Am I settling in my marriage, or expecting too much? A divorce coach on the three things that matter, and why small irritations are rarely the reason.
Dear Divorce Coach:
I have been married for nineteen years. My spouse is decent, loyal and a good parent. They also chew loudly, leave every cabinet door open, and tell the same four stories at every dinner party. I keep a list in my head. Lately it is a long list.
A friend remarried last year and seems giddy. I catch myself wondering about someone I dated in my twenties, and what my life would look like now. Nothing is wrong, exactly. But I wonder if I settled.
How do I know whether I am settling, or whether my standards are the problem?
Keeping a List in Larchmont
Dear Keeping a List,
A novel has been making the rounds of book clubs this year: The Husbands by Holly Gramazio. A woman comes home from a bachelorette party to find a husband she has never met. When he climbs into the attic, a different husband comes back down. Then another. She goes through more than two hundred of them, sending some back for the way they laugh or a habit at the kitchen sink.
What she learns is that the small things were never the problem. Endless options did not make her better at choosing. They made her worse. In the end, she stops the do-overs and chooses.
Your letter reminds me of that attic. So let me tell you what I tell clients who come to me with a list.
Irritation is rarely information
Open cabinets and dinner-party stories tell you what it is like to live with someone for nineteen years. They do not tell you whether the marriage works. Every long-married person has a list. The person you dated in your twenties would have handed you one too.
A woman who has been married a long time wrote to me this week: “It was exactly because my husband was flawed and quirky that I leaned into the marriage, and I expect he might say the same about me too.” Read the second half twice. Accepting a real person includes being accepted as one.
Am I settling in my marriage? Three things to look at:
After more than a decade of working with couples at this crossroads, I watch three things.
How you fight. Can the two of you disagree, repair and move on? Or does conflict turn into contempt, long silences or fear?
How you treat each other when you are tired. Kindness at the end of a hard day is the best predictor I know of kindness over the next twenty years.
Whether you still want the same life. Where you live, how you spend money, what retirement looks like, how you show up for your children.
If those three are sound, most of your list is haircuts. If one of them is broken, the list is often a symptom, and it deserves a real conversation.
The one who got away is frozen in time
The person from your twenties is not a real alternative. That person is forever twenty-six, with no mortgage, no aging parents and no bad week. Your spouse is competing with a fantasy, and fantasies always win. Your friend’s giddy second marriage is one year old. Ask her again in year nineteen.
Your restlessness still matters. Often it means something in your own life wants attention: work, health, purpose, friendship. Before you decide the marriage is the problem, check whether the problem lives closer to home.
A today decision or a forever decision?
When clients bring me this question, I ask whether it is a today decision or a forever decision. Nothing in your letter needs deciding this month. Here is what I would do instead.
Tell your spouse one thing on your list, kindly, and see what happens. A request said out loud is fairer than a verdict kept in your head.
Plan something new together, just the two of you.
If the doubt keeps growing, talk to someone trained for this crossroads. A discernment counselor helps couples decide whether to repair or separate, with no pressure either way. If you are further along, my column on trial separation may help.
And if you are ever afraid of your spouse, that is a different letter. Please reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
I wrote Should I Stay or Should I Go? for exactly this crossroads.
The woman in that novel finally closes the attic for good. You do not need to do anything so dramatic. You can stop auditioning replacements in your head, look hard at the person who is actually there, and then decide.
Warmly,
Cherie
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