Divorced Dopers: do you regret the union entirely?

[Nzinga_Seated]

@WF Tomba

I’ve noticed a lot of people seem to assume that if a marriage is likely to end in divorce, it’s better not to enter into it in the first place. (This point of view can be seen in the current threads about marrying young.) But I have known of married couples who achieve a few genuinely happy years together before the wheels fall off. In such cases, is it really reasonable to say that it would have been better for the marriage never to have occurred? On the other hand, some matches seem poisoned from the start.

Having never been married myself, I put it to you all: if you have been divorced, do you consider the whole marriage to have been a mistake?

What is up with you? You have been straight up reading my mind lately. I read those ‘marrying young’ threads and had the exact same thought. Someone posted something to the effect that it didn’t work out, so they wish it had not happened, and all I could think is, if my husband and I broke up forever right now, I would not regret the years we had together.

I have a very close friend that had her husband’s name tattooed on her neck. I think that it is insane to tat a name on one’s neck, but that is not the point. The point is, she had no regrets about the tat while they were together, but now that he has left her, she regrets it and wants to cover it with a scorpian.

I tried to explain to her that she should go ahead keep the tat as is. Firstly, because covering it will end up being a sloppy job…she doesn’t have enough money to get it done by the kind of expert that could handle a cover job properly. But also because it symbolizes what she felt at the time that she had it done. She should not regret that…it was a pure intention. The marriage has dissolved, but the memories, the growing they did together, the children, and the tattoos…those have not dissolved.

[Gorgon_Heap]

Nah. Our divorce, though worked on for some time, was only finalized (via the marevlous US Mail service!) only a week ago. We’ve been seperated for more than a year, though.

We had two beautiful kids. We are still friends.

I understand we ran into problems. We live at different paces, and have different goals, so far as you ignore the importance of our children. There were problems - from both of us - that were not healthy for a marriage. But we had been together for a good four to five years before that, and so the questions didn’t come in to play until many other things happened.

At this point in my life, I tend to just shrug things off and take a deep breath, understanding things will probably get better at some point. Why worry about it?

I’m sorry things happened the way they did, but I love my kids and it kinda put my priorities in focus.

[The_Chao_Goes_Mu]

It’ll be ten years in March that I walked out on an abusive, controlling, lying, son of a bitch. I sometimes look back on my 21 year old self, the one that “fell in love” with him, the one that thought it would be a good idea to marry him in spite of the warning signs, in spite of him being a custodial parent of two, in spite of having no direction in my own life and I want to kick that girl in the ass.

Some days in the past ten years I would get so angry, I would rue the day I ever met him. Then rue the day I slept with him, then the marriage, then staying with him after he lied, then the cheating, then the verbal abuse, then the physical…etc.

But now, I just see it for what it was. It was a mistake, another road travelled in my life. I am today, at this very moment, a culmination of all the choices I’ve made in my life. Some were spot on, some were horrible and some I still am not sure of what the outcome will be. They just are and I just am. I no longer dwell on the fact that it was not a good decision to marry him. I, instead, try to find what good came of it. I learned alot, he was very intelligent and I learned about alot of things I may never have stumbled upon on my own. I learned the difference between disagreeing, arguing and fighting. I learned that I am better than he ever treated me.

So, I guess I have to say, although I have no love for him, never want to see him again, and will never be friends with him. I no longer regret it. It is part of a chain of events that is my life.

ETA: For all I know, not marrying him might not have led me on the path to find the wonderful woman I’m with now.