“Mistresses are most often responsible for men leaving.” Does divorce always have to be a trauma?

Joanna woke up earlier than usual. The tremors woke her from sleep at five in the morning, even though she was never a morning person. She had to hide somewhere, disappear somewhere, look deep into her soul and wonder whose life she was living, because it wasn’t her own.

Her life was supposed to be completely different. Yes, she had a career. Yes, she bought a beautiful apartment with a garden. Yes, this is SOMETHING in Warsaw, especially since she managed to do everything on her own. She proved to herself and others that her small-town origins would not prevent her from having a brilliant corporate career. She went to the largest shower she had managed to design in her new apartment and, to the accompaniment of the rain shower, she lay on the floor and cried out all her grief, praying that her husband, sleeping behind the wall, would not look into the bathroom.

It’s true that you can’t see the tears under the rain shower, but how can you explain the agony on the floor? She prayed. He didn’t look. It was then that she promised herself that this would be her last unhappy birthday. The last birthday of a woman asking for the right to a dignified existence, next to a man who, for a change – for the first time – will be her partner. Not a son, not a father, not a friend, not a toy, but a PARTNER, written in caps lock out of respect for the seriousness of the situation. Her thirtieth birthday – that’s how many birthdays she could endure, but not one more.

The alpha male’s new woman

Piotr was preoccupied with his corporate career and, like his wife, with raising children. She is very feminine, caring, a Polish mother. He is macho, alpha male, a real man who rinses toothpaste with whiskey. He works hard, so he likes to eat, because when you work, you eat. He is a real man. Of course, men hunt and conquer. Well, they regularly deliver frozen meatballs from Sweden. He will win because he has to. He doesn’t have to get meatballs, he’ll get a friend from work.

He built a house with his wife on his own plot of land, his wife earns little, so even if he has a child with a friend, it won’t be bad. After all, the house is his and so is his salary. He will have at most one more child.

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When she can’t have children

Julia lived for painting. Her home studio was her whole world. How did he suddenly turn 50? When did it go away? Did she really have last sex with her spouse when the glass roof was being built on Zlote Trasy?

She loves her four dogs as if they were her own children, but she could have had children… Will her husband’s new girlfriend give him children? Will this mean that Julia will no longer have to take care of her mother-in-law with Alzheimer’s?

Final decision

What pushes the spouses to the final decision to separate? How deep must the crisis be to go from “I vow to you” to “I will take it from you”.

As a rule, women decide to break up when they can’t stand it anymore. They have held it, they have held it and they will not hold it any longer. In each case, the measuring stick falls at a different place on the problem severity axis. Bridget Jones couldn’t stand men’s underpants folded at the ankle, and Peter’s wife needed the baptism of her husband’s illegitimate child to go to a lawyer. Mistresses are most often responsible for men leaving. Mistresses have several versions. There are lovers whose name does not remain in the spouse’s memory longer than the time spent waiting for the underwear that witnessed the event to be washed. However, they play the role of an “awareness maker”. They make a man realize that the relationship he is in leads him – nothing more or less – into the arms of another woman. As a sign of this, he must break up, because he is probably unhappy. If he were happy, he would realization would never have occurred.

2140395153 Halfpoint/Shutterstock

Now he will buy a motorcycle and fight for the rest of his life with dignity. Yes – yours and only yours. There are also lovers who are remembered by their spouse not only by name, but even by surname. It is not often, but sometimes it turns out that the lover reveals herself as the love of her life and the bridegroom is ready to give her both kidneys. They have children together and live happily ever after. They create relationships in which they take out the garbage themselves, and the clamor of their offspring sounds almost like Moonlight Sonata in their ears. Do women take lovers? Yes. But as a rule, they leave when they feel bad. Men usually leave for their mistresses. But what would the world be if there were no exceptions that prove the rule?

When to say “enough”?

Is a crisis necessary for a divorce? Does the crisis appear where there are still emotions? How many emotions must there be to “deserve” a crisis? Is a breakup without emotions better than an emotional breakup with a crisis?

Due to the fact that in some marriages the crisis is omnipresent from the first day, it is difficult to defend the thesis that a crisis is necessary for a permanent and complete breakdown of the marriage to occur. In some cases, it is the crisis that leads to building a relationship. The desire to prove to the other person that he or she is constantly wrong and doing everything wrong is stronger than the temptation to break up or not to enter into a relationship in the first place.

There are also married couples devoid of emotions who do not even think about recognizing any crisis. They simply haven’t always liked each other enough and since nothing is likely to change in this regard, why make an issue of it. This is how they live, they carry their cross, and Halina has it much worse and somehow survives. Marian is pissed off every day.

However, when directing the issue of crisis in a relationship and the emotions associated with it to more everyday topics, known to mainstream representatives of the genre, it is worth becoming aware of the most important issues.

The decision to separate or divorce, especially when the couple has children, should not only be carefully considered, but also worked through with a specialist. Such a decision should be made no earlier than after trying to save the relationship, preferably with the help of a psychologist. The consequences of ill-considered decisions can be devastating, especially for children.

The issue of child care should also be agreed with a psychologist. A lawyer can help formalize this, but a lawyer or legal advisor does not have the competence to examine whether the method of child care proposed by one of the parties is appropriate for the children. Contacts with children are not about meeting the needs of adults. Contacts with children are about the well-being of those children.

Magdalena Dąbrowska, legal advisor, creator of the ‘Good Divorce’ program private archive

Therefore, when trying to answer the question whether a breakup without emotions is better than an emotional breakup during a crisis, we should answer that, above all, a good relationship is the best. Quite solid research by the Gottmann Institute () has shown that couples who communicate – talk and listen, and those couples who greet and say goodbye to each other, for example when going to or from work, have a 90% chance of having a long-term successful relationship .

So let’s start with small steps that will lead us to great successes in interpersonal relationships. If, for any reason, a good relationship is not possible, let’s at least try to divorce or break up properly. Instead of building extreme emotions in a serious crisis, let’s look for the simplest solutions leading to conciliation. The future is definitely more important than the past – especially the future of children.