A Bishop’s Decision to Divorce - By Gene Robinson

[DonViejo]

All of us sincerely intend, when we take our wedding vows, to live up to the ideal of ‘til death do us part.’ But not all of us are able to see it through.

Life is hard. And it just keeps on coming, ready or not. Somewhere inside me, I guess I thought that life in “retirement” would be more peaceful, easier somehow. But I am also not naïve enough to believe it for long.

Recently, my partner and husband of 25-plus years and I decided to get divorced. While the details of our situation will remain appropriately private, I am seeking to be as open and honest in the midst of this decision as I have been in other dramatic moments of my life—coming out in 1986, falling in love, and accepting the challenge of becoming Christendom’s first openly gay priest to be elected a Bishop in the historic succession of bishops stretching back to the apostles.

As my marriage to Mark ends, I believe him to be one of the kindest, most generous and loyal human beings on earth. There is no way I could ever repay the debt I owe him for his standing by me through the challenges of the last decade. I will be forever grateful to him, and as I tell couples in pre-marital counseling, “Marriage is forever, and your relationship will endure—whether positively or negatively—even if the marriage formally ends.”

I know this flies in the face of the common practice of regarding one party in a divorce as the bad guy and one the good guy. The fact remains that it takes two people to make a marriage and two people to make a divorce. The reasons for ending a marriage fall on the shoulders of both parties: the missed opportunities for saying and doing the things that might have made a difference, the roads not taken, the disappointments endured but not confronted.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/04/a-bishop-s-decision-to-divorce.html

[cbayer]

1. This breaks my heart.

He writes so truly and eloquently about what is happening, but still, I wish it were not.