Why Good People Divorce Good People, From A Woman Who Ended Her Marriage With A Nice Guy
Just because two people get divorced, that doesn't make them bad people.
RDNE Stock Project / Pexels Ending a relationship is never easy, even when it’s for the best. Breaking up carries a level of practical and emotional fall-out that has to be navigated in order to fully separate. Getting a divorce is especially stigmatized in American society, as it’s often framed as a failure.
Getting a divorce isn’t always a contentious process. Sometimes, it happens because two people just don’t fit together.
A woman who ended her marriage with a nice guy explained why good people divorce good people.
A 31-year-old woman named Ivory Lee shared her experience of getting divorced from someone she didn’t hate or want to vilify.
“I used to get asked all the time, ‘Why are you getting a divorce? You guys still get along, he’s just so nice and so great,’” she recalled. She offered an example of a situation between her and her ex that illustrated “why people end up getting divorced [when] they get along.”
She explained that she and her ex shared a home while they were married; when they split up, he stayed in their home until it sold, and then he moved out. She let him know that it was his responsibility to cancel the internet and contact the new owners about taking over the utility bills.
“After walking step-by-step through those things, I got an email… I got a phone call, I got text messages, I got it all… to tell me that our water bill was late,” Lee said. When she texted her ex to ask about the bill, he didn’t respond.
She later got an email from the water company that the bill had been paid. Her ex eventually answered her text and told her that he’d forgotten to pay the bill initially. She asked if he talked to the new owners about transferring the bills over, and he replied, “I didn’t know I was supposed to.”
Photo: fizkes from Getty Images / Canva Pro
“I said, ‘Well, I did tell you to make sure that got done,’” to which her ex responded, “What am I supposed to say?” Lee described how “there was a moment in time when I flashed forward and was like, I can’t do this for the next 40, 50 years… I don’t personally want to spend my life leading the horse to water.”
“The little things will lead to a divorce,” she stated. She ended her post by declaring, “Just be an equal partner.”
Divorces happen for entirely valid reasons, even if the people involved aren’t being awful to each other.
A divorce coach named Leah Marie made a duet video with Lee’s post, adding her own take on the situation with overlaid text.
“Marriage is a team effort,” Leah Marie stated. “If it’s not an equal partnership, it will eventually wear you down… It all adds up until one day, you’re just done.”
Lee posted another TikTok touching on the issue of dividing labor within a relationship. She explained the differences between her relationship with her ex and the one she has with her current partner, saying, “They carry half the load. Some days, they carry 80%, sometimes I carry 90%.”
“Having a partner will change your life, once you have one. What I had was not that,” she explained. “It’s something so many women experience all the time.”
After her initial post went viral, Lee made a follow-up post for clarity. She noted that the women in the comments section sympathized with her divorce story “because they’ve experienced weaponized incompetence,” yet the men chose to insult her viciously.
“I’m not affected, I’m fine,” she said. “Boys have been saying this since middle school, so whatever. But I wanted to clear up some things.”
She explained that her ex is in a “very happy, successful relationship; I am also in a very happy, successful relationship, and we are very happy for each other.”
“Just because someone is not your person, does not mean they are not a good person,” she said. “There were just things that I could no longer deal with and we tried to work through them, but we’re just not meant to be together, and that’s okay... I’m not saying my ex is a bad person… He’s just not my person.”
Lee’s straightforward sincerity in sharing her story shows that divorces happen for various reasons, all of which are valid, even if the divorce itself isn’t contentious.
People don’t have to hate each other to get divorced. Sometimes, relationships run their course, and the love that two people once shared fades away. It’s time that we stop defining divorce in terms of what went wrong and start seeing it for what it really is — the conclusion of a relationship that’s no longer fulfilling, an ending that makes space for something new to begin.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers relationships, pop culture analysis, and all things to do with the entertainment industry.