A time to marry and a time to divorce

When Jinlin moves to Finland to live together with me, we are planning to get married.

I have been married before and I have divorced. I have two nice boys, now 12 and 9 years, from my marriage. I do know that this is okay. I know divorce is not s stigma like it was in the past. I know that ending a long relationship - with or without kids - can be more difficult or less difficult but the difficulty or ethics of the end does really depend on whether there is marriage or not. I know no gods are judging our dealings in life with holy laws. I think and feel that I have made right decisions in the past both when entering and when leaving my marriage. I do not regret anything and I can look at all my old wedding pictures and feel it was happy and good party.

But still sometimes, thought quite rarely, small nagging feelings touch the edge of my conscious though: Is divorce still a mark of failure? Does it give impression that I am difficult person or bad husband? Have I had enough love and compassion in my heart? Has my credibility taken a hit? Have I lived my life in good ways?

Then I think: what kind of different paths do people take though life? What kind of paths involve divorce and what kinds of paths do not include it?

There are men who are too afraid of relationships to ever start one. If I would have been such man, I might have no divorces. I might be available for a marriage now, but I would definitely be less competent and valuable as a husband than I am now. Long time ago I used to be too such a man, but I grew in courage.

There are men who fear commitment, who prefer dozens of short shallow relationships with half-hearted commitment, always running away on the suggestion of getting more serious, especially marriage or babies. If I would have been such man, I might have no divorce, but as a potential husband I would still be less valuable than I am now. But I value deep long relationships with no-limits commitment even when no-one can 100% guarantee happiness and success of the marriage or in the long run.

There are men who are weak and scared of divorce. They might hang in a marriage even if they are suffering in it, it brings happiness to no-one and all reasonable methods of reconciliation have been exhausted. If I would be such man, I might have no divorces. Long time ago I used to be such a man, but I grew in strength and I learned that one will survive many things in life.

There are men who decide that children should have always two parents that stay together in the same house, whatever the cost, whatever quarrel and disputes and lack of love these children need to witness. But I understand that children are flexible about practical arrangements, that sometimes for children divorce is better and I have seen my boys well adjusted and happy to their life of two homes.

There are men, fortunately rare, who are extremely afraid of shame of divorce and resort to rather killing their whole family and themselves when impossible-to-solve problems raise in marriage. Such men might escape divorce but at a horrible unthinkable cost. Tiina Raevaara writes in her excellent article about such extreme cases in Finland and how we should work to remove any remaining factors in our society that can induce shame about divorce.

And of course there are men who are lucky to experience a marriage where love and understanding continues to flourish, problems remain reasonable in size and solvable in nature, until death do them apart. I offer my sincere congratulations to such men and their wives! Such men are not any more available for marriage.

But I have not been myself like any of these men. I have had courage for love, relationship and commitment, experiencing long relationships with much good in addition to the trouble. I have worked to save my marriage as well as my other long relationships and resolve problems and show love. Yet I have also had the strength to accept divorce when efforts failed for too long time and divorce seemed and felt the right thing to do. And I am at ease with this, almost completely.

I am not religious, but sometimes it's nice to cherry-pick wisdom from holy books:

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot, 
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

It is one of lives more difficult questions how much patience one should have, how long to try, when to give up. If your business running a loss, how long should you keep pouring more investment? If the loss goes on and on, when to give up, let the business go bankrupt and try something else? Recovery might be just around the corner or it might never come. Same problem arises in all things in life where you engage, invest your time, money, will and energy - including relationships. One cannot give advice, one cannot know "right" answer in any particular situation, one has to do difficult balancing act.

I don't think I have been bad husband in my past marriage, but I think I can be even better one in the future for Jinlin.