Grow with Lorraine is a mission-driven column, aimed at destigmatizing difficult human experiences, offering insights and strategies to empower personal growth, healing, and deeper connections.
I got married when I was 28, close to eight years ago. Reflecting back, I had no idea what marriage meant; if anything, it was what I had always been told was the path to a fulfilling and happy life.
In my home country, Australia, it’s quite typical to marry relatively young, which, whilst wonderful, often also means we don’t yet fully understand who we are or what we want out of a relationship, much less a lifetime.
After my dad passed away last year, I began to feel the foundation shift from beneath my feet, calling me to reflect on the status quo of my life. Eventually it led to a mutual decision that saw my relationship come to an end with someone I have known for over 17 years.
It hasn’t been an easy year to date, and at times navigating this change has triggered deep feelings of unworthiness, fear, and uncertainty around the future. But, parallel to these emotions – somehow, despite feeling the stigma of being “36 and divorced with two kids” – my heart is somehow filled with more hope than I’ve had in a long time.
Not because of the breakup, but because I’m finally giving myself the permission and space to connect to the ‘me’ I abandoned so many years ago.
I’ve always had a tendency to lose myself in relationships, due heavily to the fact that most of my young adult life was spent running away from myself towards people or endeavors that I believed could protect me from the pain of my past.
I never took the time to learn who I was, and when you don’t know who you are, you don’t know what you need. And if we don’t know what we need, how can we possibly understand what the right partner or relationship looks like for us?
There is a direct correlation between the quality of our self-awareness and the quality of our relationships – period.
I believe strongly that my past relationships ended because I never entered into them as a whole person; instead, I wanted to find someone who would complete me and help fill the emptiness I felt inside.
My lack of self-awareness resulted in relationships that were chosen based mostly on chemistry and feelings rather than the intentional exploration of mutual values, respect, and long-term compatibility.
It’s easy to conclude from our heartbreaks that the idea of a relationship that truly makes us feel alive, respected, and fulfilled doesn’t truely exist.
So often these days, I hear a detached approach from many that we should simply settle for someone. Or perhaps the other extreme – that the answer is to never commit at all. Both of which can be completely valid depending on what we want.
I challenge you, however, to consider a different approach. Perhaps instead of thinking that a meaningful relationship is based on how great our partner is, maybe the answer is that ‘great’ needs to go both ways. I think the key to finding that dream relationship is in the commitment not to the other, but to ourselves.
A commitment to understand ourselves deeply; a commitment to complete the emptiness within ourselves; a commitment to never stop growing; and, in the context of marriage or life partnership, a commitment to spend our life evolving and becoming the best version of ourselves.
And here’s the catch: we need to find someone who is committed to doing the same.
Questioning Ideals
“You complete me,” although romantic, has bastardized generations and expectations around what the purpose of romantic relationships are.
Instead, we should romanticize the idea that instead of completing each other, individuals are responsible for their own fulfillment and we should enter into a relationship as two whole people, without expecting the other to “make us happy.”
Popular and modern culture often tells us that the purpose of marriage and life partnership is to find the love of your life, the person who completes you, whom you can run off into the sunset with to enjoy life-long happiness, attraction, and that special 'spark' of romance that should never die.
Why then, do over 50% of all marriages end? If the promise is so great... why do statistics show we are getting it so wrong?
When recently watching a video of divorce lawyer James Sexton, he raised the paradox of why so many of us continue to take the plunge, despite the incredibly high divorce rates. As he points out, if we were offered the opportunity to invest in a business with a 50% chance of failure, we’d likely opt out.
So why does the appeal of marriage still trump any logic around statistics?
His answer is something that resonates with me deeply: people continue to enter into marriages despite the rates of divorce, because if you get it right, you hit the jackpot, and when you win in love, there’s nothing quite like it.
For me, and perhaps my naivety, it’s a risk I’d still be willing to take again. Like Sexton said, the dream of finding someone to share your life with is, to me, worth the risk of trying.
The future approach and mentality I would take, however, has completely shifted.
If roughly 50% of all marriages fail, I don’t believe that means that monogamy and marriage don’t work; I believe it means most of us go into marriage without a strong understanding of how much work a relationship truly takes to succeed.
Healing Emotional Wounds
For me, the answer to reducing the risk of divorce lies with a psychologist I love named Harville Hendrix. Hendrix suggests that the reason so many marriages fail is because our societal understanding of why we get married and the purpose it serves is completely wrong to begin with.
Through my own growth and work, I absolutely agree with him.
With the exception of people who marry for economic or financial reasons, the view that marriage leads to 'happily ever after' couldn’t be further from the truth.
Harville Hendrix and his Imago theory on relationships makes it blunt: The purpose of romantic relationships and marriage is to heal the emotional wounds of our upbringing. Sounds painful right?
Most of us spend our lives avoiding having to face the pain of our past – and now marriage is supposedly not about bliss but purposefully and intentionally uncovering pain? Frankly, it makes a lot of sense.
Relationships don’t end because of the good, but instead because of the areas that we struggle interpersonally with the other. The constant moments where we feel unseen, unappreciated, unheard, unworthy, and unfulfilled.
Harville Hendrix's theory suggests that our unresolved childhood wounds are often triggered in adult relationships because we unconsciously seek to heal these wounds through our partners.
He argues we are drawn to individuals who resemble the caregivers from our early years, both in positive and negative ways.
The dynamics and patterns established in childhood become deeply ingrained templates for how we relate to others later in life. Because of this, conflicts or challenges in relationships often mirror unresolved issues from our past, offering opportunities for healing and growth when approached with awareness and understanding.
I’ve listed some of my own thoughts on what it takes for a successful long term relationship below:
A commitment to learning and developing our own self-awareness and understanding
The upfront expectation and understanding that a relationship will trigger the most painful emotions and wounds we have within ourself, and that our attitude needs to encompass a willingness to work through these individually and together, but never to avoid them
A commitment to learning how to support not only ourselves but our partners through this intentional process (helping to heal each other’s emotional wounds) and prioritizing empathy, patience, respect, and compassion for one another.
The ability to seek help when needed and an understanding that we can’t do it alone
What are some of your own thoughts? Feel free to comment below, or drop me your thoughts at contact@lorrainele.com, or WeChat and Instagram handle @growwithlorraine. I’d love to hear what you have to say.
Lorraine Le
Lorraine Le is the Founder of Mental Health platform Inward Living, and CEO of The Kindness Dealer, a confidential and bespoke consultancy that specializes in in-depth sessions for people to gain a 'birds-eye view' of their struggles and the influences that have and continue to shape them.
To get in touch or follow her advocacy and work, contact Lorraine through the WeChat ID: growwithlorraine or follow @growwithlorraine on Instagram, and @growwithlorraine on YouTube.
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[All images courtesy of Lorraine Le]
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