Happy Marriage. Anyone?

Our boys were jumping gleefully in the bouncy house at The Play Fort and my friend and I were chatting, enjoying the air conditioning inside as it hovered around 110 degrees outside.  She had asked me if I still attended the activities of the local Mom’s Club, and I was giving her all the many reasons why I had not participated in a long time.  My final reason was a little tongue-and-cheek, delivered with the best emo I could muster:

“I just felt a little out-of-place among all those moms with their perfect, happy little marriages.”  Instead of the light chuckle I expected in response, a shadow crossed over her face, she locked her eyes into mine, and said urgently,

“There IS no such thing as a happy marriage.”

Now, I knew she’d been having some hard times with her husband.  And I thought of other friends of mine who had revealed their marital troubles, and I started panicking on the drive home from The Play Fort:

“Wait a minute.  If nobody’s happy in their marriage, then who was I to leave mine?  To audaciously bail on it like that, when everybody else is sticking it out!  To make my child grow up with divorced parents?!  Who do I think I am?!”  These thoughts continued to plague me as I chopped carrots for dinner, anxiously watching Mimo line up his cars and chatter to himself animatedly in the family room.

But then I thought it through a little more.  First of all, the premise is a false one.  I can’t believe that there’s no such thing as a happy marriage.  Maybe they are few and far between, but I’m sure they do exist.  My cousin and his wife are very affectionate and content after ten years of marriage.  My good friend Bobbi, who reconnected with her high school sweetheart in her late 20’s, is still very much in love.  So it must be possible, right?

Secondly, even if too many people are somewhat dissatisfied in their marriages, there’s unhappy and then there’s: UNHAPPY.  I guarantee you, mine was UNHAPPY.  Verbal abuse, physical abuse (even if it was rare and comparatively mild), feeling completely misunderstood, being isolated from family…. these are not things to “stick out.”  This is not the example to set for your child, who hopefully will be one of the skilled and lucky ones who does build a successful marriage.

So I think I’m over my storm of doubts about my decision to leave.  But I’m wondering what others think: How rare is a happy marriage?  This question matters to me even though I have no intention of ever getting married again.  I hate to think of so many married people being miserable out there.