What if I never feel bliss again?

A marriage doesn’t end without a lot of thought and sadness. If it’s ending, I promise you that at least one of the two has put in their whole soul trying to fix whatever is wrong— probably both have.

Losing your life partner sucks. Nobody goes into that willingly. Some of us (like me) stay for all the wrong reasons, but one of the biggest is happiness.

Wait, what? How can you be happy in a marriage if you’re leaving it.

Well, I think it’s about looking at your happiness, where it actually comes from, and being honest with yourself about what can wreck it.

For example, I love to travel. It’s one of my favorite things in the world to do. There’s a laundry list of reasons why, but they boil down to new adventures and people and places.

It brings me all the joy to experience something I’ve never experienced before.

And I travel a lot. My (ex)husband is the one that accompanied me on almost all of those travels. And so, every single memory from those trips, from all of my many adventures includes him.

You know how you can look back on your life, and sort of grab a highlight reel of happy? Let’s take a look at my mental travel slideshow…

The time we walked into a secret behind the scenes party at Disney
Getting day drunk in the pool with new friends in Turks and Caicos
Being served a cheese platter and drinks in the ocean in Montego Bay
Driving through Honduras in the rainforest in dune-buggies
Golden Gate Bridge drive up the coast

Oh man, I could keep going… but you get the idea— it was awesome.

He was there for every single one of those moments. He appears in the highlight reel again and again. Therefore, how can I continue to have those moments of pure serotonin happiness and bliss like that if he’s not there?

And then I realized something. This isn’t his highlight reel. It’s mine. And the worst part? I created every single one of those moments.

I’m the reason we went to secret parties and had unlimited fast passes at Disney. They invited me because of my blog.

Same with day drinking in Turks and Caicos. And the friends? From my work.

I booked the trip last minute to Jamaica because I found a lightning deal. I moved heaven and earth to get us there.

Honduras and the buggies was on my bucket list. I took my daughter and five of her friends for her 17th birthday. It was the trip of a lifetime. And another killer travel deal I found and saved for all by myself.

And don’t even get me started on the Golden Gate Bridge drive.. because we fought so much the morning of the drive that we got started so late I wasn’t even sure we’d make it there and back in time.

And that’s the other thing. I’m so focused on the happiness that I didn’t even notice the trips we didn’t take. The deposits we didn’t get back because the raiding season wasn’t over yet or he just couldn’t miss three nights of world of Warcraft two weeks in a row or whatever was happening.

Not only am I the one that created the happiness, but I am the one that fought for it. I’m the one that forced it. I’m the one that’s been shoving the square peg into the round hole all this time, and it’s because I was so hellbent on creating joy and happiness for us all that I didn’t realize I was fighting against whatever demons keep him from finding his joy, too.

It’s not that I’m unwilling to fight for the joy of everyone I love, I’m just not doing it one-sided anymore. I’m not going to be the only one that puts on the gloves and enters the ring.