Reply to Has anyone successfully stayed married just for the kids? Is this a good idea?

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Reply to "Has anyone successfully stayed married just for the kids? Is this a good idea?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous] answered this question before, OP. I actually went and found what I wrote because it still makes sense to me.

As someone on the other side of marriage and children and family, I will give you a bit of insight. Yes, there were YEARS when I seriously considered getting divorced. Yes, these were the same years when we had small children or financial struggles or health issues. I didn't and I didn't because I don't view marriage as solely a romantic relationship. It is much, much deeper to me. It's family. It's taking someone and making them your person. And while we never veered into true toxic territory (abuse, adultery, etc.), we had the kind of rough patches that sent many, many of my friends into divorces. The difference? We worked through them and after each one, we were stronger, closer, more intimate. We had a mutual respect and fundamental kindness that was the ethos of our marriage. We went through fire together (or alone, pulling the other on their backs). And I say looking at three grown kids, an empty, sold house and a retirement, our next phase strangely feels like the first one. We travel, we have fun, we have time, we nap, sleep together, have long talks about the meaning of it all, and if it was a recording or a text of our days, we would sound strangely similar to those two 24 year olds who lost their jobs and decided to wonder around Europe together for a year (where I spend equal parts crying and feeling more alive than I ever had). But we're 65 and it's a lifetime between those points. Three kids. A grandchild. Five different careers (yes, I mean careers, not jobs). A flight attendant turned speech therapist. A journalist, turned attorney, turned high school history teacher. A house that some other young family is now raising their children in. My gray hair. His long departed hair. We are so much more than those difficult years when I was a stressed out working mom and he was a stressed out working father. A blip. But I didn't know this at the time. I felt it, I felt that there was a long game to be had when it comes to marriage. But I didn't realize how long and how great the payoff could be.

I don't know how other people define love and marriage. But I think my deal was worth making.[/quote]

My husband is selfish, lazy and messy. He has none of the five "love languages." He doesn't respond to anything other than respect, but how can I respect a man who sits on his ass while his wife runs hers off?  How would I hope to fix that?[/quote]

If you truly feel this way then get divorced.  Your only other options are to ignore and just accept you have to deal with a lazy selfish husband or alternatively to try and change him, which probably won't work.

But there aren't other things you like about your husband? My husband isn't selfish or lazy. He's the opposite.  But he also only wants to have sex once a week.  No marriage is perfect.

You're part of the problem if you're describing your husband this way.  [/quote]

My husband is predictable and dependable.  He's not a great father, but he's a better dad than mine was.

I choose to ignore and live my own life.  I can't change him and I'm not going through divorce, nor putting my kids through it.[/quote]

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