Lately, much has been written about staying in a marriage even when you and your spouse are half past miserable.
Last month, The New York Times published two stories that, combined, subtly discouraged divorce and favored staying in unhappy marriages — or at least that’s how some people interpreted them. One was an interview with couples counselor Terrence Real, who talked about “normal marital hatred.” The other was an opinion article by Anglican priest and columnist Tish Harrison Warren. It was titled “I Married the Wrong Person, and I’m So Glad I Did,” but sometimes it sounds like she’s anything but:
The last 17 years have held long stretches when one or both of us were deeply unhappy. There have been times when contempt settled on our relationship, caked and hard as dried mud. We’ve both been unkind. We’ve both yelled curse words and stormed out the door. We both have felt we needed things that the other person simply could not give us. We have been to marriage counseling for long enough now that our favorite counselor feels like part of the family. We should probably include her photo in our annual Christmas card. At times, we stayed married sheerly as a matter of religious obedience and for the sake of our children.
In response to that article ― and similar think pieces from the recent past ― critics, including Soraya Nadia McDonald, begged women writers who “sacrifice themselves on the altar of marriage misery” to “stop trying to recruit other suckers to be miserable with you.”
Tracy K. Ross, a couples and family therapist in New York City, found the article frustrating, too. Mostly because the writer never really addresses why she’s grateful she stayed in her marriage. Or what she did to confront all that collected unhappiness, which surely must have taken a toll.
Yes, Ross recognizes that couples can go through very unhappy states and, with enough work, perseverance and commitment, can come out on the other side. But the therapist wishes Warren would have shown her work a little more.
“The article doesn’t address how they navigated to a better place, which is what people need to hear and learn about — there isn’t enough information out there on what ‘working on a relationship’ actually looks like and entails — the message is just that you need to do it, not the how,” she told HuffPost.
Los Angeles marriage and family therapist Saba Harouni Lurie had mixed feelings about the essay.
“The writer…
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