PLAIN TRUTH: Let’s applaud the courage it takes to leave

A few days ago, I met a woman who has made the decision to separate from her husband but hasn’t breathed a word of it to her family or friends. The end of a long term relationship is something a lot of women will not openly speak about for fear of stigma or seeming like failures for being unable to ‘keep a man’. It is different with this woman.

She told me that she is embarrassed that she allowed a man to waste her time. This, after a nine-year-long marriage. “I should have known it wasn’t going to last forever,” she says.

I’m not surprised. We are a generation of women who grew up fairy tales. We were told that you and the man you love should grow old together, that only death should part you. That love should be forever. We saw our mothers and grandmothers struggle to stay in marriages that were not working because that is what was expected of them, and because staying was the measure of a woman’s strength. Even if we should know better, we are walking in those very footsteps.

The truth is that while love can last a lifetime, it can also last a year. A relationship’s end doesn’t mean that it wasn’t love. It wasn’t a waste of time or emotion either. As long as you learnt something about yourself, about human relationships or how the world works, then I would say that relationship was a success even if it did not last very long.

The point a woman misses when she is deciding to leave or stay in a relationship that is no longer serving her needs is that ending a relationship will not erase the good times. It will not erase the fact that there were fulfilled moments or that the two of you built a family or a business empire together.

Let’s change this mindset of success in love being equal to a happy ever after. Love isn’t staying in a relationship that has turned toxic because you are afraid of leaving. It’s not fighting to stay with a man who discovers, years into your relationship, that he is sexually attracted to other men. It’s not staying with a man who hits you. Love can acknowledge when things stop working between you and your significant other. It can be making the decision to salvage your happiness and your sanity when things get to a point of no return.

So let’s start applauding the courage it takes to run from an abusive spouse. Let’s tell our friends the truth about staying in a marriage for the sake of the children. Tell them that it’s selfish, not heroic. Quit advising women in violent relationships to stay and pray about it. Tell them to love themselves.