Getting a divorce is selfish!

In today’s society the entitlement mentality is becoming ever more prevalent. Everyone has a right to this or that, and that right includes the right to be happy. These rights are not and never will be automatic. They require you to work and put in an effort.

Our right to freedom is defended by our soldiers, many whom sacrifice their lives. There isn’t a single right that doesn’t require effort to maintain, if it’s not by you, rest assured, someone else is making that effort for you.

The reason the divorce rate is so high is that everyone seems to have forgotten the simple fact that anything important is worth fighting for. Instead people give up too easily and blame the other person for not making them happy.

It’s as if these people honestly believe they will find someone that can make them happy without any effort.

Talk to any couple that’s been married for over 50 years and ask them about their marriage and they’ll tell you it wasn’t easy and took a lot of work. On one hand these long lasting couples are admired for their happily ever after while at the same time the work it took to get there is blatantly ignored.

There’s a reason you got married – do you remember what it was? Do you remember how you felt?

What happened? Are you around each other too much? Are you not around each other enough? Did kids or some other obligations creep up and take away your intimate time?

Something changed, figure out what it is and fix it.

Seek Counseling

If you find yourself in an eternal argument, perhaps a little counseling will help.

It may surprise you that a lot of couples get divorced without trying this tactic. Usually because they have a big ego and think that no one can help them if they can’t help themselves or perhaps they think that they can solve their own problems.

Here’s the problem with solving your own problems.

Your partner isn’t going to listen to your solutions because they don’t view you that way. With ego being a factor in it, they sure don’t want to listen to your solutions because you won’t listen to theirs.

Ever run into that friend that you gave a nice piece of financial advice to that they didn’t use? Then months later they come back and tell you about this new thing they’re doing that their financial advisor told them about and you’re like “I told you that three months ago.”

Your friend doesn’t view you as a financial advisor because he was just gambling with you. Your friends don’t view you as a health expert because they just got drunk with you last Saturday. And your spouse sure as hell isn’t going to consider your advice on relationships because she is in one with you that has severe problems.

Unfortunately, any solutions that either of you will listen to have to come from an independent third party. Counseling is effective because they can tell you stuff you already know in a way you’ve heard a million times and all of a sudden you both listen to them because the advice didn’t come from either of you to each other.

Children

Is it time to get a divorce or split up? Let your kids decide.

If your kids, especially those that are older, veto your decision to get a divorce or split up then you obviously are doing it for selfish reasons. Most likely you don’t want to try anymore or you’ve given up.

Kids are highly intelligent. They see what you cannot because they are not directly involved in your conflicts and arguments. They probably view what you’re doing to each other as stupid.

I’ve been the kid who got to watch his father come home drunk, hitting people, breaking things, and even taking it out on us.

I’ve been best friends with kids growing up who have been those kids. I’ve heard all of the horror stories – I’ve been part of one myself.

My father has been sober for over 15 years to date. I don’t know why he changed or what happened in his mind, but one day he just realized what he was doing wrong and stopped doing it. This is proof people can change.

If you would have asked me if I thought my parents should have split up then, I would have probably said no. The random nights of drinking and minor physical abuse were just not enough to outweigh the good that was added from having my mother and father together in the same house.

Sometimes that’s not the answer though, kids are very intelligent. They become defensive of parents that are getting abused. They’ll tell you to leave him or her and they’ll even help you do it.

If your kids are not supportive of your divorce then I’m sorry to say it but you’re just a selfish asshole.

On the flip side, I’ve known kids whose parents have gotten divorced. My own kids have had to endure that. Most of the time they’d give anything to see their parents together again. Do you know what it’s like to know in your heart that your children’s happiest hopes are that mom and dad would be together again? When your kids are saying that, then you know you fucked up.

Affairs

So maybe you’ve met someone else and things look a lot better for you with them. Selfish much?

You justify it with, I deserve to be happy, and I’ve “tried” everything I could in this relationship, it’s just not working.

When you made a vow to stay until “death do us part” it had nothing to do with you dying on the inside – I promise. Marriage was meant to be a forever kind of thing. You owe it to your spouse to actually try and if you have kids and you’re considering a divorce it better be because they suggested it.

A new person looks so much more attractive because they have zero expectations from you. You are running from your expectations and responsibilities when you dive out of a relationship. When you first start with this person, they don’t know you. You probably don’t live together and you’re not intertwined in any way except maybe in the bedroom. You don’t share finances, vehicles, or other obligations. They don’t expect you to get up at 6am in the morning and run your daughter to school because you don’t have a daughter with them.

I’m amazed at how stupid people get at thinking the “grass is greener on the other side” all the time — when the reality is the grass is greener where you water it.

If you swap that new person into your spouses position how long do you think it will take before you develop the same type of problems? You see, it’s the stress of your scenario that oftentimes causes people to snap. Look at your arguments! What are they about? Money, work, finances, and other irrelevant stress?

What other problems do you think you’ll end up with when you get more serious with this person that you didn’t have in your old life?

The way I look at it is simple.

You can take this new pharmaceutical drug to cure your back pain but it has the side effects of nausea, vomiting, dizziness, dimmed vision, or sudden death. When you look at the unknown side effects, if you’re like me, you say no thanks, I’ll just keep my back pain because I know how to handle that.

The problem is you and your inability to be happy. You always seek external solutions to internal problems. You didn’t really try at all – did you?

Abuse

Granted, there are instances where divorce is proper, especially in cases of severe domestic abuse. But seriously, if you start fights with your significant other and end up getting hit, there’s more to the story than an abusive spouse.

I’m talking where your significant other just abuses you for no apparent reason type of abuse. Getting into an argument intentionally is a bad route to go no matter how it ends. It doesn’t mean that you deserve to be hit, but let’s be honest, you probably already know what things to say and what not to say if you don’t want that to happen.

In most cases, someone getting hit is a necessary working component of the developed relationship. I don’t want to go into all the reasons because that’s a psychological factor that is too long to discuss but it oftentimes makes the person being hit feel better or stop fighting, as a final act of escalation, then they enjoy the sympathy from their partner — a form of masochism.

Some people like to be hit just so they can get sympathy from others when they tell them or because all of a sudden their spouse is “really sorry” and they feel bad so they get a lot a lot of love and attention for some period of time, so they milk the incident.

Some people are just so dead and numb that they enjoy the pain, and in almost every case, they will deny that they actually derive some benefit from the abuse. They will tell you that they don’t want it to happen, yet they’ll be back the next week in the same avoidable fight, doing the same avoidable things that caused their partner to get angry and hit them, like clockwork.

Is this a dysfunctional relationship? Of course! But there’s a huge difference between being beat by a drunk or randomly without your provocation and you getting into a verbal fight with your spouse and getting hit or pushed.

For the latter, there might be hope in counseling because the problem is occurring when the two of you try to communicate. What’s happening is that your partner is locking up and doesn’t know what else to say or do so they resort to hitting to “make you stop”.

For the former, the problem lies within your partner and there might not be a whole lot you can do to save anything except get them some type of help for themselves. Like I said above, my dad quit drinking one day and changed his ways.