I don’t believe that happy marriages exist

I’m talking > 5 years married. I’ve never seen it. I was raised in and around functional marriages. Never getting divorced marriages. But not happy.

And consistently one side suffered more. Guess who.

Life in relation to my understanding of relationships can be split into before and after hearing “Even if he goes outside he will always come back to me.”

I remember people being more angry at a female relative who allegedly arranged a babe for a husband in the family than the husband. Girl code, I get it, but who said the vows in that equation?

It’s been years of seeing piled up disrespect, emotional and financial abuse, thinly veiled disdain, a chafing of esteem, plain cut physical violence, but always to a degree that allows for explaining away.

I live in mortal fear of marrying my father. I see him in the people I date. Not at first. But soon enough. It’s why they haven’t been many.

I am at an age now where irrevocable mistakes are historically made. This concept of a clock that ticks and its five to the hour. Folding happens.

Flippantly I used to scorn the women who stay. Just leave. Then unfortunately through long drawn out horror, I learned what it means for both the devil and his hard place to be familiar. How sticky the rationalising gets. How comfortable discomfort can be in comparison to loneliness. Thoroughly destabilising. Disruptive. You lose your sense of self. All you are becomes all caps reaction. Your pH balance is out of whack. You can’t focus at work. Your skin just fucking sucks. It’s not love. And still you stay. I know why now. And I no longer judge you for it.

But it’s 12:36 on a Wednesday morning and I wonder if anyone is happily married.