I’ve talked to many people who’ve spent many, many hours trying to figure out why their marriage ended. It’s inevitable given that most of us marry with the words ‘until death do us part.’ Sometimes you can see how you could have handled a situation or an issue differently and while you’ll never know what the outcome might have been, it leads to an understanding or a change in your own behavior. There are some situations however where such an understanding never comes:
I used to say I lost everything but my kids. … My ex and the cocaine, by the time we sold our house I ended up with $10,000. I loved Boston, I’m really a New Englander and I never would have left except for this great disaster. At the time it felt to me that if I could be someplace far away, I could somehow understand what went wrong.
Barbara was with her husband for fourteen years. At one time she promised her two children that she and their father would never divorce but his drug addiction, uncontrolled mental illnesses, suicide attempts and eventual departure made saving the marriage impossible. Once divorced, she left her beloved Boston and relocated to Colorado for a fresh start.