It is hard to be fully invested in a relationship if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re already thinking about the messy ending. You are right about the statistics\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmany marriages do end. There are no guarantees. I do know that very few people go into a marriage with the intention of getting a divorce. Marriage is a leap of faith. It seems pretty clear that you are not ready to make that leap right now\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s OK. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s good to know that is where you are.<\/p>\n
What I think is interesting is that you say that you are fine with long-term commitments or even one life-long commitment. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be curious to know more about why that feels safer to you than marriage. The \u00e2\u20ac\u0153split\u00e2\u20ac\u009d rates for relationships are higher than for marriages. There are even fewer guarantees in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153nonbinding\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (for lack of a better term) relationships. The risks of not being able to trust, of being hurt, of friends taking sides are just as high. If you were to have children with a lifelong partner outside of marriage, custody issues would still be present; they would just look slightly different. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d still have to figure out dividing up shared stuff (possibly even your home). There are even fewer guarantees in this kind of relationship, yet something about not being legally bound to another person seems less risky to you.<\/p>\n
I wonder if the issue may not actually be the act of marriage, but the level of trust required to risk committing yourself fully to another person. It is not unusual for children of divorce to struggle with that trust. They experienced firsthand how marriages can end. It can profoundly impact their feelings of safety and security and limit their willingness to trust in others. You say that, right now, it feels like you have to choose between a very scary \u00e2\u20ac\u0153risk-it-all\u00e2\u20ac\u009d approach or be doomed to a life alone. There is definitely a middle ground which can allow you meaningful relationships without such high levels of fear. I strongly encourage you to explore these feelings with a therapist in your area.<\/p>\n
Best of luck,
\nErika<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is hard to be fully invested in a relationship if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re already thinking about the messy ending. You are right about the statistics\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmany marriages do end. There are no guarantees. I do know that very few people go into a marriage with the intention of getting a divorce. Marriage is a leap of faith. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2592,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[625],"tags":[552,522,395,25,41],"class_list":["post-20166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dear-goodtherapy","tag-commitment-issues","tag-dear-gt","tag-divorce","tag-psychotherapy-issues","tag-marriage-counseling-relationships"],"acf":{"author_show":false,"author_name":"","author_role":"","author_avatar":null,"author_profile_url":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2592"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}