Divorce – Selfless or Selfish?

NORRATOR – NORRA + narrator

Stories shaped by experience

Divorce – Selfish or Selfless?

11 mins read

When we get married, we naturally assume it is for ever after. No normal person enters a marriage planning for the worst-case scenario. We think about the wedding, the house, and the baby carriage.

But sometimes, couples grow into completely different people.

If you marry a sweetheart from college, the shift can hit hard when you enter the working world. A professional environment introduces you to new circles. It tests your ability to handle immense pressure. Suddenly, you realize college was just a tiny fishbowl, and now you are navigating the open ocean.

For couples who go on to have children, the gap can widen. Often, one partner is simply unwilling to adjust to the reality of parenthood, continuing to behave as if they are completely single. You have likely heard the old adages: “Men marry hoping the women will stay the same,” and “Women marry hoping the men will change.”

In my own journey, I steadily worked my way toward better career opportunities. Financially and title-wise, I was thriving. Unfortunately, the trajectory was not the same for my then-husband.

Through that experience, I learned how incredibly difficult it is to maintain a peaceful marriage when the wife out-earns the husband. This is not a slight against men, but the male ego plays a massive role—not just in a relationship, but in how a man views himself. A man lacking self-confidence can easily wreck a relationship with his own insecurity.

When I was climbing the corporate ladder in the advertising industry, working until 7 PM or 8 PM was the standard norm. We were a young, driven group in our late twenties and early thirties, slaving away and making good money. Once or twice a week, usually on a Friday night, we would go out for drinks.

This became a major breaking point for my husband.

When we were younger, we did everything together. We hung out with his friends constantly. We had the luxury of time back then because my mother was still alive, and she found beautiful companionship in my young son after my father passed away. My early corporate roles were relatively easy; the serious, demanding workload didn’t hit until my third major job change. By that time, I had been growing with the company for six years.

My husband, meanwhile, was steadily unemployed and possessed a notoriously short temper. As my career took off, his insecurity and anger intensified.

It became common for the kids and me to live entirely at the mercy of his mood swings. I dreaded weekends the most. At the office, I knew I could shine. At home, we never knew when a dark cloud would suddenly form over our heads. Some days he would act like a perfectly normal husband and father, offering a rare “sunny day.” But over time, the cloudy days far outnumbered the sun.

Even though I managed to mentally compartmentalize my marriage and my career, it became socially exhausting. Working in advertising meant meeting countless people. I started developing a sort of psychological arrhythmia every time someone asked the standard small-talk question: “So, what does your husband do?”

In my mind, the honest answer was: “He is an unemployed bum with severe insecurities and a terrible temper.” But instead, my mouth would invariably utter: “He runs his own business.”

I grew to despise myself for those moments. When had I become such a liar? If my parents were still alive, they would tell you I was the most honest, bold child imaginable—the type to blurt out the truth whether it sounded pleasant or not. Yet, every time anyone asked about my husband, I lied. I told myself it was just a white lie, a temporary shield until he got better. But it created a massive, agonizing internal conflict.

By day, I was the working mother extraordinaire, providing beautifully for my children. By night and on weekends, I was an intimidated wife.

The hardest part was managing the exhausting cycle of hope and reality. Deep down, I kept hoping he would change, become a successful businessman, a supportive husband, and a great father. But the reality was a steady downward spiral.

Hope is a tricky thing. You need enough of it to look forward to the future, but too much of it will pull the wool completely over your eyes.

This intense tug-of-war went on for years. The realization that things were fundamentally broken hit me as the children grew older. The arguments worsened. When they were toddlers, they didn’t understand the friction. As they grew, we tried to hold back our arguments, but the heavy strain in the air was impossible to hide.

I watched my children pick up on that aura of gloom. They stopped being chirpy and playful. They didn’t dare approach either of us when the tension was thick. Kids are incredibly perceptive.

The challenge multiplied when my mother passed away. My ultimate shield was gone. Without her presence, my husband’s behavior somehow deteriorated further. I was drowning in the grief of losing my mother, made even harder by my son constantly asking, “Where is Popo?” Every time he asked, I struggled to keep a straight face, gently telling him that Popo had gone to God’s house for good and wasn’t coming back. Even today, tears catch in my eyes when I remember those raw conversations.

The reality was stark: the kids and I were only allowed to be happy if my husband was happy. If he was in a bad mood, our entire household was held hostage by it. I didn’t have the terminology for it back then, but it was text-book emotional abuse.

Then came the financial realization. Money wasn’t the issue—I was earning plenty of it. In fact, I began to wonder if I had actively enabled his lifestyle by covering every single expense, even entirely funding and planning our family holidays. I wrestled with the guilt of contributing to his condition, and the shame of who I had become by hiding the truth from the world.

One day, I sat down and forced myself to imagine what life would look like if I walked away.

The initial scenario looked incredibly tough. I imagined managing every single detail of life entirely on my own. My father had been gone a long time. My mother was now gone. It would be just me, the kids, and our maid.

Then, I looked back at my current reality: Me, the kids, the maid, the husband, the volatile temper, the burning insecurities, and the permanent dark cloud.

The answer suddenly became blindingly clear. I was already doing it all alone anyway. I was vastly better off divorced than married.

I knew it would be a struggle to play the role of both mother and father. There would be no “good cop, bad cop” balance. The kids wouldn’t have a father to run to when I was strict, or vice versa. They would have to face society and answer uncomfortable questions about why their dad wasn’t around.

But was that really worse than the alternative? It certainly wasn’t better for my children to grow up like timid wallflowers, subjected to constant temperamental outbursts. More than anything, I refused to let my children grow up believing it was normal for a mother to work herself to the bone, provide everything for the family, only to come home and accept being treated poorly by the father.

It took two agonizing years of legal battles before my divorce was finally granted. To this day, I have absolutely no regrets about making that choice.

Sure, I struggled immensely with balancing a demanding career, running a family, and managing a household entirely by myself. But a beautiful thing happened in the absence of that friction: I finally got to shine brighter at work. The heavy atmosphere lifted, and my children started smiling more. There simply wasn’t a dark cloud hanging over us anymore.

If I could turn back time, would I change anything about this decision? Absolutely not.

His shortcomings were not my fault. I spent years carrying the burden of false guilt, wondering if I had somehow caused his lifestyle. But I came to realize a striking double standard: if the tables had been turned, and if he had paid for me to pursue a business venture, no one would have blamed him for “spoiling” me or enabling my dependence. He would have been universally lauded as a wonderful, financially supportive husband championing his wife’s ambition.

I finally realized I needed to take myself back—for my own sake, and for the sake of my kids. I was going to think about our future, because he was entirely incapable of doing that for us. He was too wrapped up in his own mind, frustrated by his lack of achievement, and taking the brunt of that failure out on the people who loved him.

I will always be profoundly thankful that I possessed the financial independence, alongside the mental and emotional strength, to make that terrifyingly tough decision. Choosing and prioritizing your environment is vital—not just for single parents, but for anyone who possesses basic self-respect.

When I finalized the decision to get a divorce, I knew precisely what kinds of hardships I would be signing up to struggle with. But looking back, every single tear was well worth it. Seeing my children and myself living genuinely happier, lighter lives without a dark cloud shrouding our heads was the ultimate reward.

The Quiet Reflection

When I originally penned these words years ago, I wrote them from the perspective of a woman who believed that stepping out into the world as a single mother was the absolute peak of my life’s hardship. I thought that survival meant balancing corporate ladders with single parenthood.

I did not yet know what the future had in store for me.

I did not know about the devastating financial collapse and bankruptcy waiting around the corner. I did not know I would have to look into the mirror and face my own battle with cancer. And I could never have imagined the unfathomable, world-shattering grief of eventually losing my beautiful daughter to that exact same disease.

Looking back at that version of myself from the ultimate vantage point of who I am today—a single mother, a cancer survivor, a former bankrupt, and a grieving parent—my view on that long-ago divorce has matured into something much deeper.

People often ask if choosing to leave a marriage is an act of selfishness or selflessness.

What I know now is that divorce itself is neither. It is simply a profound, heavy choice regarding which consequences you are willing to carry. Staying in a toxic environment for the sake of “keeping the family together” is often a masked form of fear, not selflessness.

Walking away from my marriage wasn’t an act of abandoning a family; it was a fierce, protective act of resilience. It was the moment I chose to stop living as an intimidated casualty of someone else’s darkness, and instead chose to become the clean, strong foundation my children needed.

That boundary-setting choice was the very first template of strength I ever designed for myself. It was the training ground. It built the exact emotional muscles, the pain tolerance, and the raw internal grit that I would desperately need years later to survive the much heavier storms life was preparing to throw at me.

If you are standing at your own crossroads today, drowning in hope that has turned into blindness, remember this: choices carry consequences, and you must choose the ones you are strong enough to live with. Sometimes, the most selfless thing you can do for the little eyes watching you is to stand up, choose the unknown struggle, and show them how to survive.

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