Til Death Do Us Part is Not a Life Sentence

Most of us, especially in the over-50 age bracket, have taken that vow: “til death do us part.”

Generally, it was inside a church and we anticipated a blissful marriage to the person we were madly in love with. And the frightening part is, we took the vow seriously, literally, word-for-word.

The amazing statistic about divorce in the United States is that almost 50 percent of marriages now end in divorce.

But this statistic supports that one: 1 in 4 women experience abuse at the hand of their intimate partner. I am hopeful that a high percentage of the divorce statistic is the result of women leaving abusive spouses!

(Yes, I know that abusers are also female. My experience is with a male abuser and my niche is women over 50, so I speak to male abusers…female victims. Thank you for understanding the words I choose.)

Now back to “…’til death do us part”.

When I took that vow I thought it was forever. A happy-forever turned out to be almost non-existent.

Signs of control and verbal abuse had already been evident before the marriage. Those traits quickly expanded into an unhappy and damaging reality. Speaking only for me and why I didn’t immediately leave the marriage, I was young and didn’t want to admit I had made a…