Matthew Fray - This Is How Your Marriage Ends: a Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships

A MAN FALLS INTO A HOLE WITH WALLS TOO HIGH TO CLIMB.

Hes hurt and afraid.

Please help! he cries. Im stuck down here!

Just then a doctor walks by and, hearing the cries for help, writes a prescription and drops it into the hole before moving along.

Somebody! Anybody! Please help me!

Next, a pastor walking by stops, scribbles a prayer onto a piece of paper, pitches it down to the trapped man, and continues on.

I need help! I cant get out! the man shouts.

Finally, a friend walks by, sees the man trapped in the hole, and immediately jumps in as well.

You idiot! Now youre down here too! Why would you do that?! the man asks.

His friend replies: Because Ive been down here before. I may know the way out. And because I want you to know youre not alone.

* * *

I was thirty-four and crying more than an adult man probably should. Because my wife left. And because I missed our little boy who was no longer home every day. And because she was seeing some dickbag who holds the distinction of being the only human I ever wished would die in a fiery explosion.

Even though Id barely touched my wife in the previous two years, the thought of someone else doing so wrecked me. My young son, not yet in kindergarten, would now be raised by this dickbag, I thought. I no longer have any agency over who gets to look after my son. I imagined a future where he would run off the field after Little League games and jump into the arms of his mom and evil stepdad, who would look to everyone else like a beautiful little family. And Id be some distance away, forcing a polite smile as if everything were okay but secretly wishing I were dead.

But I also had other immediate problems to deal with. After a lifetime of living with parents, college roommates, or my wife, I was for the first time without companionship. That wouldnt do.

Stories abound of guys my age being released back into the wild. Cleaning up in the dating world armed with the confidence and sexual competence that comes with the life and bedroom experience we dont possess in our formative years. I should try online dating! People dont make fun of you for that anymore!

I tried online dating on Match and Tinder, despite Tinders reputation at the time as being an app for cheap hook-ups.

Mostly, women werent interested. Because the internet allows people to easily filter their dating preferences, it didnt take long to realize that recently divorced, 5'9" single fathers who cry a lot arent considered the cream of the online dating crop.

But there were a few takers. The widow who liked me but chastised me for being on online dating sites despite being emotionally unavailable so soon after divorce. The hearing specialist who texted LOL after every.single.typed.sentence. The woman who turned out to be the sister of a guy I knew at work, which led both of us to shake hands and say, Welp. This is a shit idea. Have a nice life and stuff.

Before a date, Id coach myself: Dont talk about your divorce. Dont talk about your divorce. Dont talk about your divorce. Id talk about my divorce before the appetizers arrived. Idiot!

I sucked ass at dating. Not only did I cry too much but my hair was graying, I was the father of a four-year-old, which instantly weeds out a ton of people disinterested in stepmotherhood, and the politely outraged widow was right: I was there to combat loneliness, not to make authentic human connections that might lead to healthy, sustainable relationships.

Id think about how unfair it felt that my wife seemed so happy in her new life and relationship while I was binge-watching Netflix through tears, miserable and alone.

Im going to die a lonely incel and that shit-eater is going to hug my son and French-kiss my wife next to my casket before he flies them to an amazing African safari vacation where my wife will inevitably celebrate my passing with some uncomfortably hot sex act we never tried and say, Hahahahahahaha! I bet Matt sat around crying all the time and no girls wanted to kiss him! What a small, little loser he was! Im so glad Im here with you instead of him!

Thats seriously what I thought about. They were dark times.

One night, while freaking out and self-medicating with vodka, I called a therapist on a 1800 number and Im pretty sure she thought I was a loser.

She asked me questions about my life. I probably offered, Umm. Im getting divorced. Im involuntarily celibate. Im pretty sure that some guy I dont know is sticking his penis inside of my wife. Things are awesome. Thanks for asking.

She said, Since youre a writer, I think it would be good for you to start a journal. Just write down what you feel.

She probably meant that I should write things in a private journal. Instead, I got a little drunk and put it on the internet.

FROM DIVORCE BLOGGER TO RELATIONSHIP COACH TO BOOK AUTHOR

I started the blog Must Be This Tall To Ride in 2013 as a means of processing my grief and anger following my divorce per the phone-a-therapists suggestion. She encouraged me to write my feelings. So, thats what I did. It was supposed to be a dark comedy documenting my trials and tribulations as a recently divorced, midlife-crisis-having single father trying to date and start a new life. I thought it would be funny in a dysfunctionally pathetic way.

I treated it almost like a journal. It was easy to write vulnerably and authentically because I felt too miserable to care what anyone thought of me and because there didnt seem to be any danger of anyone reading it.

But then people totally read it and provided feedback. A small but engaged and growing audience formed.

Those people saved my life in several ways. People liked the writing, they said. It helped them feel less alone, they said. My public self-reflections on marriage and divorce felt personal and familiar to them, they said.

Im not the only one, we discovered collectively.

The fact that people were paying attention changed everything. Am I going to contribute to the empty-calorie click-bait noise? Or am I going to try to do something that matters?

I had been writing sad and angry tales of how I felt my ex-wife was mistreating me and being unfair to me and how hard my life was and me me me me me me me. Sprinkled with a little more me.

And then on July 3, 2013, during my first out-of-town trip without my wife following our separation, I wrote and published a blog post titled An Open Letter to Shitty Husbands, Vol. 1. Its not very good. It wasnt important because of its quality. It was important because it represented a critical shift in the way I had been thinking about my failed marriage.

I began to ask, because I needed to know: What did I do to make her feel like this was her best option?

I read several books and articles about the conditions that commonly end relationships. They sounded eerily similar to the end of my marriage. I locked in on the behaviors commonly linked to romantic partners feeling emotionally neglected and abandoned. The kind of behaviors that result in the breakdown of safety and trust in relationships. I spent time self-reflecting, for the first time ever, challenging my own beliefs and assumptions. For the first time ever, I asked myself difficult questions about how much of this horror show was actually because of me.