Marriage Isn't Forever: Love’s Hope and Lust’s Flame
When Marriage Fails: A Journey Through Divorce and Self-Discovery (Part 1 of 5)
Life unfolds in stages, a series of beginnings and endings. We are born, grow, break free from the family that raised us. We forge our own paths—independence, careers, a taste of love that might last, scorned by love’s failures.
When we feel acceptance in a lover’s heart, we may stand together and marry, bound by love, our eyes fixed on a bright future, our path paved with dreams, lit by hope.
Marriage is our solemn promise, a pledge whispered in intimacy, an anchor buried deep in the heart.
It begins with passion, two lives twining together, dreams merging, excitement building in anticipation of a beautiful future, swaddled in love.
We marry with the faith that as the worldly winds blow, guided by love, we would travel that shared path together hand-in-hand, knowing we’d chosen to walk it, no matter where it led.
Marriage is intended to be the one thing that stands solid through it all, a choice of companionship that matters beyond all other bonds we create. Marriage infuses us with strength, duty, a commitment that provides stability, a home, a place to rest and rebuild when life tests us.
The quality of that bond decides much—whether we rise or stumble, whether the years hold warmth or grow cold. A good partner adds richness to each day, a layer of stability and care, something to lean on. But a bad partner, a mismatch, pulls at us with endless strain, draining light and peace, adding obstacles and wounds that never fully heal.
When right, marriage is the answer to loneliness, a shelter against the cold shadow of an empty end. None of us wants to face that final stage without love, without someone beside us, left alone to fade away unnoticed, forsook, forgotten.
After twenty years, there’s a rhythm, an unspoken understanding. A force in shared time keeps us together, even in moments when love might otherwise falter. Years create history, and history creates bonds—and scars.
But life has its own plans.
Despite twenty years, despite best intentions and vows proclaimed in earnest, sometimes things still fall apart, we suffer the frustration of unrequited love, let go, and part ways.
'Cause I can't make you love me if you don't
You can't make your heart feel something it won't
Here in the dark, in these final hours
I will lay down my heart and I'll feel the power
But you won't, no you won't
'Cause I can't make you love me, if you don'tI Can’t Make You Love Me — Bonnie Raitt
Suffering as Teacher
Divorce was never in the script I had written for my life. But here it is, the ending of something that was supposed to hold until that final stage. And now, I face what’s left, a stage not meant to be faced alone but alone nonetheless.
I was blind to the end, righteous in my actions, unaware of the depth of the wounds I inflicted on my spouse’s heart. I asked myself some growth-inducing questions—the kind we prefer to avoid answering honestly, without blame, even to ourselves.
Why did it fail?
Why did she prefer to divorce?
How did I make this happen?
What needs to change within me to avoid repeating these mistakes?
My Responsibility to the Future
A relationship ending is a brutal reckoning with one's own failings. When I was thirty, I faced a similar reckoning, patched my flaws, and set out to try again. The subsequent union held for twenty-four years before its dissolution.
In the end, different mistakes, but still mine.
Against the wind
I'm still runnin' against the wind
I'm older now but still runnin' against the wind
Well I'm older now and still runnin'Against the Wind—Bob Seager and the Silver Bullet Band
For a relationship to last until my final days, I must face my errors, do the inner work to overcome them. I compiled a list of my failings—a list my ex-wife could surely add to—and contemplating those mistakes, owning the pain they caused, changed my course. The wind finally has my back.
Would I want to live through another woman’s disappointment?
Would I want to be another 24 years older and start over yet again?
Not. I wrote this to help me sort through my thoughts, engage the healing process, and become the man capable of a lifelong, fulfilling bond.
I work on myself for the woman who may come into my life, for the happiness we could build together. I share this with the hope that others will learn from my foolishness and sidestep the same mistakes.
This writing is the product of a lifetime of errors, lessons, and moments of clarity that came too late. My marriage, for all it was worth, ended, and its collapse left me only questions.
I wrote this post-mortem to decipher what went wrong, identify my regrets, and burn those regrets deeply into my heart.
Let this be a guide, a warning, a bit of wisdom pulled from the wreckage.
Waves of Mourning
Divorce is a death of sorts, a death of dreams, a death of love; all deaths demand mourning. Failure to mourn is a failure to accept reality; the unresolved pain lingers forever, fouling our hearts.
Time doesn’t heal wounds; it merely allows you to ignore the pain with greater ease, allowing the pain to fester in your subconscious mind, consuming your heart with hate, silently, hidden from awareness.
To make peace with divorce, we must face the loss head-on, take in the total weight of what happened, and let it shape us in the way only truth can.
People mistakenly search for acceptance in their victim stories. But acceptance isn’t selectively remembering the past, portraying ourselves as hapless victims of a callous lover, blaming them as solely responsible for our tragic state—then getting comfortable with that illusion.
Blame is a thief who robs us of acceptance, leaving bitterness where there could be understanding, forgiveness, love. Those who cling to anger, who can only see other’s faults, they must enter the crucible of their heart, roast in the fire of their own shortcomings. Instead, they spin their wheels endlessly, avoid responsibility, blame others, repeat their mistakes.
Acceptance requires our strength, demands growth, requires us to take a hard look at our own failings. We must gain comfort with reality, not delude ourselves with selective recollections that support our desired truth.
Finally, we must reach forgiveness, the wholehearted acceptance of those who hurt us, not wanting them or the circumstances to be any different.
I've been tryin' to get down
To the heart of the matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it's about
Forgiveness, forgiveness
Even if, even if
You don't love me anymoreThe Heart of the Matter — Don Henley
Acceptance doesn’t come quickly, but the sooner it arrives, the sooner the suffering dulls, enough to make room for something beyond the pain. We must rebuild from the rubble.
But it doesn’t happen all at once. Grief moves in waves, one sorrow after another, each reshaping the jagged edges of the past. With every wave, a bit more acceptance sinks in, a piece of the burden lifts, and slowly, we find ourselves stepping forward. In time, we see the world from a new angle, one in which life doesn’t revolve around the broken marriage.
It’s a long road, but each wave brings us closer to ourselves, ready to live again, unbound.
With sorrow, we must face our own failings, bravely, and resolve to change them. If there’s any hope of growth, of learning from the wreckage, we must look at how we added to the weight that finally sank the ship.
No Blame
Nothing written here tears down my ex-wife or catalogs her flaws. Her struggles were most often in reaction to my mistakes. She is a good woman, a devoted mother to our son. She deserves far better than she received during our years together.
I want her to find peace, happiness, and a life free from the pain we couldn’t seem to outrun.
Yes, she had her imperfections, as we all do. But my failure wasn’t in seeing them but in not adapting, not learning to accept them gracefully. I should have met her as she was, softened instead of bristling. When she was helpless and most vulnerable, I often acted with a hard heart.
Ultimately, the flaws that mattered most were mine, an ignorance only exceeded by my arrogance, blinding me to the pain, I see that now.
So many stormy nights
So many wrong or rights
Neither could change their headstrong waysWho's Crying Now? — Journey
The Hollow Decade
In my twenties, I was restless, moving from one shallow thrill to the next, my intentions as transparent as they were temporary.
Like most men at that age, I was driven by desire. A good night meant good sex, and a good relationship meant a steady stream of it. If things worked in bed, I’d try to maintain a connection—not for love, but for convenience, for satisfaction.
The skills I cultivated weren’t to build a natural bond but to keep the spark alive enough to maintain access to what I wanted.
I'm too sexy for my love
Too sexy for my love
Love's going to leave me
I'm too sexy for my shirt
Too sexy for my shirt
So sexy it hurtsI’m Too Sexy — Right Said Fred
Finding someone wasn’t usually a problem for me; keeping them was. I wasn’t holding out for marriage or anything serious. I’d gotten my share of practice and learned my way around the sheets.
But now and then, there’d be a woman who stirred something more, who made me wonder if there was more to it. And that’s when my flaws shone through—my neediness, my insecurity, the childish edges that hadn’t been worn down. I’d grip too tightly or act selfishly, driven by my self-doubt.
They’d see through it every time, and they’d walk away.
When I wanted more, I wasn’t equipped to hold it. That was the truth I kept running into, again and again, each breakup sharpening the edges of the loneliness I carried but didn’t yet know how to soften.
Throughout my twenties, I stumbled through the same worn-out cycle, one failed attempt after another at making something last with a woman. The patterns were familiar—open up, cling from fear, she pulls away, I endure the heartbreak, then start over, each time with the same mistakes disguised in new faces.
Near my thirtieth birthday, one breakup cut more deeply than the rest, reaching my limit for suffering, I decided to crash the cycle. So, I threw myself into the work, the kind that looks inward, faced the fears I’d been hiding from.
The journey wasn’t easy, but I found something solid within, an acceptance of myself previously unknown. It was an emotional awakening, a healing, an inner stirring of the heart that altered my course.
For the first time, I felt steady, balanced, and capable of handling love and loss alike. The turbulence in me quieted, replaced by a strength I could lean on.
My dating habits were still rough around the edges, but the facade held appeal, newly grounded by a sense of stability and self-confidence that prospective partners could feel.
I’d grown up enough to hold my own. I was finally ready to try again, not out of need or desperation, but from a place that felt real.
Let's get physical, physical
I wanna get physical
Let's get into physical
Let me hear your body talk, your body talkPhysical—Olivia Newton-John
A Lust Love Story
I never fared well trying to date with an eye on forever. Long-term intentions seemed to smother the spark; turn dates into dull interviews where we both felt the weight of expectations. Chemistry can’t be forced, and desire flags if the flame is not kindled.
As a younger man, I couldn’t see myself as anyone’s husband, especially not when I was on the road for work. I hunted for short-term thrills, taking what was offered with open hands and no promises.
In time, I formed a simple rule: if the short-term felt alive, electric, and worth diving into, then maybe it could stretch into something lasting. But if it started dull, if there was no fire, then there was no hope for anything more.
I still believe this—passion must be fierce to provide the bonding needed to survive the years.
I met my ex-wife in Las Vegas, a city built on chance and abandon. I managed a project there, flying in every three weeks for the usual grind of inspections and meetings. Thursdays and Fridays were workdays, but by Friday night, I was free, left to the city’s lights and vices until Sunday. Sleep was optional.
Those weekends in Sin City were as wild as you’d imagine, perhaps more so.
Making love out by the lake to our favorite song
Sipping whiskey out the bottle
Not thinking 'bout tomorrow
Singing "Sweet Home Alabama" all summer longAll Summer Long — Kid Rock
She was ready for something different, a woman who’d spent her twenties chasing thrills and was finally looking for a way out of the party scene.
We met by accident, a flash of chemistry caught us both off guard. Suddenly, my trips had something more—a hottie eager to join me for the adventure, happy to share in the reckless fun. Together, we made the most of it, living in the moment without care for what came next.
It was casual and raw, with none of the usual inhibitions. There were no promises, just two people embracing the weekend and each other, fully, without restraint. We didn’t look beyond the morning.
There was a freedom in it, an energy that only lives in things not meant to last.
We were in our early thirties, seasoned by years of single life and casual flings, each of us no stranger to the game.
When we met, it was as simple as two people enjoying the moment, certainly not thinking about love or marriage. It was pure and unfiltered—pleasure without the weight of expectations.
The connection between us was fierce, uninhibited, something that didn’t need words. We indulged ourselves in ways we’d never dare mention outside those rooms, fully consumed by the heat between us.
The nights stretched on, wild and unrestrained. Nothing was off-limits; we chased every thrill, left no corner unexplored. It was raw, relentless, a high-octane kind of passion that took hold and didn’t let go. It seemed impossible to burn out on it.
Looking back, I see the ease of bonding with someone who brings that fire to your life. Those days taught me something simple but lasting: sexual chemistry has a power of its own. It’s a glue that can bind two people together, even on a weak foundation or in bad times. For all the complicated layers of relationships, that one truth remains.
A Bond Becomes a Base
A foundation grew between us quietly, without any plan or purpose. We weren’t the type to argue or cling; there was no need for heavy conversations, no demands or pressures.
She came without baggage, free and unencumbered, and I liked her that way. We spent each trip savoring the time together, keeping it simple, and as each visit ended, we looked forward to the next one three weeks later.
In between, there was silence—no texts, no emails, no calls. We weren’t building anything, or so we thought. We were living in the moment, letting the days unfold as they would.
But after a dozen trips, something had shifted. We found that we genuinely liked each other and that our time together was easy, unburdened, and strangely refreshing. We didn’t get on each other’s nerves; we effortlessly enjoyed each other’s company.
Slowly, the guard we each carried started to fall. With every trip, warmth crept in, and we allowed ourselves to feel it. We began to speak about the future, about what it might mean if this thing we had wasn’t just for the following weekend but for something longer.
After ten months together, with the miles stretching between us, we found ourselves at a point where every practical reason to break up fell away. There was nothing left to argue against staying together.
Moving in together crept into our minds—not for convenience but to test the waters of something more permanent: living together, a marriage in everything but name.
She’d have to cross the country to make it happen, leaving behind the life she’d known. But she was ready for a change, tired of the old patterns, and I was a young man on the rise, carving out a path with enough stability to offer her something real. So she made her choice.
She left her past in the rearview mirror, packed her life into a few bags, and took a leap, joining me to start again, side by side.
Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone
I'll be waiting, all there's left to do is run
You'll be the prince and I'll be the princess
It's a love story, baby, just say, "Yes"Love Story — Taylor Swift
