The words have been rattling around in my head since the expression came up in recent days. “Leaving to survive.”
Haven’t most of us been in a situation where the only solution at the time was to get the hell out? Away from a toxic parent, an unbearable boss, an abusive boyfriend or spouse?
While “leaving to survive” was used in a professional context when I heard it recently – and I immediately thought of my own experiences of lousy relationships with a co-worker or boss, an intolerable workload while trying to raise a family – don’t women leave marriages for the same reason?
When women leave, isn’t it almost always about survival?
And I will clarify – I did not leave my own marriage. This wasn’t the situation in my divorce. The relationship was broken, there were many issues involved, and I wanted to fix it. But that takes two – and sometimes saving a marriage is no longer an option.
This is oversimplifying; marriage is layered and complex. Still, I know many women whose departure from their conventional lives, one way or another, is a story of survival.
Incidentally, a regular reader, Shelley, left her comment about the way she departed her last job. “Leaving to survive” was the phrase she used, and she didn’t feel very good about that. In fact, she used the word “failure.”
Failure – The “Easy” Way Out?
It’s a word we all use. It’s a mantel we’ve all worn.
Failure.
It’s not a word I like. It’s a word I’ve used in parenting – and I have been hard on my sons in some ways, teaching them that they get no “permission to fail” from me.
Failure is a fact of life, but it’s a label I refuse to own as a person though I have felt it, I have ached from its repercussions, and I am learning to apply the term to situations where, by my own examination, I accept that things haven’t worked.
And I played a key role in an undesirable outcome.
But for women, too often it becomes a label we give ourselves. Not the situation. Not the outcome. Ourselves.
“I’m a failure at marriage.” “I’m a failure as a mother.” “I’m a failure at my job.” Or our mantra may become as simple (and resigned) as “I’m no good at relationships.”
Guts? Taking a Chance?
Whatever happened to women taking a chance? Whatever happened to women standing up? Just because we’re getting older, we’re a little beaten down, we’re tired – does that mean we’ve lost our voice – or our guts?
I don’t think so!
Failure becomes a term used too easily, too willingly, and in a strange way – dismissively. It is a cover word, a code word, subterfuge. It is a way to accept responsibility but deflect further discussion or probing. And it is that probing that can lead to why something doesn’t work, to the efforts that await in finding ourselves newly – each day.
This is our job when relationships and careers do not work, when we face painful endings, when we claw our way back from the death of dreams: We shall not label ourselves failures; we shall not shut down our own inquiries to shut up those who would criticize. Instead, we must explore what is broken, reinforce what requires splinting, nurture what revitalizes, and make changes if we can.
Leaving the Battlefield
Whatever the battlefield, at times, leaving to survive really is the only answer.
When a parent is persistently abusive, eventually, we find a way to leave to survive. We may leave scarred, we may leave broken, we may leave still loving that parent but we walk toward a reconstructed self who will not abuse or accept abuse.
When a partner or spouse threatens our emotional, physical, or even financial survival – we many reach a tipping point beyond which we can no longer tolerate life as it stands.
We leave to survive. We leave to protect ourselves. We leave to protect our children.
When we leave an employer, a career, even a friendship – isn’t it generally because some element of the relationship or environment has become so onerous as to attack the core of who we are? Isn’t it for practical reasons of mental health, physical health, or again – financial survival?
So why do we beat ourselves up over these choices forever – bearing the burden of “failure?”
Marriage and Divorce
Why is the end of a marriage automatically deemed “failure?” What if the beginning was good? What if the middle was good? Why must we be so quick to label – and also, indulge in self-flagellation?
I believe in marriage. For myself?
I had my shot – once. A second time around? I’m ambivalent, and I admit it.
I believe in doing everything you can to rebuild a marriage when it has begun to unravel. I especially believe this when there are children involved, and there is no express abuse that would threaten them or one of the spouses.
But beyond that, I will never suggest that anyone other than the couple involved can know the truth of that relationship, the depth of joy or hurt that is carried, and whether or not staying to fight or leaving to survive is the only choice that seems right at a point in time.
These are the most intimate of circumstances, and the most personal of decisions.
I believe it is possible to love and be loved outside the conventional norms of marriage. For now, this is the place of partnership where I find myself most comfortable.
Wise Women: Wise Up!
I realize that Shelley’s words stir a hornet’s nest of emotions in me – recognition of my own aging and fatigue and feistiness, all stumbling along together.
I realize that the women I treasure have all used self-deprecating labels for themselves, too willing to carry blame, and at times too weary to explore further.
I realize that my own desire to fight for and with women for something better has not waned with the years. And that “something better” is a way of life that is equitable, dignified, decent, meaningful, joyful, exuberant, compassionate, hopeful. And it is a life that is responsible and accountable. But not in the way of the victim.
Women must stop apologizing. Women must look deeper than any single word – be it failure or “happiness.” Women must cease to assume accountability for all dreams that dissolve, relationships that end, careers that falter, and children who make choices that fly in the face of the way we’ve raised them.
These are my beliefs; they may not be yours.
Saying No to Say Yes; Saying Yes… to No
So many good men understand that we’re in this together, that we share responsibility as appropriate, that we reject the tendency to bludgeon ourselves with guilt.
To say “no – enough” is profoundly complex.
Especially if it’s about making marriage work – and we cannot. Especially if we must say no to people we love. Especially if saying no means abandoning dreams we’ve held precious for decades. Especially saying “no” in order to say yes yields consequences that cast us adrift from everything we’ve known.
But “leaving to survive” after giving our all may be necessary. It is often courageous. It is not failure. It is opportunity, even if it comes at a stiff price.
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Ah, this resonates. I’ve left two marriages to survive, the first with emotional abuse and the second with distance and emotional deadness. I felt guilty, yes, but knew it was necessary in both cases to take care of myself. In neither case did I feel like a failure. I’ve left “good” jobs because I just couldn’t stand to walk in the door another day. Maybe I’m more of a risk-taker, but all of these “leavings” were good new beginnings for me. That doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes wonder “what if,” (what if I’d stuck out that job until the odius boss was fired, what if I’d just applied myself a bit more) but as Edith Piaf sings, “je ne regrette rien.” (I’ve landed and stuck in both a great job and great marriage for the last 20 years.)
Very interesting, Pseu. We’re so quick to judge others, and ourselves, and use that “failure” label. It sounds like you did exactly what you needed to, and when you needed to.
As for “je ne regrette rien” – it’s hard to regret what has brought you your most significant lessons, though perhaps some of us regret the time it took and the pain caused to others.
And bravo for achieving that marriage and job – it takes work and perseverance and constant juggling.
I believe in leaving to survive. I left after 20 years to allow myself to be me. I never looked at my divorce as a failure as I have the two best sons and now their families encompass my world. Nothing about failure there. I am sorry for those that suffer with divorce. If done right both parties and kids can be better off for it. They get to see their parents in their own happiness and can make decisions about the marriage and their own parent as individuals and the truth will set you free.
Some years ago I learned to say “congratulations” at a friend’s divorce. A good friend (I’ll call her “Anna”) had told me about a mutual friend’s divorce, and I was shocked. She was one of those eternally happy people to whom bad things just didn’t seem to happen, I thought, and so my immediate response was, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” But Anna (who would herself divorce 10 years later), quickly came back with a strong, “NO! Don’t be sorry! She’s so much happier now. This is so much better for her.”
So, this past spring I was back home visiting my parents and I met up with Anna. After so many years of living in fear, she finally divorced her abusive husband. I knew it was still tough for her, so hard that she didn’t want to relive the experience by telling me the details of how she finally managed to break away. But all I had for her was pride. She has two young children and $30K to her name, but she did it.
A month ago I found out about another friend’s divorce via Facebook (we’re not close). I hesitated to comment until I saw the chimes of “Yea!!”s from her FB peeps.
I wonder if the women themselves may feel a huge sense of loss and failure, but now it seems that more and more women friends are learning how to rally around their sisters and give them the boost they need.
Ah Cecilia. I can honestly say that divorce, to me, is still a tremendously sad fact in my life. But I do not consider my marriage a failure or myself a failure. My judgment was faulty at a particular point in time; I learned my lessons late, but in the process of the choices I made two incredible children came of that marriage.
I’m not a woman who “celebrates” divorce, but that’s because of my own circumstances. It’s also because divorce at a certain age / stage is much harder in the long-run than many women realize. But for some, I recognize that leaving was the only option, the best option, the sane option, the right option in marriages that threatened their wholeness, their emotional and physical health, and likewise, the future of their children.
But again, these are all individual and personal situations. Personal and private, and more complex than we realize. Perhaps you’re right – some may use the drummed up (false?) happy face to cover what is fear and loss.
As for the sisterhood and not judging, I believe women owe that to each other – at the very least – regardless of the circumstances and decisions.
I am in this place with my career. My husband is already of the opinion that I need to leave to survive. I’m not quite there yet. I’m yet too proud to admit failure; too stubborn to admit defeat.
This year I’ve seen a few of my friends decide to divorce. And I do believe that for some of these ladies it truly is a decision to survive. I applaud their decision to live!
But I also know from the little time I spent considering in January what life without my husband would look like that the grass is NOT greener on the other side. There aren’t a ton of great men out there waiting for divorced women, much less divorced women over 50. Just like there aren’t a ton of great jobs out there to catch the 50 year old me if I decide to quit.
Wise words, Chloe. All the more reason for very very careful thought, with information – not wishful thinking.
Wow! Very well written and vindicating (at least for me) after leaving an 18 year marriage that left so many invisible scars and my daughter’s words still ringing in my ears after almost 5 years about “abandonment”.
Thank you for this wonderful and heartfelt explanation that many women need to “know” and don’t really know how to embrace.. <3
It’s sad when people (men and women) seem to take failure and wear it like a scarlet letter around their necks. Failure is something that happens to everyone at some point. If it wasn’t for failures, there wouldn’t be some of the most amazing discoveries. And success 100% of the time can breed a form of arrogance. Failures make us humble, and makes success that much sweeter. I think failures should serve as lessons for us; to teach us ways to approach life in different, better ways.
One of my favorite movie quotes comes from Elizabethtown when Claire says, You have five minutes to wallow in the delicious misery. Enjoy it, embrace it, discard it…and proceed.
But of course.
Leaving my loveless marriage was my choice and the best thing I could do for me.. yet I felt as if I had failed. At marriage, at womanhood, etc. My mother even blamed me and reinforced the ‘you’re a failure’ bit. But, let’s not go there!!!
I wrote about this same topic today from the angle of finally finding the real me, the one who is no longer fearful about following her own desires. I think societal expectations, our age and the fears we face as single women (or at least, mine) add to the challenges in pursuing the life we need, want and deserve. Oh so complicated.
Gosh, what a shock to see my name in there! I was just talking yesterday to a friend from work, a mentor who helped me start over in my work, to move into another area to escape a bullying boss. She was — and is — lovely and now she finds herself in a similar situation. She’s astounded to be off on sick leave for mental stress and she’s looking for ways not to return to her present job. She keeps telling me she’s never been on sick leave since she started work. At 57, she’s hoping to manage early retirement, but she’s never been particularly frugal – probably in part because she never saw this sort of thing happening to her – and so it may well be quite a painful journey for her. As a doctor and a professor, she has a lot of potential options, but I can see that what with this trouble at work, along with the death of her older brother, she doesn’t have a lot of stamina left for making tough decisions. Watching her, I feel really fortunate to have had Bill’s support and to have had a frugal lifestyle for so long.
What do you mean by survive? Can one survive without thriving, or when you speak of surviving, are you speaking not merely of a body with vital signs of life. Oh, that’s interesting. Vital signs. When not used on the context of vital signs we often mean it as positive or perhaps joyous or jubilant energy—vitality. But when we talk about vital signs, it’s like talking about the most general sort of survival. So to survive must you have vitality or merely be biologically vital?
I’ll ask the same sort of question of the word failure. Is failure one of those necessary learning requirements for eventual success—thus it is not the opposite of success, but a component of it? Or should we separate our terms and use the word mistake and reserve failure for a universal defeat that we create when we allow a compilation of mistakes (from as few as one) to crush us and hold us down in despair? Is there a level of failure that is about task and actions and another that is the universal failure of Self? Is failure when the whole thing is lost? And if it is, then the label can only be applied in our post life review—because until there is no chance of recovering from a mistake, success is always a possibility. But then what of those whose great achievements are not recognized in their own lifetimes? Their great success goes unknown to them and they may rate their live a failure in their review; are they correct? Or is that a paradox?
Today I have been reading a book that has brought to mind a poem I wrote in 2008 just after Sweetheart left for the last time and before he returned. It was for him and for everyone. But I wrote it that day for a young lady in my office. She was beautiful, living with her heart exposed, giving hugs and sharing herself in joy and tears. I can’t remember why she was sad that day, but she was sharing and I was in my Liminal period where I was inward and people were avoiding me—well, because I was avoiding them. I would sit at my desk and cry and no one noticed or offered comfort. I felt a kinship with her and through her sorrow I felt connected and comforted. I wrote this on a scrap of paper and gave it to her.
The Broken Heart
My heart broke open
to make room for you.
It broke open
to expand and
hold your pains
alongside my own.
Sweetheart’s leaving was an absolute necessity. Was it necessary to leave 8 times…well to that I cannot say. But in general for our marriage to not only survive, but also to thrive with blissful imperfection (also known as reality!) he had to leave. Though I told him to leave once (#4 or 5) and I kicked him out once (#7) I did not initiate his leaving (#1). I did not want him to go and yet as the tension built rapidly after Bomb Drop I looked forward to it as I also dreaded it. It was ~6 weeks from Bomb Drop to exit and the pressure and stress kept building beyond the container of our marriage. And I knew he would go. I knew it was a compulsion which he could not ignore—or he could only ignore at great peril to his Self and us.
Leaving does not mean something ends—not permanently. It may be the end of cycle, a metaphorical death, the Tower Card… but leaving to survive is not mutually exclusive to reconciliation.
As for fighting—fighting for my marriage. No. I was not going to let the crisis scare me away, and so in another line of poetry—that was part of a more metered and upbeat anthem I wrote:
My husband’s midlife crisis won’t frighten me away,
I’m Standing for my marriage, by kneeling down to pray.
Realizing success of the destiny of our lives or whatever you want to call it is not something you can do by resisting within ego, it requires accepting and embracing the humble You.
We think of a broken heart as a bad thing—as something that can bring death. The irony is that an unbroken heart is a truer death, a living death if it is with vital signs and has a greater chance of losing those vital signs at a much earlier age than those who break open their hearts to make room for other hearts.
“But “leaving to survive” after giving our all may be necessary. It is often courageous. It is not failure. It is opportunity, even if it comes at a stiff price.”
And yet often the price of not leaving is stiffer. It’s not a choice between evils; it’s an acceptance of opportunity and that which is not within our control. Leaving can lead to personal renewal and it can even lead to renewal of that which was left—be it within a different relationship context or within the same general context with growth.
I recognized my/our purpose was to use our experience to change and maintain our togetherness. Part of what we were to learn was how to follow our bliss without losing each other; to embrace our bliss within the container of our marriage. For me, divorce was not an option because I had faith we not only could, but that we would step together into our individual paths of bliss/belonging.
Ah! BLW, I once again align with you… I almost always do 🙂 And of course the topic you address raises a lot of questions, some of them going in the deep of our Judeo-Christian Western culture. Because, yes, this notion of “failure” is bound to exist in front of what would be the opposite: “Success”, “the right thing” etc … and here lies the problem, because too many people have this fake Western vision of immutable things like: a marriage is made to last forever and other such delusional assertions.
But life is not made this way, there come moments when not only the original bond is broken but when the simple presence of someone in your life becomes an obstacle for being who your are or damaging for your health (be it mental or physic), or endangering your financial aptitude to make it in that unforgiving world. So, for me, in these moments, leaving is absolutely not a failure, au contraire, it’s the doing of those who stand for themselves, of those who have the guts to live, of those who have this wisdom to abstain from persevering in a mistake just because stopping it asks a courage that they don’t have.
In these moments you preserve what I believe to be the essential: Your integrity. May I add that the wisest among us will know how to avoid frontal wars each time they can, because even in wars that you win, you will lose a lot of your blood and of your energy on the battlefield.
I don’t remember exactly whom we owe these words of old Chinese wisdom, but I like to quote them from time to time:
“Stay sitting on the threshold of your house, and one day you’ll see passing the casket of your enemies.”
These words you just wrote are so easily forgotten, François – and so important.
“… even in wars that you win, you will lose a lot of your blood and of your energy on the battlefield.”
We really must pick our battles, and sometimes, be careful what we wish for.
Exactly my dear BLW and that’s why I wanted to say these words once more, here.
Of course there were times in my life when I stood and fought. I wouldn’t have reached the quarter of the road I’ve crossed if I didn’t. But sincerely, If I was asked what makes me the man I am today, in peace with himself and having materially sheltered his family, I would more give the credit to the wars I dodged (be it in relationship or business) than to the ones I fought and won.
A few words about “what we wish for”, which is so important as well. People should really be aware that life offers no rehearsal, the decision you make today will condition what you will live for years. The thing is too many people have a short view and are unable to project themselves in future consequences which are, yet, not so difficult to anticipate. In short they don’t know how to embrace the big picture, therefore they can’t determine what their real and deep choice is bound to be, once all the elements have been gathered in the frame. That quick choice which may ruin everything in a short delay, we call that “se tirer une balle dans le pied” (to shoot oneself in the foot).
It’s silly to say so, but a lot of people badly damage their lives exactly this way. So look at the big picture, question your deep self, and don’t shoot yourself in the foot, my friends.
There are relationships I’ve been in that were abusive where I stayed for a long time because I didn’t perceive the abuse as abuse. For me the main problem was sorting it out.
BigLittleWolf, I agree with you – the bravado is probably a drummed up response to cover the pain/difficulty. Re-reading my original comment I worry if it came out insensitively. I think the real sentiment I wanted to convey is the confusion I’ve had in how to respond to my friends’ divorces; I react with sympathy but many don’t want that. I was truly shocked when balloons were practically going up with my recent friend’s FB announcement, as if she’d just completed a marathon. I appreciate your honest and heartfelt description of how divorce was for you, which I imagine is the more common and definitely healthier reflection. I can’t imagine it is EVER even remotely easy. Our marriage is my husband’s second, and contrary to what many people might think, he actually works incredibly hard on our marriage. He says I will never truly understand how painful divorce is, if I hadn’t gone through it myself.
Thanks for always being so open and honest!
Someone who is supposed to love you tries to crush you and have control and power over you, tries to bad mouth you and make your life hell, and when you discover just how evil that person is you leave to survive before they break you, you leave to become strong again, to live again, to be yourself again. This is not failure this is called living, and this is being strong.
There’s so much strength required in putting pieces back together again after a relationship disintegrates. Especially one that is long-term. Especially, as you say, when the person who is supposed to love you instead crushes you.
I hope your journey will continue to cultivate your strength. Thank you for stopping and reading, Survivor.
But does a relationship disintegrate? The way I see it, for someone to act so cruelly to another as soon as they are married makes me believe they never loved at all. It was all do do with possession, and I had to learn the hard way that not all people are good people.