict and stress generated by separation. A situation which may have a negative impact on their future educational attainment, happiness and well being.

Under those circumstances I believe it is worth evaluating a partners "ex" potential place on the scale of....

helping support child through stress of change creating toxic stress

...before a final decision is made.

True, but what do you do? stay with somebody because you fear they'll divorce badly. I think if you know they'll divorce badly you have to take a deep breath and get on with it. Tbh, knowing a husband will 'divorce badly' is an extra reason to divorce him.

what do you do?

You pick what you consider least harm based on the individual nature of your circumstances I suppose.

That's the unfortunate thing about life when compared to books and films, there isn't always a nice ending where all the good guys get their needs met and issues resolved while the (clearly obvious) villian of the peice gets his comeuppance. Sometimes you just get to pick least awful rather than "good solution for all parties involved".

For some people the idea of being trapped in a currently low tension enviroment for a decade or more would be so deeply unsettling that the current low tension would evaporate anyway as their ability to hold back their frustrations etc. grew. So either way the kids are going to have to face a period of high tension, and it may be that as awful as the divorce could be, staying together over time will probably decend into something so much worse that it is better to cut to the chase sooner rather than later.

For others having a "higher purpose" in having to live with no inner fulfillment with their partner could give them the leverage they need to seek other kinds of fulfillment in other arenas in order to mitigate the lack in the marriage. As a way to be in a better place to hold together the low tension intact family and avoid a high conflict seperation until the kids are well into grownuphood.

And I guess lots of variations between those as well.

Hello myname, sorry to hear your situation. I'm an old school believer that once your married that's it, but I know life is not as simple as that....

It seems to me everyone posting here is trying to give you advice to stay and your coming back with reasons not too... You clearly have made your decision you just want people to tell you your doing the right thing... Which no one can't.

Relationship counselling is great try that, you say you both fixed it yourselfs but still have problems, maybe that is the problem.... Go to counselling and have a mutual speaker there to referee the situation. If that doesn't appeal to you, and I believe that is the last option, leave, who are you making happy by staying?

Hope you figure it out... Good luck

TBH yummymummy, I haven't taken a decision yet. I have had that question in my mind for a long time and I am looking at pros and cons being extremely indecisive.

Carpe YY to looking at other sort of self-fulfilment outside of the relationship. The 'spiritual retreats' etc... described in one the letters tessa linked too would be a good description of how I've coped so far. The thing is, yes it has done a world of good to myself. But is that a reason good enough to stay? And I am also wondering if this is just not simply an escape from my daily life.

TheBiggestLoser, Yes I am also very aware that DH would stay in my life anyway, at least until the dcs are grown ups.

yummymummy17, i can't believe people still think like that.. :-(

what if your husband is abusive, even just mean, or lazy, and expects you to do all of the housework, all of the childcare.... and won't be told that you're not his slave.

A lot of these issues don't materialise pre-kids. When you have your own job and your own salary and to be frank, when you can walk away EASILY, I don't think you knwo for certain how a man will treat you when you are dependent and can't walk away easily.

WHERE is the decency or the merit or the logic in saying that you're old school and believe that once you're married that's it? as though there were some reward for enduring misery and /or abuse/laziness/selfishness. Please do not be so foolish, outdated, misogynist as to think that there is some superior moral fibre in enduring a bad marriage. NOBODY will thank you for it. Even your average catholic priest would be a little bit more enlightened now. If you actually spoke one to one with a local parish priest and detailed your misery and incompatability the majority of them wouldn't want ot see your misery continue.

mynameisspecial here are two questions that really helped clarify things for me

1. If you could fast forward time so that you have split up, and the announcement, awkwardness, adjustment is all behind you, would you do it, would you press fast forward and put yourself in that place? No going back, but, it's all behind you now, you're settlled, it's dealt with (largely), everybody knows, the tears are dry, you are starting to get on with your new life.

2. if you won the lottery and money was no object, would you leave?

The answers to these questions helped me decide what to do, because it is a very hard decision. Anybody who thinks that women leave marriages 'too easily' is really barking up the wrong tree. I think it is still very difficult to end a marriage, no matter how shit it is, women will still cling on. They'll do lists of pros and cons, they'll philosophically ask themselves how happy it is reasonable to expect to be, they'll berate themselves with the 'you made this bed' stick, they'll wonder if they are jumping from the frying pan into the fire - because maybe being a single mother is worse, and in some respects it's not a picnic, but there's more integrity about if it matches what YOU want. there's no comfort in being married so that you APPEAR to the outside world to be respectable and content.

OP - how are you getting on? I am in a very similar place and feeling lost about it all. My heart and gut want out but I'm worried I'm jumping ship too soon...

The only reason to leave is if you sincerely believe you would be happier on your own than with him. leaving in the expectation that you will find someone else is unwise, it may happen, but then again it may not. he sounds like a pretty good husband generally, and a new man will not necessarily be easy to find, men tend to get thin on the ground as you get older, especially when you have children. Why not talk to him about the things you want to talk about? get him to share more of his thoughts with you.

there's quite a good book called Mating in Captivity which I've found helpful. it's by Esther Perel