“If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Repeat After Me: It’s All My Fault

There is nothing like divorce to oil the blame and self-pity machine. Every now and then I go down the reddit rabbit hole seeking commiseration and read my way through divorce stories. It is remarkable that a large majority of people were apparently married to assholes.

“But s(he) really was a horrible person! S(he) did all those despicable things while I ploughed ahead for this marriage. My behaviour was of course not perfect but no one is. I did my best. My suffering was very real.”

To be fair, this is a bit exaggerated. To be even more fair, I’ve done this sing-song myself. The harsh truth is, for the vast majority no one was truly forced to stay. Even those cheated upon and never knowing about it, it is easier but more self-destructive to cast the other as an asshole, than face the difficult and painful self-introspection: “what is it about me that landed me in such a situation and why did I fail to recognize it?”

Here’s a tiny habit I aim to carve into my brain: whenever I find fault in him, I change the conversation and ask myself how did I fail myself.

In the end, we have to face the fact that it is mathematically impossible for 90% of people to have been married to assholes without some of us also suffering the same affliction.

Unless reddit has a secret asshole-filtering mechanism.