How I Knew My Marriage Could Not Be Saved

At the height of the break up of my first marriage I was still trying to cling on, not because I still loved her, but because I instinctively knew that as the man, I was going to lose my lovely three children. I would have put up with almost anything to save them from all the pain and the hurt of a divorce and losing them in the process.

A few times I asked my wife to go to Relate Marriage Guidance with me and she declined. That in itself should have been enough for me to know that I was fighting a lost cause. I was slow to accept that she had moved on a long time ago, she just hadn’t got around to telling me.

One day I asked her if she thought we could make a go of it and she replied…

“I think we might have half a chance.”

I know some people would see possibilities in that, but I didn’t. It was her deadpan, tired resigned tone of voice. That plus so many half-negatives. Think, might, half, chance, jeez she could not commit one way or the other if it killed her. In my book, four half-negatives do not amount to a single positive one.

On reflection, I thought she was just caught between two stools. I got the impression her thinking was along the lines of “I’ll be damned if I do and damned if I don’t.” That was always her way, totally indecisive. And that stems from never wanting to be seen to be wrong. On the contrary, it is wanting to be seen as always right and therefore superior, in no small part to allow herself to lord it over others.

In part, due to having done well academically, she had spent her entire life having smoke blown up her backside by her proud father. To the very end of his life, she was his blue-eyed girl who could do no wrong. She had a lot to live up to.

That meant that she lived forever in the grey zone (beware of people who reside in the grey zone) between black and white, yes and no, maybe yes, maybe no.

For me, it was as clear as day that our marriage did not stand a cat in hell's chance. Once I realised that, I knew I had to walk away from that woman forever. You cannot negotiate with somebody who is constantly trying to appear right when they are plainly wrong. And as I already had one foot out of the door, it wasn’t too difficult to drag the other one out after it.

In so many ways, that turned out to be the best thing I could ever have done. However, here’s the thing, the minute I took the decision to leave and met somebody else, she was furious with jealousy. Finally, she had made up her mind that she wanted to give it a go. It was too late, I was gone and never going back.

There is a lesson to be learned from all of this; if you try to keep somebody dangling on the end of a piece of an emotional string, do not be too surprised if they take away what was on offer, and take it away for good. If you try to play someone, they will play you right back and you will lose everything that you really wanted, or only wanted after you have seen somebody else pick it up and run with it.

Sadly, my ex-wife decided that she could not have me, nobody else could and did her best to destroy that relationship. And, over a period of time, that was exactly what she did. A second divorce came, followed by a decade (2005–2015) of living alone and content.

Thankfully, by pure chance, I found love again and next year will be celebrating ten years of being together, still blissfully happy. As for my two bitter exes, I do not know nor care. All that matters now is my present and future.

Tim