Too Soon For Marriage? Divorce? – Sometimes, a person makes a huge mistake by marrying someone they shouldn’t. This is more likely to happen when passionate commitments are made too soon.
Sometimes people, driven by a passion of another sort, divorce too hastily.
Often, these are the same people. Their smart divorce attorney referred Dean and Elizabeth to my office.
“Get real,” shouted Elizabeth to her husband, Dean, after he announced he had taken an apartment, seen an attorney and filed for divorce. He was sure she would understand and not give him a hard time.
Dean and Elizabeth have been married for a year. By most barometers, Dean is a good guy who made a mistake. Now, he’s continuing to make others.
These two met at a convention. Their long distance romance hardly felt “oh-so-romantic” and left plenty of time for fantasy about what it would be like to live together. They could hardly wait. They were married within six months of their first date.
Elizabeth’s parents hosted a beautiful wedding for three hundred. Dean never has told Elizabeth about how much he hates fancy parties.
The new couple moved far away from each of their families. This pleased Elizabeth, who loved the idea of starting fresh without having to bother with “interference.”.
Dean says that he would have preferred to live closer to his parents, his brother and sister-in-law. “No,” he says. “I never told that to Elizabeth. I guess I should have but I just wanted to please her.
Dean discovered, in fairly short order, that Elizabeth doesn’t like sharing him with anybody. Her idea for married life was “staying home and cocooning.” Dean was bored.
He loves to ride motorcycles, run and play softball. Elizabeth hates all those things and hates that the activities take him away from her.
Although he has actually filed for divorce, he admits he still has some doubt.
“I’ve filed for divorce, but I admit, I have my doubts. Maybe no one will ever love me like Elizabeth does.”
“Now she says she wants to learn about motorcycles. Can you believe that?”
Dean, I said, “Of course I believe that. I also believe you never should have married Elizabeth when you did.
I asked Dean to consider that he and Elizabeth had never married, in any real sense.
“We had that gorgeous wedding,” he protested.
That was a party, I explained. A lovely party, I’m sure. But it wasn’t celebrating your marriage, even if that was the intent.
Marriage is a process and not an event. Dean and Elizabeth had not been together long enough to allow this process to happen, before the partying had begun.
Maybe it’s not too late. I want Dean to make sure that he’s not making yet another mistake by divorcing too quickly. I encourage them to put the divorce on hold as they take some time and effort to learn about each other.
Something good about each other had motivated them to be together in the first place. The ultimate task her is for them to discover if those things are worth a lifetime commitment, before they have children.
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