Expressed reasons for divorce often don’t jibe with real reasons

In last week's column, I observed that The Reasons I Chose Divorce might not explain much, because, with some exceptions, such as evil or domestic violence, there are few Reasons you could present that some other married couple hadn't faced similarly and not divorced. Instead, they endured, healed and overcame into a new and thriving future as husband and wife.

What's the difference between the two couples? One couple stayed married, the other couple did not. The truth is so simple, it's startling.

I said that the decision to divorce had less to do with The Reasons, and more to do with the people making the choices.

So, if not about The Reasons, then why do people divorce? I think we avoid the answer to that question because the answer is so naked.

People get tired. Exhausted. They run out of gas. Then they let go. And then they assemble, rehearse and narrate The Reasons I Chose Divorce, because that buffers the gripping truth: In a given moment of time, they lost the will to be married.

I shared last week's column with two close friends. Both men. Both divorced and remarried. One recounted a conversation with his then teenage son. "He asked why I left his mom," he said. "I don't know if this was right or wrong to say, but I just blurted out, 'I couldn't take it anymore.' "

Wrong or right? What impressed me was it was so honest.

My other friend was more poetic. Maybe I should say more graphic: "Steven, make no mistake, we didn't have to divorce. We could have made it. But we were standing on opposite sides of a river flowing with acid and excrement. To heal our marriage, we both would have had to be willing to swim in that river for a while. And suddenly I just didn't have the energy to swim anymore."

Both men remind me of a scene in the 1980 film "Ordinary People," in which a young man seeks therapy to resolve his guilt and sadness over the drowning death of his older brother. In a crisis moment of clinical transference, the patient shouts at the therapist as if to his dead brother: "Bucky! Why didn't you hang on?" And the therapist, in a flash of brilliance, responds as the dead brother and shouts back, "I got tired!"

This little bit of simplicity helped the patient. Set him free to be angry at his brother and move into a healing future.

The gist of my friends' conclusion as "drowned husbands" is the same: "I got tired and decided to stop hanging on."

Now, I'm not saying there are not some very good reasons to be exhausted in some marriages. Nor am I saying there are not some things, finally, we rightly decide are not worth our continued sweat, fatigue and suffering.

If, after several years of marriage, your mate suddenly decides that employment is "just not my thing," or if your mate unilaterally decides to stop having sex with you, or if they flatly if passively refuse to grow out of words and tempers and moods that relentlessly degrade, demean and humiliate, or if after two rehab stints and a DUI you find yet another hidden stash of vodka bottles ... well, of course you're tired.

But none of this changes the fact that it's us who decide when we're too tired to go on. Us who decide what is and is not worth our continued effort.

When we choose divorce, we want so badly to talk about it as unavoidable. A moral necessity. A move of strength, integrity and heroism. The only available path.

But again, obvious exceptions notwithstanding, there are almost always choices. Real choices. And my prejudice is that life is better, freer, more radically responsible and ultimately happier if we'll admit that and own the decision we have made.

Now, a fair question would be, why have I gone on and on about this for two weeks? And my answer is, whatever we ultimately decide to tell ourselves and others about why we decided for divorce, the really dicey journey is telling our children.

You think I'm struggling with the usefulness and credibility of The Reasons I Chose Divorce? You ought to meet the children with whom I work week in and week out. Or even the adult children who, years later, still have a cloud of pain and confusion around the memory of their parents' marital demise.

So, having set the table, let's talk about how we talk to kids about divorce next week.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling and Wellness Center in Las Vegas. His columns appear on Tuesdays and Sundays. Questions for the Asking Human Matters column or comments can be e-mailed to skalas@review journal.com.