Would I go back?

I was having an email conversation with a reader, and in it, she asked this (which I am sharing with her permission):

I was wondering if you could magically go back to your marriage and little children days before things got intolerable, would you? Either knowing what you know now, or something of it? Or do you wish you had left earlier?

In the context of our conversation, part of what she was asking is whether I think I could change things if I went back and knew what I know now; in other words, could I have done something differently to make it work? 

So, my brief answer is: no. 

2008 me

Since I stayed so long and since I poured so much effort into trying everything I could think of to make my marriage better, I know without a shadow of a doubt that I would not have been able to make it successful no matter how many times I tried or how long I stayed. 

I read countless books on marriage, listened to innumerable podcasts, read up on his personality type using every framework I came across (trying to understand!), and implemented eleventy thousand different ideas/experiments/suggestions. I faithfully went to personal therapy and I managed to get us into marriage counseling multiple times, with a different counselor/therapist every time. 

You guys know I work hard at things that are important to me (reference my behavior in nursing school), so you can imagine that I also put forth 4.0 effort in my marriage.

I prayed, submitted, respected, supported, and served tirelessly. 

If wifely effort could have made it healthy, then mine would have been healthy. Instead, it devolved into something progressively worse over time.

Which, I now understand, is how these kinds of marriages almost inevitably go. 

So, absolutely, positively no; I would not go back. Instead, knowing what I know now, I would have left far, far, far sooner.

Life is too short to wear yourself out trying to fix something unfixable. It is like spending 25 years of your life chasing the wind; you will be tired, but you will have gotten nowhere. 

But to carry the analogy forward: all of that chasing after the wind probably made me stronger in some ways, just as your heart and lungs would be strong from running after the wind. I regret running for so long, but since it’s behind me, I might as well be thankful for the endurance I’ve gained from it. 

And I’m trying to channel that endurance and energy into more fruitful endeavors now. Like nursing. 🙂 

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I’ve explored some of these themes in a lot more detail over on my Patreon, so if this type of writing feels like something that would be helpful to you, feel free to join us over there.

In once-a-week posts on Patreon, I share my story, trusting that simply doing that is enough to help others. 

But (and I am exactly the worst Patreon marketer in the world because I am always basically trying to talk people out of joining)…I never want anyone to feel pressure to join.

My Patreon just exists because the things I share there are too personal to put out on the world wide web; otherwise I’d just publish it all here. And the paywall of $9.97/month is simply in place so that someone has to be more than casually looking for some gossip in order to read. 🙂 

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If you are trying to figure out if your marriage can be fixed (so that you don’t waste decades chasing after the wind!), I offer up two book recommendations.

First, I suggest Lundy Bancroft’s book “Why Does He Do That?”, which includes a whole bunch of ways you can tell if your spouse is actually changing or not, and whether it is reasonably possible for him to change. He has spent many years trying to help men improve their behavior in their relationships, so he brings a lot of expertise to the topic.

(Obviously, hurt in a marriage can come from a wife as well. That is not Lundy’s specialty, but the book could probably still be useful if that’s your story; just focus on the principles and not the male pronouns.)

Secondly, if yours is a Christian marriage, you might find Natalie Hoffman’s book, “Is It Me? Making Sense of Your Confusing Christian Marriage” to be helpful. Natalie was a long-time homeschooling mom of many in a conservative Christian church (Bethlehem Baptist, which you might know because it was pastored by John Piper for many years) and they excommunicated her when she left her abusive marriage.

If you are in a Christian marriage that is confusing and you find yourself wondering what in the world is going on, you will probably find her book helpful. 

I know sometimes people are nervous to read books like this because they think, “What if my marriage is really fine, and I’m just overreacting?” To that I say: Do not worry. If your marriage is healthy, you will read these books and be like, “Hmm, that’s not at all what I experience. Whew.”

Let’s say you read a book about trichotillomania, which is the compulsion that causes a person to pull their hair out. If you don’t have that condition (and your hair is actually falling out from some other cause), the book would not convince you that you do have trichotillomania.

In a similar way, if the shoe doesn’t fit, these books will not force you to wear it. 😉 But if your marriage IS problematic, you will recognize it within these pages.

I can’t lie; I am a little nervous to hit “publish” on this one, because it’s more than I usually share here. I’m gonna do it anyway, though, with the hope that it will help someone out there. 

P.S. If you want to respond to this post but don’t want to do so publicly, you can always reach out to me by email: thefrugalgirl@gmail.com