In December 2023, my marriage fell apart for the last time. And I did not handle it well.

I want to be honest with you about that, because a lot of people who talk about healing skip over the part where things got ugly first. So let me say it plainly: when he left, I lost myself. Not all at once, but slowly — and then very quickly. I begged. I pleaded. I chased a man who had already made up his mind, and in doing so, I chased away the last pieces of my own dignity.

And here is the part that is interesting: it wasn’t a “good” marriage, not one that glorified God as Good. It wasn’t watering us. It wasn’t filling us. In many ways, it was taking from us, from me — draining my ability to love, my joy, and my sense of self, one quiet day at a time. But people pleasers don’t leave draining situations. Oh no! We stay. We shrink. We convince ourselves that if we just try harder, love louder, need less, give more, maybe they’ll finally see our worth.

They usually don’t. And the trying harder only teaches us to trust ourselves less.

The Two Ways to Divorce

I’ve thought a lot about this. There is a way to go through the end of a marriage that preserves who you are. And there is a way that dismantles you. The difference isn’t about who filed the papers or who was “at fault.” The difference is about whether you walk away still knowing your name.

To divorce well is to grieve fully but not grovel. It is to feel the loss without making a desperate bargain with it. It is to honor what the marriage meant without begging for what it can no longer give.

Real love — the kind God designed — is a daily choice. It is two people waking up and deciding, again, to stay. To show up. To renew what they promised. When one person stops making that choice, no amount of your begging can make them. And you lowering yourself to make them stay does not make the love more real. It only makes you smaller.

To divorce well means you eventually understand this. That love does not require your self-destruction as proof of devotion. That letting go — when someone has already let go of you — can itself be an act of love. For them. And for yourself.

What People-Pleasing Really Costs

People-pleasers don’t just want to be liked. They are terrified of what happens when they’re not. Underneath all the accommodating and shrinking and over-giving is a deep, aching belief: If I stop performing, I will be left.

And then sometimes — as was the case for me — you do everything right by people-pleaser standards, and you still get left. That’s when the mask cracks. That’s when you realize the life you were performing for someone else’s approval was not really your life at all.

My lowest point wasn’t the separation itself. It was realizing how far I had drifted from myself in the name of keeping the peace. I had confused peacekeeping with love. I had confused self-erasure with sacrifice. Real sacrifice comes from a full heart. What I was doing came from fear.

When God says love drives out fear, He means this: you should not have to be afraid of the person who loves you. You should not have to earn your place at the table every single morning. A love that demands you shrink is not the love you were created for.

Broken Marriages and What Breaks Them

Every broken marriage breaks because of sin. I know that may feel like a hard word, but it is also a freeing one. Because sin is not the end of the story for anyone who belongs to God.

We are imperfect people. We wound each other. We choose wrong things. We sometimes choose ourselves at the expense of the people we vowed to love. That is the human condition. And divorce — when it comes — is often just the final visible evidence of wounds that were never healed and choices that were never corrected.

But here is what I need you to hear: the failure of a marriage does not mean the failure of you. God was not surprised by your divorce. He is not standing over you in disappointment. He is the God who sees you in your lowest moment and calls you by a different name than the one your pain is using.