“My Marriage is Falling Apart! How Do I Stay Solution-Oriented?"

When I separated from a man, whom at the time I believed was the love of my life, it was the hardest decision I’d ever made and yet I knew that I wasn’t honoring myself in that relationship. The lies and betrayals had begun to eat away at my soul. Nonetheless, the day I asked him to leave, I loved him more than I ever had. We didn’t split out of a lack of love—we had a lack of trust and respect. I knew that things weren’t working and that I had to completely and utterly surrender the relationship to God. If we were meant to be—we would be together, just not then. For the first time in my life, I took care of my spirit—my soul.
Every day for nearly a year I would ask myself, “What would courage have me do?” And every day, for nearly a year, it would say, “Do not call him. He hasn’t done any of the work he needs to do in order for you to consider getting back together. Nothing has changed!!” 
I gave myself breathing time, grieving time, and then the moment came where I knew I had to get back in the game.
Did I cry? Every day, for over a year – and then some!
For the longest time I wondered, “Did I really love him?” How can you know true love until you truly love yourself?
I may have ached for him, craved him, desired him, wanted him . . . but it wasn’t until I surrendered him—surrendered what I wanted him to be . . . what I wanted us to be . . . what I wanted me to be—that I began to know what true love meant.
Finally I realized that it “was what it was” and that I couldn’t stay in a place of grieving—wishing and wondering and hoping—any longer. I wrote a good-bye letter to my once-supposed “soul mate” and burned it. I then made a “wish list” of all the qualities I needed in a man—qualities I would never live without again. Four months later, in a whirlwind romance, I was engaged. It was the most “outrageous” and yet, most authentic decision I’d ever made. Not to “him” (we’d dated for seven years without marriage!) . . . but to a man who seemed to magically appear out of nowhere—Yes, I’d found my prince. Some would say it happened because I had become a princess. Not the kind of princess who wears a tiara or owns great lands, but the kind who knows the wealth within her soul . . . The kind who is no longer afraid to share it.
Not surprisingly, it wasn’t until I’d committed myself to someone else that “he” came back—professing his undying love for me. It was my test; my moment of reckoning. I chose my husband.
I look back now, years later, at that profoundly significant relationship—at the pain and pleasure—and realize that it was only because I truly loved him that I left him. Had I stayed, I would have disabled him by enabling him to not become the man he needed to be.  In disabling him, I was disabling myself. We had outgrown each other—he just didn’t know it. I did.