Marriage Didn't Work Quotes & Sayings

The marriage didn't work out but the separation is great. — Liz Smith

I wanted my marriage to work, but it didn't. — Diane Abbott

A month ago, Gavin had given his employer four weeks' notice. "I'll get a job around here," he'd told her. "Something low-stress, part-time, maybe. We're not paying rent, and Dad's left us plenty. You should quit, too." A year earlier this news would have filled her with delicious, full fat, chocolate-coated joy. But now, after a grueling routine of shitty work, shitty- weird home life in a house where the shadow of a dead boy walked more solidly than the grownups, shitty headaches, shitty worry about a husband who couldn't keep his dick out of other women, the golden offer just weirded Laine out. She didn't trust it. — Stephen M. Irwin

Adjusting to any marriage, let alone a plural one, is an incredibly individual experience, and it is all-encompassing. Your entire worldview and your entire cultural, personal, and religious awareness goes through a radical upheaval. You barely have time to worry about what's going on in the outside world. I found that I had to do so much work readjusting my own parameters and shifting my own perspectives that I didn't think too much about my mother's parallel experiences. — Janelle Brown

Today's marriages become toxic, with resentments, after only a few years. It's one thing to say, 'I forgive,' but most lack the enterprise to do the necessary work that follows. It was the day after that proved who had the wisdom of God and who didn't.
pg 46 — Michael Ben Zehabe

Chess worked for a wholesale grocery firm. He had thought of being a history teacher, but his father had persuaded him that teaching was no way to support a wife and get on in the world. His father had helped him get this job but told him that once he got in he was not to expect any favors. He didn't. He left the house before it was light, during this first winter of our marriage, and came home after dark. He worked hard, not asking that the work he did fit in with any interests he might have had or have any purpose to it that he might have once honored. No purpose except to carry us both toward that life of lawnmowers and freezers which we believed we had no mind for. I might marvel at his submission, if I thought about it. His cheerful, you might say gallant, submission.
But then, I thought, it's what men do. — Alice Munro

I've often thought if I didn't make my marriage work, I would have failed at my one true shot at happiness. — Bethenny Frankel

Just because marriage didn't work for us doesn't mean we don't believe in the institution. Just because our own marital track records are mixed doesn't mean our hearts don't lift at the sight of our daughters' Tiffany-blue wedding invitations. — Sandra Tsing Loh

I had this dream about you last night. We were still married. I was giving you a haircut, like I always did, being careful to trim around the scar on the back of your head. I'm sorry I sometimes forgot it and left you with a bald spot. And, I'm sorry we didn't work out. But you look pretty happy on Instagram. — Crystal Woods

BRADBURY: Well, if you love people you criticize them, and if you don't love them you don't criticize them, you let them go to hell, don't you? To help any kind of friendship, your marriage, your children, you criticize because you love. And this works the same way. With your friends
let's say in writing
if you don't offer criticism to them and scare them on occasion ... In other words you say to a new writer, for gods sake write, because if you don't you will disappear. The world doesn't give a damn about you unless you do something. Those are the rules; I didn't make them. If you are lazy, if you don't get the work that you love done, the world won't care if you die tomorrow and go into the grave and are gone and forgotten forever. — Ray Bradbury

Warren Beatty once quipped that the best time for a wedding was noon, because if the marriage didn't work, you hadn't screwed up the entire day. — Peter Biskind

Neil [Simon] was considered our greatest [living playwright] at the time [of their marriage]. Maybe he still is; I don't know. But anyway, he was hugely successful, and I just kind of got folded into that. And in some ways, he protected me, but in other ways, I wasn't fully able to step out, you know? He didn't want me to go away so much. The work that we did together was great, and I don't regret it, but what I am saying is that I didn't get an opportunity to explore some other areas that were offered to me early on. I took what I might call a U-turn. — Marsha Mason

Sometimes a rut can be a comfortable place to be, but ours was full of too many differences and resentments to be wholly comfortable. I had always had my own way in the marriage - about what we'd do, where we'd do it, when, how. Katharine had always argued, and always given in. In the process she'd become more resentful, I guess, except that I was too busy with my own work to notice. But in turn she was less and less appealing to me. She's a couple of years older than me, I guess you know that, but that wasn't all. Those stolid American middle-class values, her sensible clothes, her sense of responsibility, her moderation in all things - frankly, they bored me. We made love less and less, and she didn't even seem to miss it. I did. — Shashi Tharoor

It's hard enough to be in a marriage, and then have a kid, then kids, it changes everything. For me, I'd become more concerned with my children. Not that I ignored Britney, but my kids are always most important ... I mean, we were having complications. I didn't give her an ultimatum, but I was trying to work stuff out with her, and she didn't even talk to me or anything and went behind my back and filed [for divorce]. [I was] completely blindsided. — Kevin Federline

Choice: that was the thing. Other people claimed that you can't choose who you love
it just happens!
but Grace and Roman knew that was a bunch of happy horseshit. Of course you chose who you loved. If you didn't choose, you ended up with what was left
the drunks and abusers, the debtors and vacuums, the ones who ate their food too fast or had never read a novel. Damn, marriage was hard work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that. Yet, year after year, Grace and Roman had pressed their shoulders against the stone and rolled it up the hill together. — Sherman Alexie

I went through a long period of time in that marriage when I didn't believe anything was my fault. I had to face what my part was, and only because of that difficult work was I able to trust a man again. — Connie Sellecca

I honestly thought my marriage would work because me and the wife did share a sense of humour. We had to really, because she didn't have one. — Frank Skinner

We just say: the divorce didn't work out. — Joe

Mum is a perfectionist and Dad is a pedant and that was partly why their marriage didn't work so well, Elsa figures. Because a perfectionist and a pedant are two very different things. — Fredrik Backman

When my husband and I went into the bayou between New Orleans and Baton Rouge for a week of intensive marriage counseling after I started burning myself. My parents paid for it and kept the baby. It didn't work but we did have anal sex and the woman counselor gave me a recipe for oatmeal blueberry pancakes that I still make. — Merritt Tierce

No marriage is one person's failure any more than it's one person's success, so it works best to see a marriage that has ended simply as something that didn't work out. — Merle Shain