Dear Fuck-Up: How Do I Live With the Choice to Leave?

Sick for Love

A few years back, I wrote a short personal essay about leaving my marriage to a good man because I didn’t love him enough to stay. Obviously, when you offer up the decisions you’ve made to readers they are going to judge them so I was expecting some people to judge me rather harshly. Fair enough. What surprised me was the number of people who reached out to say they worried I lacked sufficient self-awareness. Did I not realize that I had painted a somewhat unflattering portrait of myself? Did I not see how I came across as selfish, or even cruel?

How strange! The whole point, I thought, was that of course I felt selfish and shitty and like I was being careless with something women are taught to value greatly, but I did it anyway because doing anything else would be a lie. Self-awareness is a good thing to cultivate, and I think far more people do have it than we commonly assume. The problem for most people is not a lack of self-knowledge, but a lack of will to do anything with it.

You’ve already done something about what you know, and that’s commendable. Taking actions that comport with what you’ve learned about yourself or the world is also called living with conviction and a lot of people don’t do it because it’s scary and difficult and not always much of a comfort. Conviction won’t dance with you at weddings or make you soup when you’re sick. You can’t share any inside jokes with your conviction. It’s also, unfortunately, no guarantee at all that you will find what you want simply because you have finally identified it.

Four years after leaving my marriage I have been miserable in ways I couldn’t have imagined. There have been moments I’ve felt so lonely and stupid and late to any chance at happiness that I sort of understand what the trad wives are on about. But I would make the same choice every time, because along with misery there is also joy and possibility and the knowledge that insofar as any of us are truly able to do what we want with our lives I am doing something with mine that feels honest.

Maybe you do maintain a great friendship, or maybe you part ways. But you don’t go back just because it’s hard and he would have you. That would be unfair to someone who is his own person with his own needs and desires and not your weighted blanket.

You will live with the choice you made because making choices and then living with them is all we can do. There’s a cost to everything and sometimes it will probably feel like you’ve paid too much, but not always, and not forever.

Love,

A Fuck-Up

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