Who really needs the shove?

For all you gals who finally decided you weren't going to let him push you around anymore,  I say congratu-goddamn-lations. But I do have one question.

What took you so long?

It sure took a long time to get to this point. You know and I know he didn’t change overnight. This crap had been building from “I do” and if you’re honest with yourself, you already had a few bones to pick when you were picking out bone china.

How many screaming red flags did you choose to ignore over the years?  How many times did you quietly say to yourself, “well, this is just the way it is?"

Acceptance and compromise are critical in keeping any kind of partnership together, but NOT when they’re used to excuse or gloss over bad behavior.

Many, many women in my mother’s generation “stuck with” their husbands for years and years because culturally there really was no other choice. And they’re still together today. After all, by the time you reach your 70’s perhaps there is a sort of contentment that sets in. You’ve been through it all and out the other end and made it. And besides, once you reach 70, you often have other more pressing priorities in life that don’t necessary include emotional intimacy and “date nights.” Whatever crap you went through is just crap under the bridge by now, and regrets are useless.

Of course by then, you have way more years behind you than ahead.

Gals, I always say life is too short (and so am I). For  all of you finally making the break and getting out of bad marriages, I say hurrah. You are now free to move about the cabin.

But for those of you still stuck in an unpleasant union, I urge you to act now versus later. I’m not advocating break-up for everyone. I don’t think every marriage should be dissolved at the first sign of a crack.  All I’m saying is doing nothing is the worst possible thing you can do.

Every single minute you sit there and “take it” and keep silent is a minute of your life wasted. You will NEVER get that minute back. And the next minute it happens, you will be older and less vital than before.

You owe it to yourself and your children to speak up and make things better. If you stay in a miserable relationship, you are teaching your children that relationships are mostly miserable.  I know people always say they stay together “for the children,” but I cannot believe kids don’t pick up on tensions between their parents. However I don’t have kids, so what the heck do I know.

What I DO know about is allowing myself to get into and then STAY in relationships where there were red flags flapping mightily in the wind from the get-go, which I chose to ignore. And instead of trying to solve the issues, forcing communication, I just tried to pave over them, because “that’s just the way it is.”

Well it isn’t. I spent probably 16 years of my life in these 2 relationships NOT confronting the real issues. Being afraid to communicate. Not demanding communication in return. I have no idea what my life would have been like had I not been married and divorced (and married and divorced). Frankly, it’s irrelevant now.

But I’ll tell you one thing. I will not waste one more minute of my life fretting about an unhappy relationship. Not one from the past, and certainly not in the present. My feelers are extra sensitive now, and as soon as I pick up troubling waves, I talk about it.

Put it this way. When you sit in the dentist’s chair, and he’s drilling away, as soon as it hurts, what do you do? You say “Ow.” You don’t wait a little longer. You don’t sit there for his sake. You tell him it freakin’ hurts.

What the heck are you waiting for?