Dear Colin,

Sigh. Big Sigh. I feel like the worst kind of person, and I’m searching everywhere for signs that I don’t have to feel guilty.

I have asked my husband for a divorce. And the hard thing is, most people think my reasons are nonsense and not valid reasons for leaving a good man. I feel thoroughly judged every day—and I do it to myself too.

I am just not happy anymore. I haven’t been for a long time. In the last ten years I have learned just how much he and I are different, and the differences are things I feel I cannot live with.

We have different plans for our future. Different dreams. We have different views on the role of extended family. We have different views about what a relationship between husband and wife should look like. And no one is compromising. I also feel no physical attraction, and our approach to sex is also very different.

But now I am breaking this man’s heart. He did not want a divorce. I have been wanting it for a long time. But I am struggling so much with this guilt! He is emotional and cries a lot.

I look around, and everything I have he has given me. But the things he knows are important to me in a relationship, he hasn’t been willing to work at. He refuses to see that he has contributed in any way to this.

So I struggle with this extreme guilt of breaking someone’s heart terribly. But on the other side, I am so excited in my heart to at last being able to live a life I want, to be myself. Chase my dreams. Have someone treat me the way I’ve always dreamed of.

Getting back together is not an option: I have completely moved on in my heart. Even just saying that makes me cringe for how horrible it sounds and it’s like I’m dodging other people’s judgments.

How do I balance this extreme guilt with the happiness I feel about being ‘free’ and ‘me’ at last?

Bye Colin,
Nicolette

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Hey Nicolette-

That’s difficult; truly difficult.

I don’t think there’s anything I can say that will make you feel 100% better about the situation, due to how we perceive relationships culturally, how we tend to assume their inherent value even when alternatives might be better, and because there is someone else involved whose outcomes are different from yours.

But I do have a few thoughts that might help:

First and very importantly, you can’t live for anyone else.

It’s possible and often desirable to be malleable within a relationship. But to sacrifice your happiness for another person’s leaves everyone involved worse off. Resentment will almost certainly grow, you won’t be energized and as able to participate in the partnership, and the other person will almost certainly come to recognize that you aren’t fully there, which can lead to self-consciousness and mutual resentment.

If you ensure you and your needs are fulfilled, however, you’ll be happier, healthier, and more capable of sharing what you have and who you are, sustainably.

Wring yourself dry—even with the best of intentions—and eventually something will give.

Care for yourself, and your internal satisfaction mechanisms will stay well-calibrated and oiled, providing you with both forward motion and excess energy that you can share with others without depleting your own stockpiles.

Second, while it’s often worthwhile to bend and in some cases to even make some serious changes to one’s habits or lifestyle if it means maintaining something that’s worthwhile in every other respect, a relationship that requires you to give up your prime motivations or desires, your true ambitions, the things that fulfill you most—that’s an entirely different matter.

Making this sort of tradeoff is a perfectly legitimate choice, if you definitively understand what you’re giving up, and if what you get in return is worth the effort and sacrifice.

But for most of us it’s probably too big an ask. There are just so many other relationship options out there that wouldn’t require us to fundamentally change who we are to pursue and enjoy them.

Being asked to grow is fine. Being asked to be someone else, less so.

Third, it’s seldom easy to recognize when our relationships aren’t serving us, so the fact that you gave yourself the permission and space to acknowledge that and act upon it is wonderful.

This doesn’t mean that all the outcomes of that realization and those actions will be pleasant: they tend to come with a lot of uncomfortable questions, pangs of regret, and at times, it may mean hurting someone who we don’t want to hurt.

But many of us never even give ourselves the time or permission to critically assess our status quo to begin with. So despite the complex consequences you’re working through, don’t lose sight of what you’ve already accomplished, and don’t allow the downsides to perceptually overwhelm the upsides.

Fourth, it truly sucks that your ex has been hurt by this process, and it’s good that you care about him, despite having moved on, yourself.

I would suggest that you hold on to that empathy and care, and within reason help him transition to his own next steps; which may mean just being a friend and listening, it may mean helping him realize that what comes next for him will be better, too, and it may mean giving him space—or even forcing some space into the situation, if too much familiarity seems to be holding him back, keeping him locked into a semblance of the prior relationship.

Which brings me to my last thought:

We all have a huge catalog of expectations for ourselves and others when it comes to relationships. Some are obvious and some are subconscious, and the specifics will be different for every culture, every family, every individual.

But all of us step into romantic relationships with baggage of some kind or another, and that duffle full of “how things should be” perceptions influences our choices.

It’s important to recognize that we have biases and preconceived notions on this matter, some of which will serve us, some of which will not.

Most of these expectations can be adjusted, shuffled around, or removed entirely without doing anyone any harm. Acknowledging our power in this regard is helpful, as it can allow us to bypass or discard the inessential and harmful stuff in favor of the things that more often bring happiness and fulfillment to those involved.

Ideally we build relationships that are custom-tailored for the people in them, and we allow ourselves to continuously reassess and tweak them as we and our partners grow and change.

But there’s no shame in leaving behind a relationship that no longer fits, even if you realize that’s the case before your partner does.