My sister has filed for divorce. She told me last weekend she was going to talk to a lawyer, and she filed the papers this week. It is really sad for me since they are both good people. In a way, I wish her husband had been a jerk, or that she'd been a bad wife and he initiated it. Just something so blame could be placed somewhere. This has been coming for awhile, and she said he didn't seem surprised when she told him. I think she was hoping he would ask her to stay and try to work things out, and I really think that they could have with the right counseling. In her defense, I'm pretty sure she asked him to go; and in his defense, I know her "asking" tone can sound a lot like "nagging"...

When she was still engaged, she started having some doubts. I guess I knew back then that it might not last. She knew she could call it off, and we (Mom and I) told her it would be fine. I think she was just really swept up in the planning, and she didn't want to cancel everything. Then after she was married, they bought a house that needed a lot of remodeling, so they lived in a little two-room (not two-bedroom, but two rooms) apartment on the property. I think the close proximity was the final straw. He started working a lot of night shifts, and she started going to stay with her friend out of town on the weekends, and everything just fell apart.

So here we are, about a year and a half after their wedding, and the marriage is gone. How can you go from loving someone so much that you would commit your life to them before God, to signing some papers ending it all? I know this isn't my marriage, and they were both ready to get out, but this really hurts. I stood by them at the altar, and I welcomed and loved her husband as a brother. He hurt her, and she hurt him, but they really did love each other once.

I'm sure it sounds strange for me to be so bothered by this since divorce is pretty common, but this is the closest I've been to someone going through it. Our parents have stayed together. Some of my aunts, uncles, and grandparents divorced when I was really young, but our family has been relatively stable for most of my life. I'm just really glad my sister didn't have any kids with him. I know it's harder for children than for the adults involved.