I’m an unhappily married, 30-year-old woman. I’ve been with my husband for 10 years but we only got married seven months ago. We argue almost daily, and he spends all of his time working. Because we fight so much, the thought of him touching me has become repulsive so we are rarely intimate. Though these problems long proceeded our marriage, I felt I needed to move forward in life (marry, have kids, etc.), so I went through with the wedding. I recently got sexually involved with a co-worker, and I think I’m falling in love with him. We have all the loving passion I don’t with my husband. However, I want to have children before I’m 35. My husband can afford to raise a family and my co-worker cannot. I can’t go on like this much longer, and I don’t know what to do. – Miserable
Keep in mind that even good marriages get strained by the addition of children, thanks to the poo-splosions, sleep deprivation and mystery rashes that look just like Ebola when you Google them at 3:03 a.m.
It’s also seriously unfair to bring kids into a marriage that’s tanking. Sociologist Paul Amato calls children “the innocent victims of their parents’ inability to maintain harmonious and stable homes.” Reviewing the research on divorce’s effects on children, Amato explains that “compared with children with continuously married parents, children with divorced parents … score significantly lower on measures of academic achievement, conduct, psychological adjustment, self-concept and social relations.” This isn’t to say enemy combatant parents who stay together are doing right by their kids. Amato notes that some studies show that children in “high-conflict households … are worse off than children with divorced parents.”
Obviously, staying together “for the children” is a particularly bad idea when you and the husband you despise don’t even have the little buggers yet. So why did you make this “repulsive” guy your husband instead of your ex-boyfriend? It probably has something to do with our tendency to engage in ego-protecting “self-justification.” Psychologist Elliot Aronson finds that we are prone to refuse to acknowledge our mistakes – even when they’re banging us over the head with a leftover wedding centerpiece. Our denial allows us to keep seeing ourselves as smart people who make good choices. Which keeps us mired in our bad choices.
There is a way out, and it’s gritting our teeth and admitting mistakes instead of marrying them and making little bundles of stressjoy with them. For you, admitting that you screwed up by marrying this guy – the first step in unmarrying him – would take accepting the potential cost: You might not find a suitable candidate for daddyhood in time (or ever). Yes, that would be rough – but so would the possible alternative: having an adorable pair of twins who go to Harvard – because it’s a great place to mug dazed freshmen so they can feed their staggering meth habit.
© 2015, Amy Alkon, all rights reserved. Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon, 171 Pier Ave, #280, Santa Monica, CA 90405, or email AdviceAmy@aol.com (advicegoddess.com). Weekly radio show: blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon. Order Amy Alkon’s new book, “Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck” (St. Martin’s Press, June 3, 2014).
This article appears in Dec 17-23, 2015.
