Marriage Survival Stories 1: “Everything Changed”

Hanging in there when life throws you a curveball

A few weeks back, I asked married readers if they’d be willing to share a story about surviving a rough patch in their relationship. I’ve been overwhelmed by the deeply moving stories I received - thank you all! There were far too many stories to do justice to in one essay, so with profound gratitude for your generosity, here’s the first in a short series.

How do you respond when life throws you a curveball, or one or both of you changes so much that it feels like the ‘I’ who said ‘I do’ no longer exists? Recently, entrepreneur Denise Lee, 40, caused a social media furore when she posted a TikTok video describing how she divorced her husband at 29, after four years of marriage: “I grew so much as a person [that] I didn’t feel he was the best fit for me any more”.

@denisexleeHere is one thing I would tell my younger self if I could! Allow yourself the space to grow and change, and be thankful for each version of you that got you to where you are now 🙏🏼 #personalgrowth #selfimprovement #growingandlearning #selflove #mentalhealth #mindfulness #lessonsformyyoungerself #selfacceptance #selfcare #motivation #positivity

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It’s easy to find stories like this. But it’s far harder to find stories from marriages where this happened, but the couple stayed married. And yet, based on your accounts, this happens a lot: you think you’ve married one person, then everything changes. And hanging in there can be tough.

One reader is still going through it. Danielle*, originally from NC but now living in Texas, recounts that over the last four years of her 11-year marriage her husband made ill-judged financial decisions that first accrued and then lost over $1 million, leaving them living hand-to-mouth.

Things nearly fell apart, she says: “At one point I thought about packing my bags and taking our son to live with my father temporary in North Carolina.” But she and her husband are hanging on: “Despite all of this, I still love my husband. We have learned to understand each other’s roles as husband and wife and we have learned to work through this painful situation day by day.”

Danielle is very lonely, she says, and short of real-life friends she could lean on for advice on “staying married while wrestling with pain”. And yet she isn’t without hope. “I have found the best comfort and prayer and studying the Bible,” she says. And she’s decided to lean into her relationship, and to find solace in it: “We live in a world where people are celebrating independence and getting divorced,” she says. “In contrast, we have learned to lean more on each other in order for our marriage to survive.”

Danielle isn’t alone. Weathering life-changing shifts in life circumstances is a recurring theme in your stories. Anna recounts having two kids in quick succession, shortly after she and her husband married, both aged 35 - only to find herself with two babies and also supporting the family financially, after he lost his job and the business he started proved erratic.

His work blossomed, crashed, blossomed again; meanwhile Anna grew more and more burned-out, exhausted and resentful. Married life got more and more miserable:

My husband felt like a failure.  At the most critical point in his life for earning money, to support his family, he was making less than he had ever made historically and now his wife was stuck in a horrible corporate job she couldn't walk away from.  He gained 100 pounds. I gained 50. We were both drinking too much and spending too much on weekends to compensate for time lost with our kids.  We fought a lot.  Sex stopped.  We both felt trapped.  We were on the verge of divorce. 

They realised, Anna recounts, that “we had to make drastic changes, NOW, or we would lose the marriage.” They met outside the house, “took divorce off the table”, and figured out what they had to do to get back on track. And first off, that turned out to mean moving, downsizing, and Anna taking a less stressful job. It also meant focusing on rebuilding their relationship: “We made date nights mandatory. We both supported each other in lifestyle improvements and got healthier.”

While it wasn’t an overnight fix, things got better. And there’s a happy ending: today, her husband’s business is thriving, they’re both healthier, and Anna works fully remote while getting certification as a health coach. Soon, she says, “I will be the one launching my own business and my husband will support me.” Above all, now they’re focused on what matters:

We live in a conservative lake community south of Charlotte.  It's tight knit with great people and my kids spend their days on their bikes and scooters playing with other kids outside and jumping in the lake.  Our house is tiny and affordable and our lives are rich. We couldn't be happier.  

Renaud’s story is just as dramatic. “Twenty years ago,” he recounts, “I exchanged vows with a Parisian fashionista and she married a Wall Street investment banker.” Both, he says, felt confident that this high-flying, glamorous life was certain to be their future: holiday homes, expensive accessories and all. But while today “we are still married with three children (the eldest of which is himself married now)” everything else is different: “Josie is now a naturopath and I am a painter.”

Having children pulled Josie gradually away from the fashion world, Renaud recounts, while he made “an ill-judged capital investment” that scuppered his self-image as financial master of the universe. There were health issues and financial challenges; in the end it got too much, and in 2012 they left New York for a sabbatical in Portugal.

They never went back. “Gaining distance from the ferris wheel/ hamster wheel we came to question our commitment to this life path,” Renaud recounts. But that doesn’t mean the change of pace has been easy in every way. Going through such an intense change caused “a great deal of relationship turbulence.”

Most challenging for both of them, Renaud says it took some time to let go of the glamorous, idealised “other” each had married. “Somewhat trivially, I might have become quite attached to seeing my wife dressed to the nines, and somewhat taken aback when she became an avid wardrobe thrifter in granola sandals.” And this cut both ways: “Josie may have taken the suit jacket that I draped on her shoulders one chilly evening early in our relationship for a protective mantle that would save her from the misadventures of previous relationships with indigent creative types”. Renaud is rueful about the fact that he turned out, in the end, to be a ‘creative type’ too, rather than the high-earning Prince Charming. “She’s very charitable these days about the painter’s smock I’m more likely to be wearing,” he says.

For Renaud, it’s not a question of “fixing” something that’s gone wrong, because a long-term relationship is a moving target. “With a bit of luck, the relationship evolves into something that can sway with the wind and weather rather than some iron-clad union,” he says. He believes he and his wife have been lucky:

Over time we have recognised in one another an echo of our own changing aspirations and ambitions. Initial disappointment or disorientation upon realising that the other person is not who you had bargained for gives way to an accommodation of our own shifting nature, and the ability to find new, more honest or enriching ways of flourishing than we might have imagined on our wedding day.

Words to stay married by.

Everyone’s story is different, and I dare say there are many more where things changed, or life got tough, and the gap just felt too big to bridge. I’m not here to throw shade. But I’m grateful for the small corrective these three stories offer to the message we’re fed, day after day, about how the only solution to unexpected change is to pull the ripcord.

Sometimes, there’s another way.

Stay tuned for more marriage survival stories! Or if you have one you are willing to share, I’d love to hear it- you can reach me by replying to this email.

*All names have been changed