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.
Thank you so much for sharing so clearly and so honestly. Fear can keep us stuck in these situations, gaslighting, shaming or anesthetizing ourselves to remain...I felt crazy being unsatisfied in my 29 year relationship that looked so (so!) good from the outside. I look back and thank myself for being brave enough to go through with leaving a few years ago. So grateful to have spaces of sharing and support like these being created...it feels like such a safe haven - it's the best of the internet in action.
This. I am in the situation you describe. My husband is a wonderful and loving person. I want to keep him as my friend because, like you, I really do love him. Unfortunately, I haven’t been so nice for the past couple of months and that has led him to conclude I don’t think he’s of being treated like a deserving human. My apology and empathy was merely seen as a product of my guilt for actual feeling like he described. This is shattering me. And that makes me wonder if I’m just a self-pitying, selfish heartbreaking home-shatterer. Yeah, I needed to vent. I’m less than a week into putting a separation into motion and I’m losing it. Your comment gives me some sort of solace.
I’m so sorry you’re in the midst of so much. My only words of advice are to be patient with yourself — and with him. There is so much to process that each moment can feel like it means everything, when in reality, it’s all the moments mixed together that will ultimately matter. Sending you love.
I deliberated in earnest for over a year, but the first night I spent in my new place I knew I made the right decision. My moments of doubt were guilty moments, wondering if this thing that was so right for me would damage my children irreconcilably. It did hurt them. It still does. But I’ve decided that on balance I would rather mother from this place- where I am healthy, joyful, in my creativity, and alive! Than be the faded ghost who was angrily disappearing day by day in my married home.
I’m resourced now to help my children navigate anything, including their complex feelings about me - when I was married I was a walking raw nerve, prone to migraines that would lay me up for days at a time. I also got the village I was dying for during the isolation of post-covid parenting, now I have an amazing bonus mom who partnered with my ex who loves on my kids, I feel so nourished to have extra people in the circle caring for my kids, it’s an impossible ask to do it all alone in the nuclear model. Blowing up my life was the very best thing I ever did for myself- three years in I’ve let go of the guilt and accepted that this is a part of what will make my children interesting, dynamic, adaptable and creative people who are loved by a whole village rather than one ragged mom and one confused dad. This list, Miranda, would have accelerated my decision had I read it during my year of deliberations- I imagine- because it felt like having the most nurturing, mothering, crone-artist-advocate for my lifeforce reaching through to tap on the things I didn’t have words for. Thank you for compiling it in such a compassionate list.
I was happily married for 13 years before my husband died from cancer in August 2021. Since then my whole life has changed multiple times. Most recently I've been taking a deeper dive into several feminist issues, one of which is the history of marriage. In my article "Heterosexual Marriage Is A Form Of Sex Work" I wrote, "Historically, marriage was a legal and financial contract between families, not a love match between two people. Goods were exchanged, (money, livestock, etc.), for a daughter who would cook, clean, bear children, and satisfy their husband’s sexual urges."
Heterosexual marriage is sold to young girls and women as the pinnacle of achievement, but the reality is much different. Statistically, married women don't live as long and suffer more health challenges than single women. Studies that assert that married women live longer have not adjusted for the prevalence of domestic violence by men against their wives, which skews the data to appear marriage positive for all. In reality, marriage keeps women financially dependent on men while married men live longer and healthier lives than their female counterparts.
I almost feel like it’s my calling as a woman in midlife to tell young women the truth about the origins of marriage and its affect on women in the present. It’s in the best interest of all men, even the most feminist leaning, to be married. There’s an illusion of choice to be equal partners within a marriage, but systemic patriarchy punishes married women and mothers financially, emotionally and physically. We can’t change what we don’t acknowledge. Most men would never have access to consistent sexual encounters unless they paid for it or were married.
Just to be clear, I have no problem with sex work other than all forms should be decriminalized and de-stigmatized. Sex work is work and deserving of all the rights and protections offered to those working in other industries. We like to believe that there can be a 50/50 partnership within heterosexual marriage, but how is that possible within a patriarchal society? When we think of a married couple taking care of each other, the man provides financially and the woman provides emotionally and physically. Women do most or all the emotional labor within a relationship, in addition to most childcare and working outside the home. It's really a shit deal, one that leaves many midlife and older women in dire financial situations.
I was lying on my bed, curled up in a ball crying, with my hoodie pulled up over my face, when I decided to open this and read it. It couldn’t have been better timing. I just ended a 12 year relationship, which itself ended my marriage, and what you write here feels like a balm. I ride waves of regret, anger, and grief, mostly at what I have done to my own life, but thinking of these as seasons, and seeing how I’m moving into my grown-up life (potentially) feels freeing, even as I’m exhausted by putting so much of myself into something so vaporous, ultimately. I’m facing this stark and beautiful period of possibility - for my own creativity, for my own definition of and care for community, for just being in a way I’ve never been or returning to what I’ve always wanted. I’m so tired but I’m also so relieved.
2025 is 30 years for us living together as partners. We were married in 1999. I’ve written a book about our lives here in our home, the heaven and hell of it. I’m so grateful that we never split up. Now, in our 50s, we are so close, he’s got my back like no other. I have a combination of rare diseases, an autoimmune disease and then the shit that comes with that. He fucking adores me, my body, my whole Eve self, and he worships the ground I walk on. Yeah, our marriage has always been a challenge. But life just is. He’s my forever guy. I can’t speak for what’s best for Leila. I know I’m so glad we both stayed.
I wrestled with the question of whether to "blow up my life" for years. I hit a point where this life I was afraid of blowing up was so terribly inadequate to support me that I cracked, but all the time spent wrestling with the question and quietly doing logistical preparations (like increasing my earning potential) made it so when I said it was over, I had built my own safety net. Now, just moved into my new apartment, my divorce well under way, my new world of new friends and new lovers and new love, support, and freedom for myself all coalescing around me...in retrospect I can see there was no "blowing it up". I was simply leaving a life that I had built that did not support me. And staying in it would have been worse. YES it has been painful, hard, and there has been so much crying, paperwork, logistical considerations. But I had to feel all those feelings and face all those fears in order to move through them.
My wife and I were partners in Social Justice and education for 67 years, and that was more important to us then romantic feelings. Without me she would have been lost in the fog or dementia at the end. I dealt with sexual dissatisfaction by acquiring a lover whom I am still caring for. My wife and I both wanted to stay together and continued to value our relationship.
I usually don't share this perspective because I expect to be vilified and attacked, but I was the "crow bar" person to someone else's marriage and it blew up my life too. I'll take a chance here since I loved All Fours and the people in this Substack seem to be open to a multitude of experiences.
I was 23 and he was 40. We met dancing and our chemistry clicked. He had gotten married young when he was a Jesus freak in Alaska and had only been with his wife, he had decades of unfulfilled fantasies. My boyfriend at the time treated me like a maid in our house and adamantly opposed all changes I requested. I was raised by two parents who really like each other and are still married, so I didn't have any basis for understanding divorce or cheating or what it's like to live with someone who has no empathy and treats all relationships transactionally. I was teaching latin partner dances and going out social dancing with my team, so when I met this other dancer we fell in together and created a bubble fantasy world that was emotionally fulfilling but completely incompatible with reality.
We had two good years and two bad years. I'm the one who ended everything because keeping secrets is corrosive and it was physically killing me. If you are keeping secrets, my first piece of advice is to tell someone. Leila obviously has an incredible friend in Miranda who is listening and hashing things out. I told no one because I knew that I was the bad guy and every horrible experience I was having was my fault and I deserved it-- at least that's what I believed at the time. I couldn't tell anyone because then his reputation would be marred and everyone would hate me. That is the storyline I saw played out everywhere. So I blew up my life and moved across the country. I shed the two men, I lost the city I'd lived in for six years, I lost my dance community, I lost the friends who might have listened to me if I'd been brave enough to confide when I had the chance.
I'm 36 now and I have the benefit of time and perspective. Blowing things up was right for me because I didn't have the skills to make repairs. I didn't have the courage (or humility) to let myself be seen and held by friends. In the years since leaving I have walked the Camino de Santiago twice. Walking 500 miles was the physical experience I needed to spiritually repair my body and soul since dancing was no longer available to me. I learned that the married guy got divorced, which was no surprise. He was one of these tech futurists who looked down on anything handmade, and I remember him calling his wife's beautiful art quilts "a useless waste of time." I hope that no one stays married to a person who regards their skilled craftsmanship as a waste of time.
Sure I have plenty of regrets, but blowing up my life young taught me that repair is possible, even if sometimes I feel like I'm still repairing injuries from 12 years ago. And it's absolutely better to be where I am now than stuck in a pattern of lying. Being in a reality where my insides match my outsides is worth all the effort it takes.
Maybe I am too literal or too measured but the gradations of life explosion to life mutation to life permutation to life shift all seem so possible and maybe that is how I made it happen. Or maybe I didnt explode it, but more like unraveled it while re stitching it?
I guess, I would tell anyone to really really account for the fact that, even if we are parents or beloved partners, we are all kind of alone. What is the point of not checking in deeply with who you are and who you might be and starting a walk towards it?
For me, the sex life I want and need isn't possible in a monogamous marriage. But I didn't know that, I kept demanding we work and do work books and fix this problem! When in fact the change wasn't a fix and it exploded my life. Shifting away from monogamy has been so fucking hard. (Have you ever done couple's therapy with your boyfriend and his wife?? 🤪). But it actually finally really fits me, now that I have spent a lot of time figuring out what I really really want and explicitly ask for that and not try and use something (sexual desire) to cape for something else (true secure attachment and intimacy and trust) that it just isn't.
I would say any proper life blowing up, will feel horrible and urgent and nauseating but also you will be motivated to work through it and the things and parts of a relationship you really want will still exist or can.
There is a whole menu of gray in between leaving all of a sudden and staying til you are dead. And a good indication of someone worthy of your time is that they will take the time to explore the conflict and hell and hard parts and in the end just want you to put your own happiness as a priority and vice versa and you will then be able to see what is left.
Marriage is such a boring word but it can contain anything you want. Or not! Keep following what feels like the parts of life you aren't willing to compromise or sacrifice and use that clarity to take a hard look at what needs to stay and go.
My very wise therapist said, the problems of your life aren't going to disappear but how you feel and relate to them will change. Which is exactly it. I didn't fix my marriage to be the version I was sold by culture, I just stopped caring so much that it wasn't and am so excited that I can relate to it in a totally different way and I get to say and go after what I want and need even if it doesn't fit "what we agreed on" 24 years ago.
As was said in the essay, you will be there with yourself no matter what, which is an incredible comfort. Might as well be the person you want to be..
Yes. I myself did not "blow up" my life. There was a long time living in this interesting gray. This Leila also has lived in the gray for a long time. It's been written about in the chat but maybe we need a post about unconventional marriage set ups so people can see what those look like. Maybe this will be a post made out of your stories (I kinda already wrote a version of mine.) I'll put a call out!
Oh yes, PLEASE do put that call out! I’m currently living in the grey but having a hard time imagining ways for it to shift more into alignment with where I want to be 🥲
I’ve just re read your comment! Could you explain this sentence, I’m really interested in it and want to get the full meaning!
‘But it actually finally really fits me, now that I have spent a lot of time figuring out what I really really want and explicitly ask for that and not try and use something (sexual desire) to cape for something else (true secure attachment and intimacy and trust) that it just isn't.’
Are you saying that our sexual desire might actually be our wanting secure attachment/intimacy/trust?
I mean, you are you and I am me, so no idea if any of this woukd make sense to anyone not in my squirrely weird little brain or life, or marriage.. But yeah, I think as a woman growing up in Gen-X times I did think that having my partner and particularly my long term husband want to have sex with me was really important and was a form of validation and security. Like if that meant that we had a "real" "good" or "normal" marriage. And when he didn't, and his body didn't want to have sex with me (or much at all) it really felt terrible. Like I didn't trust that he really cared and loved me, because sexual desire felt like the thing that had defined marriage in our culture and to me and was something that existed when you loved someone and you just did it.
And so, I did a lot of thinking. Was it cohabitation that made us married? Having penatrative sex? Having kids together and sharing daily household chores? And that all felt super reductive and not true. So I thought of what the sex I wanted with him really meant. I was having the amount of sexual experiences I wanted with a boyfriend and other lovers and myself. And it clicked that my husband really did love me, and I knew that. I am really myself with him, and love him and feel so supported and cared for and secure. And all of that wasn't the sex. I wanted the sex as "proof" of all of this things, it was a good shorthand and was what everyone else said a "good marriage" had.
So I started believing that he could love me, and I could respect his body autonomy and that he didn't want sex and I could still feel loved and secure and that the "proof" of our love was our daily non sexual intimacy, sharing and trust. It took a lot of work to undo the way I equated sexual desire with love and a reason why someone wouldn't leave you. But it turns out that I am a wonderful partner, I am smart and fun and kind and that is why he would want to stay. And I feel the same way about him. And I didn't need the sex to be with him to know that.
Obviously it would be a lot less logistics to have sex with the person I am married to who lives in my house! But I am really glad that I can have this relationship with him and the expansion of other people who I love and desire too and none of it is a zero sum game. All those parts are additive and don't negate each other.
Thank you so much for this. I’m really grateful for you explaining it further. Honestly this is exactly my ‘problem’ with my partner (of 15 years). I am totally stuck on the wrongness of our relationship because sex is no big deal to him and I find myself almost pressurising him into it or at least really facilitating it etc. He doesn’t want me in the way I want to be wanted and I have found that devastating- as if I chose the wrong man for me. I’ve waited all these years to see if things would change (and we’ve had a child in the meantime) but honestly I can see now that it is just he doesn’t have the same desire for sex as I do. He can take it or leave it. I love what you say about body autonomy- I want to be able to stop having expectations and pressuring him and let him be the person that he is. When I think about it it’s very manipulative what I’m doing. Sort of trying to make the picture as I want it and feeling I have to throw it away if it’s not perfect. I’m going to
need to digest this, it’s a revelation for me. Thank you so very much.
I am so glad, this made sense to you. I really really felt the gendered stuff too. Like *everyone* else kept complaining their husband was all over them and they were not into it and I had the opposite. I also really recommend reading Emily Nagoski as she talks about "spontaneous desire" vs. "Responsive" desire. And I really did feel like he owed me "working on " our sex life as a sign that he really cared about me. I think I heard about so many women just doing it, to make their partners happy, that I thought that was normal. For me it isn't. But I will say sex is really important to me! I love it and so I definitely need it and want it. And it was complicated to decide to stay when I had great sex and big feelings for another person but it has been a lot of work but I really do feel good about where I am. I hope you give yourself time and space to really explore all of this. There's not a lot of road maps but you got you and hopefully a loving partner who wants you to be happy and satisfied.
Thank you so much for your reply ! I will read Emily Nagoski. I feel as if I’ve been acting as a sex therapist with my attempts at making our sex life work. (He didn’t want us to go and see one tho I went on my own just to check there wasn’t something wrong with me- there wasn’t!) Now I’m feeling such a relief that I might be able to stop all this performance and stop manipulating things to be a certain way. There’s been a kind of shame for me that the sex part doesn’t work- I didn’t fully realise I had been carrying that around. But it doesn’t need me to fix it and that is mind blowing to me!
Yeah, accepting things as they are is no picnic, but also, doing the work for two when the other doesn't want to is absolutely not sustainable and will drive you mad. I am very familiar with so much of that work (sensate touching, sexy hinting, and then for me crying and feeling upset and unwanted) -none of it changed anything.
But once you accept the situation it is a lot easier to tune into what is in your control to change. Much love to you.
Thank you so much for this. I thought I was all alone. It seemed my 🤯 scared my friends, or at least their husbands, so I lost a lot of them, too. Happy to be finding new kindreds. 🙏
I blew up my life spectacularly, and while I grappled with that decision for a lonnng time afterwards, 5 years later, I can truthfully say “not usually” when asked if I regret it. I wanted a life that is continually surprising (as All Fours so brilliantly put it), and I now know that I am definitely happier in an unconventional/modular family than I was as a traditional wife and mom. I know that is selfish but I also know my happiness and serenity benefits my kids; I witness it firsthand. I’m very grateful to have a wonderful coparenting relationship— for me, that made all the difference. I don’t know what I would recommend to a person who isn’t sure if they will be able to coparent peacefully. The beginning can be very, very bleak, I would make sure someone knows that going in. Thank you for this post, MJ
I literally just separated from my husband of 15 years THIS WEEK. I can't believe you posted this today. I'm sort of overwhelmed that there's a place here for me in what I'm going through.
All the things you said above are so true. I don't know what the future holds for me and my husband, we have a young child, we own a home, we are non-monogamous and have good strong relationships outside of our own. But our own relationship is this strange thing, it almost happened TO US after having a child. If I had a true choice on what I wanted, I would not want a romantic relationship with my husband. I'm not even sure I want a platonic relationship which is what we've been doing the last 2 years.
I'm been afraid to dream of what I truly want because I think it'll be so outside the norm of what's possible and what's done. I want a community of other parents who all care for one another, who raise each others kids and fuck each other and are there for each other. Friends who can support one another and not call any one person "mine." I live in the Bay Area (California) and even here it's hard to find, as progressive as it is.
I'm sort of stuck here in the interim of wanting a change, NEEDING a change because I'm not the same girl I was 15 years ago, but still not really stepping into who I am now and committing to it. I'm in the middle here.
“I want a community of other parents who all care for one another, who raise each others kids and fuck each other and are there for each other. Friends who can support one another and not call any one person "mine." “
I love all of your thoughts. And I want to note that it's important to understand that parenting is a HUGE element in revealing/disrupting underlying patterns in ways that you can't unsee. In my case, my husband and I married fast (decided to after 2 months in relationship, married after 6 months). We were in our 30s, had had relationships good, bad, long, short and felt the ability to bond and accompany one another so strongly. We had 5 years "by ourselves" and despite inevitable complexities, we were still very passionate and loving. Kids changed it - and we never could get back to that place of secure devotion to each other. The old story - unequal responsibility falling on the woman (and to be fair, also grabbed by the woman, when I disagreed strongly with his more slack yet more authoritarian parenting....), sublimating our own desires and needs to the endless prescribed chores and responsibilities. I LOVE my children and don't wish myself back, but having them separated our paths and began the era of growing apart " though we sang in our chains like the sea" sometimes as Dylan Thomas says. I had hope that we could recover our pair bond when that stage was over - have seen that happen strongly to older friends, and felt it was worth waiting just on case it would be possible...but that was not to be because he became disabled. We do love each other better again now - just the 2 of us, seeing each other, feeling loved and understood. But... Both people in a pair bond are both growing and changing the whole time (in our case 27 years pre-,stroke). And childrearing throws a giant wrench in the works that has to be recognized, whether you stay to see what happens after, or go, to free yourself and all parties to do better.
I blew my life up just like this. It happened virtually overnight and I lost everything except for my dog. I honestly did not think I would survive that time in my life, but the second I did it I started to feel myself becoming myself once again. I didn’t even know how much of her I had lost in my marriage, but when she came back, I didn’t feel lonely anymore. In my experience, that is reason enough to go through the painful branding of divorce.
Deep sigh. I finally read All Fours after postponing it forever (as I wrote elsewhere, to look forward to it for as long as possible, but also out of fear of confronting certain parts of myself that I'm not yet ready for). I cried a lot - especially when she comes home after Monrovia, the feelings of displacement, of absence, of brutal pain. I lived like that for many years, compensating for emotional loneliness through new and sparkling bonds, but rarely honest about what I was doing.
I was a lonely only child forever escaping through daydreaming, a teenager who kissed everyone at the first real party I went to, not understanding why that would be wrong, a defiant young woman enforcing my reproductive rights, I was Enid of Ghost World, though Terry Zwigoff hadn’t shot the movie yet, an orphan dealing with the mess left by my parents, an overambitious student and worker heading for burn-out, and then again a daydreamer, and then a mama together with the Harris I married because it was the only person I trusted enough to live with.
It's too early for me to give advice to Leila, except for a lot of self-care.
The most urgent message I took from AF was that I need more Jordis in my life, the ones I have being either too far away geographically or spiritually.
I never thought I would be married, and certainly not to a man, but the deep loyalty and closeness in the face of absurd catastrophes are still strong.
As I approach the age of my mother when she died, all my contradictory facets sparkle and spin around me.
"If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell. I’ll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days." (Plath, 1963).
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.
Thank you so much for sharing so clearly and so honestly. Fear can keep us stuck in these situations, gaslighting, shaming or anesthetizing ourselves to remain...I felt crazy being unsatisfied in my 29 year relationship that looked so (so!) good from the outside. I look back and thank myself for being brave enough to go through with leaving a few years ago. So grateful to have spaces of sharing and support like these being created...it feels like such a safe haven - it's the best of the internet in action.
“anesthetizing” is exactly it! thank you for your words and voice.
This. I am in the situation you describe. My husband is a wonderful and loving person. I want to keep him as my friend because, like you, I really do love him. Unfortunately, I haven’t been so nice for the past couple of months and that has led him to conclude I don’t think he’s of being treated like a deserving human. My apology and empathy was merely seen as a product of my guilt for actual feeling like he described. This is shattering me. And that makes me wonder if I’m just a self-pitying, selfish heartbreaking home-shatterer. Yeah, I needed to vent. I’m less than a week into putting a separation into motion and I’m losing it. Your comment gives me some sort of solace.
I’m so sorry you’re in the midst of so much. My only words of advice are to be patient with yourself — and with him. There is so much to process that each moment can feel like it means everything, when in reality, it’s all the moments mixed together that will ultimately matter. Sending you love.
Thank you so much for your words of comfort ❤️
Let’s connect
This is beautiful
Go Alexa go!
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.
Wow. This sentence gave me a deeply visceral response.
This is powerful
I deliberated in earnest for over a year, but the first night I spent in my new place I knew I made the right decision. My moments of doubt were guilty moments, wondering if this thing that was so right for me would damage my children irreconcilably. It did hurt them. It still does. But I’ve decided that on balance I would rather mother from this place- where I am healthy, joyful, in my creativity, and alive! Than be the faded ghost who was angrily disappearing day by day in my married home.
I’m resourced now to help my children navigate anything, including their complex feelings about me - when I was married I was a walking raw nerve, prone to migraines that would lay me up for days at a time. I also got the village I was dying for during the isolation of post-covid parenting, now I have an amazing bonus mom who partnered with my ex who loves on my kids, I feel so nourished to have extra people in the circle caring for my kids, it’s an impossible ask to do it all alone in the nuclear model. Blowing up my life was the very best thing I ever did for myself- three years in I’ve let go of the guilt and accepted that this is a part of what will make my children interesting, dynamic, adaptable and creative people who are loved by a whole village rather than one ragged mom and one confused dad. This list, Miranda, would have accelerated my decision had I read it during my year of deliberations- I imagine- because it felt like having the most nurturing, mothering, crone-artist-advocate for my lifeforce reaching through to tap on the things I didn’t have words for. Thank you for compiling it in such a compassionate list.
I was happily married for 13 years before my husband died from cancer in August 2021. Since then my whole life has changed multiple times. Most recently I've been taking a deeper dive into several feminist issues, one of which is the history of marriage. In my article "Heterosexual Marriage Is A Form Of Sex Work" I wrote, "Historically, marriage was a legal and financial contract between families, not a love match between two people. Goods were exchanged, (money, livestock, etc.), for a daughter who would cook, clean, bear children, and satisfy their husband’s sexual urges."
Heterosexual marriage is sold to young girls and women as the pinnacle of achievement, but the reality is much different. Statistically, married women don't live as long and suffer more health challenges than single women. Studies that assert that married women live longer have not adjusted for the prevalence of domestic violence by men against their wives, which skews the data to appear marriage positive for all. In reality, marriage keeps women financially dependent on men while married men live longer and healthier lives than their female counterparts.
I almost feel like it’s my calling as a woman in midlife to tell young women the truth about the origins of marriage and its affect on women in the present. It’s in the best interest of all men, even the most feminist leaning, to be married. There’s an illusion of choice to be equal partners within a marriage, but systemic patriarchy punishes married women and mothers financially, emotionally and physically. We can’t change what we don’t acknowledge. Most men would never have access to consistent sexual encounters unless they paid for it or were married.
Just to be clear, I have no problem with sex work other than all forms should be decriminalized and de-stigmatized. Sex work is work and deserving of all the rights and protections offered to those working in other industries. We like to believe that there can be a 50/50 partnership within heterosexual marriage, but how is that possible within a patriarchal society? When we think of a married couple taking care of each other, the man provides financially and the woman provides emotionally and physically. Women do most or all the emotional labor within a relationship, in addition to most childcare and working outside the home. It's really a shit deal, one that leaves many midlife and older women in dire financial situations.
Wow, thank you for sharing this, including the misleading stat about domestic violence not being factored in.
lol, for a man, finding consistent sexual encounters is as easy as using a public restroom.
I was lying on my bed, curled up in a ball crying, with my hoodie pulled up over my face, when I decided to open this and read it. It couldn’t have been better timing. I just ended a 12 year relationship, which itself ended my marriage, and what you write here feels like a balm. I ride waves of regret, anger, and grief, mostly at what I have done to my own life, but thinking of these as seasons, and seeing how I’m moving into my grown-up life (potentially) feels freeing, even as I’m exhausted by putting so much of myself into something so vaporous, ultimately. I’m facing this stark and beautiful period of possibility - for my own creativity, for my own definition of and care for community, for just being in a way I’ve never been or returning to what I’ve always wanted. I’m so tired but I’m also so relieved.
2025 is 30 years for us living together as partners. We were married in 1999. I’ve written a book about our lives here in our home, the heaven and hell of it. I’m so grateful that we never split up. Now, in our 50s, we are so close, he’s got my back like no other. I have a combination of rare diseases, an autoimmune disease and then the shit that comes with that. He fucking adores me, my body, my whole Eve self, and he worships the ground I walk on. Yeah, our marriage has always been a challenge. But life just is. He’s my forever guy. I can’t speak for what’s best for Leila. I know I’m so glad we both stayed.
I wrestled with the question of whether to "blow up my life" for years. I hit a point where this life I was afraid of blowing up was so terribly inadequate to support me that I cracked, but all the time spent wrestling with the question and quietly doing logistical preparations (like increasing my earning potential) made it so when I said it was over, I had built my own safety net. Now, just moved into my new apartment, my divorce well under way, my new world of new friends and new lovers and new love, support, and freedom for myself all coalescing around me...in retrospect I can see there was no "blowing it up". I was simply leaving a life that I had built that did not support me. And staying in it would have been worse. YES it has been painful, hard, and there has been so much crying, paperwork, logistical considerations. But I had to feel all those feelings and face all those fears in order to move through them.
My wife and I were partners in Social Justice and education for 67 years, and that was more important to us then romantic feelings. Without me she would have been lost in the fog or dementia at the end. I dealt with sexual dissatisfaction by acquiring a lover whom I am still caring for. My wife and I both wanted to stay together and continued to value our relationship.
I usually don't share this perspective because I expect to be vilified and attacked, but I was the "crow bar" person to someone else's marriage and it blew up my life too. I'll take a chance here since I loved All Fours and the people in this Substack seem to be open to a multitude of experiences.
I was 23 and he was 40. We met dancing and our chemistry clicked. He had gotten married young when he was a Jesus freak in Alaska and had only been with his wife, he had decades of unfulfilled fantasies. My boyfriend at the time treated me like a maid in our house and adamantly opposed all changes I requested. I was raised by two parents who really like each other and are still married, so I didn't have any basis for understanding divorce or cheating or what it's like to live with someone who has no empathy and treats all relationships transactionally. I was teaching latin partner dances and going out social dancing with my team, so when I met this other dancer we fell in together and created a bubble fantasy world that was emotionally fulfilling but completely incompatible with reality.
We had two good years and two bad years. I'm the one who ended everything because keeping secrets is corrosive and it was physically killing me. If you are keeping secrets, my first piece of advice is to tell someone. Leila obviously has an incredible friend in Miranda who is listening and hashing things out. I told no one because I knew that I was the bad guy and every horrible experience I was having was my fault and I deserved it-- at least that's what I believed at the time. I couldn't tell anyone because then his reputation would be marred and everyone would hate me. That is the storyline I saw played out everywhere. So I blew up my life and moved across the country. I shed the two men, I lost the city I'd lived in for six years, I lost my dance community, I lost the friends who might have listened to me if I'd been brave enough to confide when I had the chance.
I'm 36 now and I have the benefit of time and perspective. Blowing things up was right for me because I didn't have the skills to make repairs. I didn't have the courage (or humility) to let myself be seen and held by friends. In the years since leaving I have walked the Camino de Santiago twice. Walking 500 miles was the physical experience I needed to spiritually repair my body and soul since dancing was no longer available to me. I learned that the married guy got divorced, which was no surprise. He was one of these tech futurists who looked down on anything handmade, and I remember him calling his wife's beautiful art quilts "a useless waste of time." I hope that no one stays married to a person who regards their skilled craftsmanship as a waste of time.
Sure I have plenty of regrets, but blowing up my life young taught me that repair is possible, even if sometimes I feel like I'm still repairing injuries from 12 years ago. And it's absolutely better to be where I am now than stuck in a pattern of lying. Being in a reality where my insides match my outsides is worth all the effort it takes.
This felt really powerful to read
Maybe I am too literal or too measured but the gradations of life explosion to life mutation to life permutation to life shift all seem so possible and maybe that is how I made it happen. Or maybe I didnt explode it, but more like unraveled it while re stitching it?
I guess, I would tell anyone to really really account for the fact that, even if we are parents or beloved partners, we are all kind of alone. What is the point of not checking in deeply with who you are and who you might be and starting a walk towards it?
For me, the sex life I want and need isn't possible in a monogamous marriage. But I didn't know that, I kept demanding we work and do work books and fix this problem! When in fact the change wasn't a fix and it exploded my life. Shifting away from monogamy has been so fucking hard. (Have you ever done couple's therapy with your boyfriend and his wife?? 🤪). But it actually finally really fits me, now that I have spent a lot of time figuring out what I really really want and explicitly ask for that and not try and use something (sexual desire) to cape for something else (true secure attachment and intimacy and trust) that it just isn't.
I would say any proper life blowing up, will feel horrible and urgent and nauseating but also you will be motivated to work through it and the things and parts of a relationship you really want will still exist or can.
There is a whole menu of gray in between leaving all of a sudden and staying til you are dead. And a good indication of someone worthy of your time is that they will take the time to explore the conflict and hell and hard parts and in the end just want you to put your own happiness as a priority and vice versa and you will then be able to see what is left.
Marriage is such a boring word but it can contain anything you want. Or not! Keep following what feels like the parts of life you aren't willing to compromise or sacrifice and use that clarity to take a hard look at what needs to stay and go.
My very wise therapist said, the problems of your life aren't going to disappear but how you feel and relate to them will change. Which is exactly it. I didn't fix my marriage to be the version I was sold by culture, I just stopped caring so much that it wasn't and am so excited that I can relate to it in a totally different way and I get to say and go after what I want and need even if it doesn't fit "what we agreed on" 24 years ago.
As was said in the essay, you will be there with yourself no matter what, which is an incredible comfort. Might as well be the person you want to be..
"There is a whole menu of gray in between leaving all of a sudden and staying til you are dead." THIS.
Yes. I myself did not "blow up" my life. There was a long time living in this interesting gray. This Leila also has lived in the gray for a long time. It's been written about in the chat but maybe we need a post about unconventional marriage set ups so people can see what those look like. Maybe this will be a post made out of your stories (I kinda already wrote a version of mine.) I'll put a call out!
Oh yes, PLEASE do put that call out! I’m currently living in the grey but having a hard time imagining ways for it to shift more into alignment with where I want to be 🥲
And they can be some 🔦 flashlights or something to go with the crow bars.
I’ve just re read your comment! Could you explain this sentence, I’m really interested in it and want to get the full meaning!
‘But it actually finally really fits me, now that I have spent a lot of time figuring out what I really really want and explicitly ask for that and not try and use something (sexual desire) to cape for something else (true secure attachment and intimacy and trust) that it just isn't.’
Are you saying that our sexual desire might actually be our wanting secure attachment/intimacy/trust?
I mean, you are you and I am me, so no idea if any of this woukd make sense to anyone not in my squirrely weird little brain or life, or marriage.. But yeah, I think as a woman growing up in Gen-X times I did think that having my partner and particularly my long term husband want to have sex with me was really important and was a form of validation and security. Like if that meant that we had a "real" "good" or "normal" marriage. And when he didn't, and his body didn't want to have sex with me (or much at all) it really felt terrible. Like I didn't trust that he really cared and loved me, because sexual desire felt like the thing that had defined marriage in our culture and to me and was something that existed when you loved someone and you just did it.
And so, I did a lot of thinking. Was it cohabitation that made us married? Having penatrative sex? Having kids together and sharing daily household chores? And that all felt super reductive and not true. So I thought of what the sex I wanted with him really meant. I was having the amount of sexual experiences I wanted with a boyfriend and other lovers and myself. And it clicked that my husband really did love me, and I knew that. I am really myself with him, and love him and feel so supported and cared for and secure. And all of that wasn't the sex. I wanted the sex as "proof" of all of this things, it was a good shorthand and was what everyone else said a "good marriage" had.
So I started believing that he could love me, and I could respect his body autonomy and that he didn't want sex and I could still feel loved and secure and that the "proof" of our love was our daily non sexual intimacy, sharing and trust. It took a lot of work to undo the way I equated sexual desire with love and a reason why someone wouldn't leave you. But it turns out that I am a wonderful partner, I am smart and fun and kind and that is why he would want to stay. And I feel the same way about him. And I didn't need the sex to be with him to know that.
Obviously it would be a lot less logistics to have sex with the person I am married to who lives in my house! But I am really glad that I can have this relationship with him and the expansion of other people who I love and desire too and none of it is a zero sum game. All those parts are additive and don't negate each other.
Thank you so much for this. I’m really grateful for you explaining it further. Honestly this is exactly my ‘problem’ with my partner (of 15 years). I am totally stuck on the wrongness of our relationship because sex is no big deal to him and I find myself almost pressurising him into it or at least really facilitating it etc. He doesn’t want me in the way I want to be wanted and I have found that devastating- as if I chose the wrong man for me. I’ve waited all these years to see if things would change (and we’ve had a child in the meantime) but honestly I can see now that it is just he doesn’t have the same desire for sex as I do. He can take it or leave it. I love what you say about body autonomy- I want to be able to stop having expectations and pressuring him and let him be the person that he is. When I think about it it’s very manipulative what I’m doing. Sort of trying to make the picture as I want it and feeling I have to throw it away if it’s not perfect. I’m going to
need to digest this, it’s a revelation for me. Thank you so very much.
I am so glad, this made sense to you. I really really felt the gendered stuff too. Like *everyone* else kept complaining their husband was all over them and they were not into it and I had the opposite. I also really recommend reading Emily Nagoski as she talks about "spontaneous desire" vs. "Responsive" desire. And I really did feel like he owed me "working on " our sex life as a sign that he really cared about me. I think I heard about so many women just doing it, to make their partners happy, that I thought that was normal. For me it isn't. But I will say sex is really important to me! I love it and so I definitely need it and want it. And it was complicated to decide to stay when I had great sex and big feelings for another person but it has been a lot of work but I really do feel good about where I am. I hope you give yourself time and space to really explore all of this. There's not a lot of road maps but you got you and hopefully a loving partner who wants you to be happy and satisfied.
Thank you so much for your reply ! I will read Emily Nagoski. I feel as if I’ve been acting as a sex therapist with my attempts at making our sex life work. (He didn’t want us to go and see one tho I went on my own just to check there wasn’t something wrong with me- there wasn’t!) Now I’m feeling such a relief that I might be able to stop all this performance and stop manipulating things to be a certain way. There’s been a kind of shame for me that the sex part doesn’t work- I didn’t fully realise I had been carrying that around. But it doesn’t need me to fix it and that is mind blowing to me!
Yeah, accepting things as they are is no picnic, but also, doing the work for two when the other doesn't want to is absolutely not sustainable and will drive you mad. I am very familiar with so much of that work (sensate touching, sexy hinting, and then for me crying and feeling upset and unwanted) -none of it changed anything.
But once you accept the situation it is a lot easier to tune into what is in your control to change. Much love to you.
This is a very reassuring read
Thank you so much for this. I thought I was all alone. It seemed my 🤯 scared my friends, or at least their husbands, so I lost a lot of them, too. Happy to be finding new kindreds. 🙏
I blew up my life spectacularly, and while I grappled with that decision for a lonnng time afterwards, 5 years later, I can truthfully say “not usually” when asked if I regret it. I wanted a life that is continually surprising (as All Fours so brilliantly put it), and I now know that I am definitely happier in an unconventional/modular family than I was as a traditional wife and mom. I know that is selfish but I also know my happiness and serenity benefits my kids; I witness it firsthand. I’m very grateful to have a wonderful coparenting relationship— for me, that made all the difference. I don’t know what I would recommend to a person who isn’t sure if they will be able to coparent peacefully. The beginning can be very, very bleak, I would make sure someone knows that going in. Thank you for this post, MJ
I literally just separated from my husband of 15 years THIS WEEK. I can't believe you posted this today. I'm sort of overwhelmed that there's a place here for me in what I'm going through.
All the things you said above are so true. I don't know what the future holds for me and my husband, we have a young child, we own a home, we are non-monogamous and have good strong relationships outside of our own. But our own relationship is this strange thing, it almost happened TO US after having a child. If I had a true choice on what I wanted, I would not want a romantic relationship with my husband. I'm not even sure I want a platonic relationship which is what we've been doing the last 2 years.
I'm been afraid to dream of what I truly want because I think it'll be so outside the norm of what's possible and what's done. I want a community of other parents who all care for one another, who raise each others kids and fuck each other and are there for each other. Friends who can support one another and not call any one person "mine." I live in the Bay Area (California) and even here it's hard to find, as progressive as it is.
I'm sort of stuck here in the interim of wanting a change, NEEDING a change because I'm not the same girl I was 15 years ago, but still not really stepping into who I am now and committing to it. I'm in the middle here.
“I want a community of other parents who all care for one another, who raise each others kids and fuck each other and are there for each other. Friends who can support one another and not call any one person "mine." “
That’s exactly what I want, too.
I love all of your thoughts. And I want to note that it's important to understand that parenting is a HUGE element in revealing/disrupting underlying patterns in ways that you can't unsee. In my case, my husband and I married fast (decided to after 2 months in relationship, married after 6 months). We were in our 30s, had had relationships good, bad, long, short and felt the ability to bond and accompany one another so strongly. We had 5 years "by ourselves" and despite inevitable complexities, we were still very passionate and loving. Kids changed it - and we never could get back to that place of secure devotion to each other. The old story - unequal responsibility falling on the woman (and to be fair, also grabbed by the woman, when I disagreed strongly with his more slack yet more authoritarian parenting....), sublimating our own desires and needs to the endless prescribed chores and responsibilities. I LOVE my children and don't wish myself back, but having them separated our paths and began the era of growing apart " though we sang in our chains like the sea" sometimes as Dylan Thomas says. I had hope that we could recover our pair bond when that stage was over - have seen that happen strongly to older friends, and felt it was worth waiting just on case it would be possible...but that was not to be because he became disabled. We do love each other better again now - just the 2 of us, seeing each other, feeling loved and understood. But... Both people in a pair bond are both growing and changing the whole time (in our case 27 years pre-,stroke). And childrearing throws a giant wrench in the works that has to be recognized, whether you stay to see what happens after, or go, to free yourself and all parties to do better.
I blew my life up just like this. It happened virtually overnight and I lost everything except for my dog. I honestly did not think I would survive that time in my life, but the second I did it I started to feel myself becoming myself once again. I didn’t even know how much of her I had lost in my marriage, but when she came back, I didn’t feel lonely anymore. In my experience, that is reason enough to go through the painful branding of divorce.
Deep sigh. I finally read All Fours after postponing it forever (as I wrote elsewhere, to look forward to it for as long as possible, but also out of fear of confronting certain parts of myself that I'm not yet ready for). I cried a lot - especially when she comes home after Monrovia, the feelings of displacement, of absence, of brutal pain. I lived like that for many years, compensating for emotional loneliness through new and sparkling bonds, but rarely honest about what I was doing.
I was a lonely only child forever escaping through daydreaming, a teenager who kissed everyone at the first real party I went to, not understanding why that would be wrong, a defiant young woman enforcing my reproductive rights, I was Enid of Ghost World, though Terry Zwigoff hadn’t shot the movie yet, an orphan dealing with the mess left by my parents, an overambitious student and worker heading for burn-out, and then again a daydreamer, and then a mama together with the Harris I married because it was the only person I trusted enough to live with.
It's too early for me to give advice to Leila, except for a lot of self-care.
The most urgent message I took from AF was that I need more Jordis in my life, the ones I have being either too far away geographically or spiritually.
I never thought I would be married, and certainly not to a man, but the deep loyalty and closeness in the face of absurd catastrophes are still strong.
As I approach the age of my mother when she died, all my contradictory facets sparkle and spin around me.
"If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell. I’ll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days." (Plath, 1963).