The Relief You’ll Feel When You Stop Trying To Save Your Marriage

Choosing peace over persistence.

AI image generated by the author using Leonardo.ai

It was just an empty dresser drawer. For a few seconds, I thought my estranged husband had made room for my pajamas in the dresser we shared at our lake house after we separated. Until I thanked him for making more room for me. That was when he informed me he was keeping the drawer empty for his girlfriend, who stayed with him every other weekend.

I had seen her belongings in the house on my weekends there, but the dresser drawer being taken away and given to her felt like the biggest sign yet that my lake house would no longer be mine, and this woman was taking it over.

After that, I stopped trying to fully assert my presence in the house because I knew the marriage train was on track for a disaster, and there was no turning back.

With denial as my steady companion, I held onto hope that my husband was going to come around and have a real marriage. I believed in commitment and didn’t want to get divorced. But, it was clear my husband didn’t share my views.

He had gotten involved with a woman from out of state as part of a last-ditch effort involving an open marriage arrangement. Even through this two-year affair, I held onto hope we could work things out.

That was ten years ago. It felt like I had been trying to convince my husband that he really did want to be with me for at least that long. He had dismissed and disrespected me for years. But I was not a quitter. I tried everything I could think of to improve our marriage. Should I lose weight? Did I need new clothes?

I had done all I could to recover from a debilitating stroke in the thirteenth year of our marriage, but it was never enough for him. I walked too slowly. I couldn’t go hiking. Everything was different. My husband and I had different ways of adjusting to our new reality. Maybe I wasn’t being fair to him because I was so caught up in my own problems, such as not being able to walk or take care of my children, that I never imagined what he was going through.

I made the best of what I had for as long as possible, and held out hope we could reconcile even after he moved out. I was unhappy and exhausted, as I’m sure my husband was. We can get used to just about anything.

It wasn’t until the marriage train had crashed and burned that I saw the writing on the wall. The dresser drawer space expanded to include the entire house. The girlfriend has been living in my former lake house with my former husband for three years.

I didn’t realize how heavy the weight of ambivalence and denial was until it was lifted. After a particularly great night’s sleep recently, I remembered how many nights I lay awake worrying about my future alone. I stayed up doing math in my head, trying to calculate how much I would need to live vs. how much my ex wanted to give me. I wondered who I would go on vacation with. Who I would have sex with. Go out with.

The stress of it would carry over into legal wrangling through countless emails with our attorneys during my waking hours. This went on way longer than it should have. We had been married 30 years and had accumulated assets that needed to be divided. It was a complicated, lengthy, expensive, and contentious process. It consumed a lot of energy and had me on edge for nearly eight years.

Now I only notice the chaos of it all because of its absence. Suddenly, now that I’m divorced, I no longer feel like I have to work so hard on my relationship. I don’t have to beg for attention. I don’t have to hope he loves me.

When you accept there is no hope for fixing your marriage, you can choose peace over persistence. You can sleep at night. You can devote the energy you used to spend on trying or fighting to living your best life.

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Victoria Ponte — 2025.