What I Miss About Marriage

You may have heard the old joke: What happens when you play a country song in reverse?

Answer: The guy gets his wife, home, dog, and truck back. My divorce was like a bad country song. I lost my wife, my home, my dog, even my truck. We lose a lot of things in divorce.

If you’ve ever been married, you know that married life is a cycle of heartwarming highs and crushing lows. No one can love you or hurt you like a spouse. If your marriage has ended in divorce, you also know there are many things you miss about being married. No matter how hard it might have been at times, there are aspects you wish were still part of your life. 

What do you miss about marriage?

I miss many things…

1.) Family

Whether you got along with your in-laws or not, they were still part of your life. When I was married, I wasn’t just Chris. I was a son-in-law, an uncle to my nieces, a friend to my wife’s cousins. When a marriage ends, you lose those connections. You may still maintain healthy relationships with some of them, but they’ll never be your family again. 

2.) Mutual friends

I am fortunate to have a core group of friends I’ve known for years. They stood firmly in my corner during my divorce. But there are other friends you make together as a couple. My ex’s friends, coworkers, and couples we met at church. So who gets Debbie in the divorce? Who gets Greg? Now, these people must choose which person deserves their loyalty. For some, the decision is easy. For others, it hurts. Many friends liked us both equally and they didn’t ask to choose between us. Those mutual friends lose too. 

3.) Places

My ex and I had our favorite spots in our town. We shopped at the local grocery store. Ate at our favorite Italian restaurant. Hiked the canyons just outside our neighborhood. We had our favorite vacation spots. When you get divorced, all these places get disrupted too. You can go back to them, but it will never be the same. 

4.) Dreams

I had a dream that I’d be a successful husband. That we’d have children and throw football and host princess parties in the backyard. You miss the fun times with your children and family and friends. 

Maybe you had the dream of being a strong spouse. A good parent. A respectable person with a wedding band on their left hand. The dream of maybe sitting in rocking chairs on a front porch somewhere, grown kids visiting you and your beloved, frail but together after a lifetime, holding one another’s withered hands. 

5.) Sense of self

Marriage makes a huge imprint on a person’s identity. You see yourself as someone who can be married, who can give and receive love. Then, when it ends, your sense of self is suddenly scrambled.

Am I not lovable? Am I not valuable? Am I not a person capable of maintaining a healthy relationship?

You’ve gradually become one person in marriage, and now suddenly you’re someone else. Someone you may no longer recognize. After divorce, you have to rebuild your sense of who you are.

6.) Companionship

The thing I miss most about being married is simply having a companion to get through life with.

A friend once told me that the most meaningful thing about marriage is being able to look at the sky or a cathedral or a piece of art, to point it out and to have someone else there to see it too. Someone to behold with. In divorce, we lose that, and now we must look at the sky alone without that other person to affirm us, to remind us we’re alive and sharing the same experience. 

We miss someone to come home to, sit on the couch with, and talk about the day with.

Someone to cook for and eat dinner with. Someone to help you navigate the challenges of work, and to support you as you pursue your passions and dreams. 

At the very beginning of the Bible, God said it’s not good for us to be alone (Genesis 2:18). So when a marriage breaks up, we feel the “not good” part of it intensely. 

I miss many things about being married.

But there’s a flip side to losing so much: I also started to find.

I found who I never knew I was: a man strong enough to withstand all this loss. After my divorce, my heart was still beating, still coiled with potential ready to burst forth into the world. 

So grieve the things you’ve lost. It’s okay to miss them. Give thanks for the good you experienced. It’s okay to be grateful for the good times.

And move forward, knowing that Jesus is the “author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2) and your story is not over yet. As writer Frederick Buechner says: “What’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.”