Divorced Wife Reveals The Marriage Sacrifice She'd Never Make Again — 'It Changed The Trajectory Of My Life'
I would never honor this request in a marriage again.
Andrii Nekrasov | Shutterstock I’m newly married when my husband asks me a question. I wish I had thought twice about it. I didn’t. I can’t even blame him. It was in my nature to fix, and rescue.
“Will you quit your job, and build the business with me?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
And just like that, in one marital moment… I walked away from all of my own ambitions.
For a man. Why? Because to me, he wasn’t any man. He was my college sweetheart, my best friend, and the love of my life. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for him. It didn’t seem like a sacrifice.
It certainly didn’t appear to be the massive sacrifice that it was. And it wouldn’t have been. If he had been fair.
Men and women alternate wants and needs throughout the entirety of their relationships. It’s a push and pull. It’s a relay between two individuals who should give when necessary and take when needed.
It shouldn’t be an extreme. It shouldn’t be ‘the giver’ and ‘the taker.’ There’s an imbalance to that dynamic. Psychologists in the field would refer to this imbalance as codependency, a partner where one person assumes responsibility for meeting another person's needs.
Again, I can’t blame my husband. I was all in. I immersed myself in the business. It was an industry I didn’t find interesting. I labored over it. Ultimately, I learned it, digested it, and came to love it. But only for his sake.
Once we’d built a thriving business, he should’ve asked another question. “You have made a massive sacrifice for me, what’s important to you?” He never asked that question. Why? He never recognized how big his ask was.
It still would have been okay if he’d simply recognized that I’d abandoned my career, and dreams to fulfill his.
If there had been some level of appreciation. I’m not talking strictly about the duration of our marriage.
Yeexin Richelle | Shutterstock
In divorce, he could have validated our truth. Instead, he told a different narrative. In his words, “I bit the hand that fed me. How could I dare leave The Golden Goose. How could I be so ungrateful?”
I remember chatting with my friend while my marriage was struggling. “I’m going to keep pursuing my dreams,” I say. “I gave that away to a man years ago."
I may never have this opportunity again. I’ve already sacrificed too much for him.”
Several years later, I was published in Washingtonian Magazine. I became a freelance journalist and business columnist. Ultimately, I became a relationship columnist.
I reclaimed the ambition I had once freely given away. That’s the good news. The bad news?
When I said, ‘Yes’ to a man, it changed the trajectory of my life. I not only stopped pursuing my own career, but I also became financially vulnerable. I went from an incredibly independent woman to a world that was controlled by someone else.
Numerous studies have shown that the weight of financial vulnerability falls more heavily on women, leading to a sharp plummet in household income and an increase in poverty risk.
What my ex-husband did in divorce was wrong. But I can’t fully blame him for my willingness to walk away from ‘me’ to build ‘him.’
I am a fixer, rescuer, and a pleaser. I knew this. Our psychologist and marriage counselor confirmed it. My husband and I were never evenly matched.
We were two extremes. ‘The giver’ and ‘The taker.’
Klaus Nielsen | Pexels
The question he asked was the worst that you could ever ask ‘The giver.’ Because the answer was always going to be yes. It was never going to be no.
In divorce, ‘The taker took.’ ‘The giver’ sacrificed everything.
Colleen Sheehy Orme is a national relationship columnist, journalist, and former business columnist. She writes bout love, life, relationships, family, parenting, divorce, and narcissism.