Most brides that will tell you that in the days leading up to their wedding all they can think about is seating arrangements and flowers and weather predictions and making it through to the honeymoon. But in the fortnight leading up to my wedding, all I could think about was divorce.
My thoughts during that time included things like: what would my partner be like to deal with through an experience like that? If we were to have children and separate, would he do his 50 per cent share of the work and be someone that I could see at birthdays and celebrations?
They weren’t thoughts that were keeping me awake at night and filling me with dread, but I was certainly giving them time and considering my possible future realities seriously.
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Before we got married, we had to do a premarital counselling course through the Catholic Church and (much to our surprise) one of the questions we were told to ask ourselves and each other during one of the reflection periods was, "What would make me leave this person?".
It was a little confronting but like the other says, it really helps send you into marriage with your eyes open.
We had to do the same thing through our church (Southern Baptist), and we were asked the same exact question. It definitely opened our eyes. And while a lot of people would hurriedly say they would never leave no matter what, we were realistic, we thought about it and talked about it, and came to the same conclusion, only an affair in which the guilty party involved refused to end said affair or habitually cheated would drive us to separate.
My husband is a wonderful man, even when he gets mad, he knows himself well enough to just stop and walk away before he says or does something he will regret. We are both like that, so abuse would not be a possibility.