Am I in a bad marriage?

telltale signs of crumbling relationships

Recently, I was talking to a friend whose parents are divorced. He said his parents were a good match, except that his dad had a drinking problem, and hence, the separation was inevitable.

Back in the day, there were only a handful of well-established transgressions that was solid grounds for divorce - infidelity, impotence, abuse, alcoholism and so on. So, if you found yourself dealing with any of these issues in a marriage, it was easy to tell you are in a “bad marriage”.

Today, however, it’s much harder to qualify a relationship as good or bad. Relationships come in so many flavours that they’d be at best, “atypical”.

There are long-distance marriages, open marriages, marriages with rigid and fluid gender roles, childless marriages, double income marriages, single marriages, income-less marriages and so on. You can slice and dice relationships along every axes, and you’ll find plenty of examples of relationships.

We no longer believe in a singular idea of what a marriage must look like. We have become far more flexible with our benchmarks, and yet, ironically, we’re far less tolerant of any variance from these benchmarks.

*

A friend and I were discussing a mutual friend’s marriage. Both of us jointly concluded that it is a “bad marriage” because there were a couple of critical aspects of a relationship that were missing in this marriage.

We were outsiders, judging this marriage based on our personal experiences, but it is possible that our friend and her partner were happy. Except, our friend wasn’t. She knew that her situation wasn’t ideal, but she’d convinced herself that every marriage has its own challenges, and she was dealing with hers.

This is the kind of BS our society peddles about marriage. Love hurts, relationships need work and so on. No one has a clue what pain is acceptable, and when it’s time to stop working mindlessly and make tough decisions.

These are all such important life decisions, but we have absolutely no training, guidance or frameworks to help navigate them. We are all collectively attempting to wing it for generations. I am waiting for RaaS (relationship as a skill) start-ups to take off in the next decade or two (yeah, remember that you heard it here first!).

Anyway, the point is, people endure bad marriages for much longer than they need to. At the same time, they also flip out on the most trivial differences and break up, because they can’t distinguish an unexpected situation from a potentially disastrous one.

Back in 2006, I’d found a tumour in my chest. We didn’t know if it was malignant. It turned to be benign. The doctor said it was okay to leave it as is, but my parents didn’t like that option. I got a surgery to have it removed so that there are no concerns in the future, if any were to arise.

I am reminded of this incident, because when something unexpected happens, it is natural to freak out and want to deal with it. But not every unexpected situation actually causes harm. Most of us don’t want to risk a future harm, hence, we don’t wait long enough to see how the unexpected situation unfurls in our lives.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately - how can you tell if you are in a potentially bad marriage? Are there any telltale signs that distinguish a bad marriage from an atypical one?

I’d once asked a relationship counsellor how she identifies if a relationship is on the verge of crumble, and these were the traits that she had shared:

Abuse

If there is any form of serious abuse in a marriage - physical or emotional, it is a cause for concern. If the partner perpetuating abuse regrets their action, and is willing to make amends in their behaviour, seek help (therapy, etc.), then the relationship may be salvaged. If not, there’s little hope.

Criticism

If your partner criticises you constantly, then it doesn’t foster a healthy relationship. Open communication is key to a relationship, and hence, it is important to give each other honest feedback, even if it sounds critical sometimes. But there is a difference between someone criticising you for a specific action versus criticising you as a person.

Let me illustrate:

“hey, you didn’t clean up the kitchen after cooking last night, could you please ensure you don’t leave the counter messy again?”

“you are such a messy person, you always leave the kitchen a mess after cooking”

you see the difference?

Resistance

If your partner brings their baggage of defensiveness into your marriage (due to them being a generally defensive person or some early childhood experience), they are likely to avoid honest conversations and reject any feedback from you. If they display this sort of resistance about anything and everything you have to say, your relationship will not “improve” much from where it is.

Disrespect

If your partner disrespects you as a person, then you are not in a healthy relationship. They can be disrespectful in several ways - they don’t acknowledge your feelings even when you have clearly spelt them out, they don’t think you are worthy of equal consideration, they have total disregard for your preferences and they constantly make fun of you or put you down in front of others.

Stonewalling

The last straw in a marriage is when people shut off, stop listening to each other and don’t even care enough to fight with each other, choosing that over conflict. This is when the relationship is beyond repair.

*

While these are all serious signs of breakdown in a marriage, is there a way to preempt any of this? Are some signs more evident early on in a relationship?

I would think so.

We probably choose to ignore them, or may be we are too much in love to notice?

For instance, resistance is a function of trust. The longer you are with someone, more likely it is to build trust. When your partner trusts you, they are likely to see reason, and stop resisting change, if necessary.

Whereas, respect is more fundamental. This is not something that “grows” with time. People are either capable of respecting you, or not. It has nothing to do with you or the relationship. Hence, you will likely see instances of disrespect pretty early on in your relationship, and you must call it out, if you hope to change that.

I don’t think its necessary to constantly assess a marriage. It could become like Schrödinger’s cat. But if you experience sustained unhappiness due to any of the above, or anything else that you deem as a “no go” for your relationship, it’s probably time to assess, and hence, repair.

Just like how people have relationship values, it might be useful to have a list of no-gos or “anti-values” that you will not tolerate in your marriage.

---

What I’m reading/ doing/ listening to:

Drawing the Inside Out: my Substack has exploded with some really interesting content this week. I found an incredible drawing class by Newfoundland-based artist, Georgia Webber, thanks to Medha Murtagh’s post. I was doodling after so long but Georgia facilitated such a fabulous session. I highly recommend it.

Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel: I am re-reading this book simply because this book made such a big impact the first time I read it.

Burnout to Balance: I found this simple and cool model by Louise Brown for recovering from a burnout

My Marriage: Found this cool cartoon by Margreet de Heer on her marriage.

Leaving Instagram: I am not on instagram, and I am glad. I saw lots of people contemplating leaving the platform, so I thought I’ll share my experience doing that a couple of years ago.

Shapely Gal song: Monster by Pomplamoose and dodie