Before I start this post, let me just say, I know this is a wedding planning website, and that pretty flowers and romantic, gushy stories are the entrees of the day. However, I thought I would throw this topic out there, in the hopes, that maybe others experiencing the concerns I had or something similar, can feel that they’re not alone.

There was a time in my younger life (before I met Mr. G) when I thought that even a simple conversation about divorce with my future betrothed would be like directly asking for bad luck or a curse on our marriage. Call it youth. Call it superstition. I really had no idea what divorce entailed, but I was hesitant to learn anything about it. Whatever divorce actually meant, I wanted nothing to do with it, and, of course, my imaginary future marriage would never end in divorce.

Fast forward to today, I still don’t know that much about divorce (compared to those directly affected by it), but I have seen and lived through my fair share of unhappy marriages and separations. (I won’t go into details to protect friends and family). And as I have witnessed unhappy marriages over the years, it has changed the way I see my own relationship with Mr. G and this abstract “fear” I’ve carried for years over the big d-word: divorce.

Now that Mr. G and I are making the big marriage leap, I feel as if pretending like divorce doesn’t exist or spouting out sentimental phrases like, “We will always be together forever” is my way of avoiding my fear. Instead, I should focus on the fact that I want to be with Mr. G forever. I want to work together to create a happy marriage. I want to have a family of our own. Yes, all of these things I want to do. I’ve been starting to see it more as “We will do everything in our power to stay together and be on the same page,” rather than “We will always be together forever”.

I have been working on my fear of the unknown. In place of that fear, I’ve embraced that the d-word exists. Mr. G and I have talked about what divorce means and about what we can do to attempt to sustain a happy marriage. But mostly, we’ve just allowed the conversation to happen naturally. We don’t know what the future will hold. It’s safe to say no one does. So, for us, having a certain level of self-awareness, I hope, will help during those unexpected, tough times. Does this give us a better chance than the next couple who doesn’t talk about it before they marry? Maybe. Maybe not.

But for us, that’s just how we roll.

Did you and your fiance have any conversations about divorce before you got married? Did you ever abstractly fear divorce like me?