Ask Sherry: My views on marriage and how I got them

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What has shaped your views on marriage?

Obviously my parents. My parents are in an unhappy and increasingly unhappier marriage ever since they left with all of us and immigrated.

My father feels resentment at everyone and everything, taking no responsibility for anything but himself – he is selfish to the core.

He looks back at what he missed out on, he looks to us as money bags, who have sucked out all this money from him while he was raising us and are giving nothing back (you know, like a Filial Piety payment each month)..

As a result, in recent years he has become increasingly selfish. He literally does JACK SQUAT in the house, doesn’t help my mother, nothing. I mean when I say nothing, I mean NOTHING, and she pays for everything. In his mind, she is paying back all the money she “spent” while she was getting her degree to better her job prospects and her life.

She is unhappy, he is unhappy, they’re taking it out on each other.

This is their marriage.

And yet they won’t divorce.

My mom is too scared of change to leave. She is familiar with the situation, and I cannot judge or blame her — it is hard to know a zoo stinks until you are out of said zoo and realize the air is so much cleaner and fresher on the other side.

So my view on marriage is that if it ever reaches that point, where I could wake up every morning and literally pick a fight if I wanted to with someone I had raised a family with, it is time to leave.

She will never divorce, and I will never become that woman who refuses to divorce even if all the flags and signs are turning and screaming crimson red in my face.

Other views on marriage — I see my siblings, I see my friends’ marriages and their parents’ marriages via their eyes.

I see that there has to be communication between the two, and compromise. My partner is no good at compromising but he is slowly trying, and I am trying to get him to see that he has to SAY SOMETHING because I hate it when things are bottled up (and I can tell, obviously).

I am more of a -fight about it, fight loud, air it out, and be done with it.

He is the type to take it to the cave, and basically simmer in a stew of hate and anger until I go in there and lance the boil, so to speak.

I also really don’t enjoy being told that anyone needs to be with someone. I am an individual who chooses to be with another, not that I need to have someone in my life to be with.

I also don’t enjoy the implication that I need to be classified by my marital status because quite frankly, it is no one’s business or of any importance in who I am as a person who has to be treated with respect regardless.

So marriage — not a big deal for me. I am okay with being married or not, it doesn’t really bother me, it’s a piece of paper. What is more important is the union of that marriage, and in our case, that our son came of it, because he will be the one everlasting true bond between my partner and I forever, no matter what.

Still have a burning question?

You can ask any question using the form here and all of my previous Ask Sherry posts are here.