Becoming Her

After doing some work with someone recently, it led me on a deeper dive, talking to more people about their stance on marriage and divorce. I asked people who have been divorced, people who are still married, and even those who have never married at all. Me, being divorced myself, I really wanted to dig into this subject. Because when you’ve lived through the breaking apart of vows, you see things differently.

You start asking the harder questions: What do those promises really mean? Where is the line? There also comes a point when someone asks you to sacrifice more than comfort or convenience…they ask you to sacrifice who you are. When a partner knowingly pressures you to compromise your values, your beliefs, or your morals, it doesn’t just break your heart. It fragments your soul.

And while I believe in complete forgiveness, because forgiveness sets us free, there are still some wounds that cannot be healed by staying. There are some fractures that won’t close as long as you remain in the place where they were created. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do, for yourself and even for the other person, is to detach. To step away. Not because you don’t believe in love, but because you finally understand that love was never meant to destroy you.

How do we balance commitment with protecting our own peace?

We’ve all heard the vows: for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. Beautiful words, but when life gets real, we have to ask: what exactly does that mean?

Does it mean that once you sign your name on the dotted line, you’re bound no matter what? Does it mean you stay through abuse, through betrayal, through manipulation, through gaslighting? Or is there space to say: “This no longer honors who I am, or the covenant we made”?

The thing is, this is not black and white. There is always gray. And only you can decide where the line is.

Because yes, commitment is sacred. Marriage and partnership are meant to be rooted in loyalty, endurance, and shared responsibility. But those vows were never meant to trap you in cycles of harm. They were never meant to excuse someone else’s abuse, neglect, or destruction of the very love those vows were supposed to protect.

Here’s where the pressure comes in. Sometimes we love someone so much that when they lean on us, we try to be everything: their preacher, their therapist, their doctor, their maid, their mother or father, their financial provider, their constant rescuer. We take on those roles out of love, but eventually, we break under the weight.

And when we hit that burnout, something happens: resentment takes root. The foundation cracks. And eventually, the cracks become canyons that no amount of patchwork can fix.

So where is the line? The line is where your peace, your safety, your dignity, and your wholeness begin to shatter. The line is crossed when commitment turns into control, when vows are used as shackles instead of sacred promises.

Releasing the guilt doesn’t mean you failed. It means you finally recognized the pressure was more than one person was ever meant to carry. And that’s not abandonment of love, it’s choosing survival, freedom, and truth.

Because love was never meant to break you.