You Bust Loose From Heaven And Now Your Life Starts*
Or: should you blow up your life?
My friend Leila came to me the other night with an urgent question. Should I blow up my life? she wondered. Am I delusional? What if I regret it?
Below are some of the things I talked about with Leila (not her real name, obviously) over tea and ginger cake. These thoughts come from my own life and from the lives of many women who have written me since All Fours came out, as well as the conversations I had while writing it. Please give your own advice to Leila in the comments. Feel free to speak to the complications of children, financial dependency, etc. – we are making big decisions in an unjust, difficult world. This post could be a nice place for women to go when they are having this feeling. (Note: Leila is married to a man so these are slanted a bit that way but most should be applicable to everyone.) (Also this is heavily biased; Leila already had a lot of people telling her to stay and work it out.)
I do believe (and I tell this to my child) that romantic relationships are usually not supposed to be lifelong, but rather a season of a particular length, to be determined. People default to "lifelong" in part because it can be really hard to trust your gut about the length of the season. Some relationships only last a few weeks (or a night) but you spend the rest of your life using things you learned from them. No length is better or more profound than any other length. But knowing the right length is profound, letting relationships change and perhaps even come back as friendships, that is very meaningful. My very best man-friend was once my worst boyfriend.
In the case of a long relationship, you better hope you're not the exact same person you were at the start. And that alone can be reason to leave. You simply know yourself better now, you would not choose that person if you met them now or you perhaps you would choose them all over again but you would describe yourself and your needs much differently in those first dates and: they might not have chosen you. It might have just been a fling if they had known who you really were and what you wanted. (For example: you're really, not just a little, bisexual. You're devoted and consistent but not monogamous. You see yourself primarily as a solo adventurer, not in terms of a couple. Etc.)
Often there is a new person involved in this crisis. Indeed it is the new person who makes it a crisis, who brings it to a breaking point. Most of the time this new person does not endure but they are still very significant in the story of your life (a friend of mine calls these people crowbars — they get you out.) What I really think is that you are not doing it for this new person, but for this new side of yourself. The new love speaks to this side of you so it seems very tied to them. It’s hard to trust your new side because it has no credit score, no deeds in its name. You don't know how trustworthy or good it is. In fact every instinct and every friend may tell you it's for sure untrustworthy and not good — it's tearing up your home! Home good! New side of you bad! I would generally say: take risks in order to know yourself.
The fascism of our era will make you want to batten down the hatches, not rock the boat. But I think things generally turn out better when people trust the groundbreaking, progressive elements within themselves. There is much company on this route, whereas the more conservative path tends to become smaller and smaller until it is just you alone in a house taking care of an old man.
One friend had an elaborate plan designed to make her leaving the marriage more palatable and understandable to her husband. It involved several lies and I was nodding for a while, it seemed plausible, maybe even kind. But then I remembered something! "Maybe he doesn't need to understand or approve of what you’re doing?" She laughed in horror – it was, after all, a plan to leave him. This is where it gets tricky. Because for a long while you are still a part of him, like trees with entangled roots. So it is very hard to think your desires aren’t dangerous. It feels almost suicidal. The confusion of this probably stops a lot of women in their tracks.
As you are so busily trying to think of how to not hurt your partner you might consider that a wife who doesn't want to be with him might not be such a great prize. He might be able to do better. And you might want this for him.
A friend of mine was talking to a psychic about her 25 year marriage that was now over. "It was probably a mistake," she said. The psychic said No, it wasn't. That it had given her the stability to become herself, to grow up. So a marriage as a continuation of childhood, and then, at mid-life, you finally leave home.
Novelty helps women stay very alive which is part of our very important purpose here on Earth. Doesn't mean you have to slut it up constantly, but the idea of one person forever was...probably not something women came up with.
The one person I know who regrets blowing up her long marriage did it very abruptly, with no conversation before, no couples therapy, no period of questioning. She was trying to be a good person: she had fallen in love with someone new and did not want to cheat. The new love did not ultimately work out and the whole thing seemed like madness in retrospect. But when I ask her if she wishes she was still with her long-time partner she says, Not usually. She just can’t believe how black and white her thinking was back then. And some nights she does wonder if she made a big mistake.
The idea of "soulmates" was very big in my early teens and twenties but honestly that is not how I would describe any of my relationships. All of them were important and they are still very alive to me, every single one, but this idea of soulmates caused all sorts of problems. Made me feel like one person had to be everything forever or it meant nothing.
Remember that you are not a vagabond. You are not a child. You will be with you every step of the way and that's quite something. Also: you are not leaving behind art and music and dancing and your work and your friendships and magic and spirituality. All that is coming with you, in fact it might be more with you, going forward. Have a little faith in life itself and your journey through it.
Some things that don't seem stable are. For all the stability of the home, you might have friendships that endure for longer. This thought can give you a chill if you're currently reading this in the cozy comfort of your marriage house. My friends!? Sure they are wonderful to have lunch with, but I wouldn't want to end up on their doorstep with a bag in hand! Again, you're imagining yourself with nothing, no inner self at all. The most forlorn and bereft person to ever exist. This probably goes back to how you felt in childhood. But now you are a grown woman and you probably are good at taking care of a lot of other people in addition to yourself. It is possible that – out of fear of being bereft, suitcase in hand – you have too much stability in your life. A build up of stability and structure that is not actually supporting you. You as you are beginning to see you might be.
I'm not great at being helped. I had trouble reaching out in my first months alone. Everyone is busy and I worry about taking up too much of anyone's time or owing them (transactional nonsense, I know. I’m all screwed up.) Meanwhile, despite these issues, my world has expanded. I have a friend that helped me order and then put up curtains when I was too sick to do this. A friend who advises me on trans rights. A mom friend who is irreverent and surprising. A friend who will talk on the phone while we both do chores for hours. A friend who also just ended a long relationship. When I'm talking with her we marvel that we are not going to have to suddenly get off the phone because there is no man about to come home. We live alone and we can't believe we really did it; we are ecstatic.
What I'm saying is that stability can also be found in the freedom to have all these very specific relationships fully, without thinking of them as less than the marriage.
Women in the comments sections of this Substack do not seem to be regretting "blowing up their lives" even when they admit it was hard for a while.
Look for the through-line of your most inner self. What did you want for yourself when you were younger? Is it connected to what you now, so problematically, want? If yes, then perhaps you are not so much blowing up your life but rather redirecting it back to its most elemental and true path.
Keep an eye on death and who you want to be as you near it.
Try not to be too afraid of the mess that will come with tremendous change; it's a mess you'll become yourself through. It's important. Fear stasis and spending this one life frozen in a crouched position, not wanting to get in trouble.
What advice do you have for Leila?
My girlfriend sent me the song “Dear Darling” by Mary Margaret O’Hara while I was finishing writing this; this title comes from the lyrics.
I feel this all spectacularly. But I’m about a year into “unwinding” my 20 year relationship and as a sticky and impossible as some moments feel, there are twice as many that feel affirming — like the exhale I’ve been holding in for so long. I have no regrets. The biggest challenge for me in deciding to start this process — which I realize will never truly end — is this: my ex is just really wonderful.
In the end though, I realized that his wonderfulness was, in my case, actually a reason to leave, rather than a reason to stay. I want to transition our relationship from one based on romance (though was it ever?) to one that feels more familial, while I’m still respecting him and able to be treating him with the appreciation and — yes, love — I have for him.
I told a friend the other day that I knew I needed to nip it in the bud because my feelings were starting to fester and I could feel a malignancy growing every day.
I was starting to get resentful, angry, bitter at him for doing nothing more than being who he is. And, who he is is quite incredible. It just wasn’t fair.
Here’s one example.
We have two kids, whom we both love without measure, and I could see how my staying, in part because he’s such a good dad (like such a fucking good dad) was doing none of us any favors. My unhappiness was starting to impact the way we both parented. Mine, because I felt suffocated by the indescribably misery of trying to be happy in a situation where I was supposed to be happy, but tragically/comically wasn’t. And his, because he was using his energy trying to make me happy rather than focusing that magic on the kids.
Leaving a relationship where nothing is on fire is really hard. I sometimes joke that it’s like death by a million paper cuts, when sometimes I wish for a sniper. But I think a big part of that comes from the fact that there are so few models of how to do this gracefully, differently, before it’s “too late” out in the world.
Grateful for communities like this where we can share our more nuanced and honest realities.
I knew my marriage was over when it dawned on me that I was the only one aware of my near constant state of sacrifice.