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I Knew Our Marriage Was Over When I Started to Hate His Snoring
When the little things you used to love suddenly aren’t so cute, it’s time to reflect.
My ex-husband (who really is the sweetest) and I still aren’t divorced. The paperwork has either bounced back or we just up and didn’t want to deal with it all.
It’s getting handled and not what the story is about, but it created the question that would unravel so many thoughts about marriage that I hadn’t really considered before.
And that could also help you, somehow, since it didn’t help me then.
I’m not sure how the conversation got started. My best friend listened to me tell him in passing how I was emailing back and forth with my ex-husband about the paperwork and I said, “you know what’s funny about marriage. I only realized it was over when I noticed how much I hated his snoring.”
“But I thought you loved his snoring?” My best friend, Michael, who lives with me and also had been on the phone with me every night of my marriage and was Mister-of-Honor at our wedding, said.
He knew more than anyone how much I had loved his snoring in the past. This all changed, though. Which is what I told Michael.
“Huh,” he’d said in return, batting his long eye-lashes in thought.
“Hasn’t that ever happened to you?” I asked as I pulled a drink from the fridge, the juxtaposition of such a casual maneuver and serious topic, something Michael is used to now living with me.
“I never really noticed, but yeah, I guess. It’s gradual,” he replied.
You don’t notice until it’s too late. Or maybe you do.
And it is gradual. If there’s any advice to newly weds I can give, it’s to watch for any signs of “slippage”. Things you once found charming about your marriage or relationship that you could never possibly hate that, well, you start to kind of hate.
Of course, so many would say they did not need to watch for these signs. You love everything about your partner and couldn’t possibly think about them in any kind of way that’s negative, especially with something as simple as a snore…
