The coffee shop felt heavy with history. The couple across from me hadn’t sat together in two years, but they’d both agreed to talk about their marriage—and its end. They were couple number thirty-seven in my informal study.
After forty of these conversations, patterns emerged that surprised me. Not the obvious stuff about communication or money. These were deeper regrets, the ones people only admit years later when the anger has cooled. The things that might have changed everything—or at least made the ending kinder.
1. They’d have fought about the real problem
“We spent three hours arguing about the dishwasher,” one woman told me, laughing darkly. “The dishwasher was never the problem.” Every couple mentioned this—the proxy wars they waged instead of addressing what actually hurt.
The real issues felt too big, too scary to name. So they fought about chores, in-laws, what to watch on Netflix. Meanwhile, the actual problems—feeling invisible, dreams abandoned, loneliness in a shared bed—grew quietly in the dark. By the time anyone spoke the truth, it came out as cruelty instead of vulnerability. The research confirms this: couples who avoid core conflicts rarely survive.
2. They’d have gotten help while they still liked each other
Nobody tells you this: marriage counseling works best when you don’t desperately need it. Every couple I talked to waited until they could barely stand being in the same room. By then, therapy became divorce mediation with extra steps.
“We thought needing help meant we’d already failed,” one man told me. Both he and his wife grew up believing strong marriages don’t need intervention. So they white-knuckled through seven years of growing apart. Looking back, he sees all the exit ramps they passed—moments when a good therapist could have helped them course-correct. Instead, they arrived at counseling speaking different languages.
3. They’d have protected their friendship
This one hurt to hear repeatedly. Somewhere between the wedding and the lawyers, they’d stopped being friends. Not dramatically—quietly, like air leaving a tire. They forgot to laugh together. Stopped sharing random thoughts. Became co-managers of a life instead of partners in one.
“I can’t pinpoint when we stopped having fun,” said a woman who’d been married twelve years. Date nights became obligations. Conversations turned transactional. They ran their household like a small business, not a marriage. The friendship erosion happened so gradually, neither noticed until it was gone.
4. They’d have been honest about growing apart
People change. This seems obvious until it’s happening in your marriage. Almost everyone mentioned watching their partner become someone different and pretending not to notice. Or feeling themselves changing and hiding it.
One couple described maintaining a pleasant fiction while living increasingly separate lives. She discovered meditation and spirituality; he thought it was ridiculous. He wanted to sell everything and travel; she craved roots. Instead of acknowledging they were growing in different directions, they just… kept growing apart. “We kept waiting for the other person to snap back,” she told me. “Like a rubber band. Neither of us did.” Growing apart remains the leading cause of later-life divorce.
5. They’d have left with more grace
The biggest regret? How it ended. Not that it ended—but the scorched earth approach so many took. The words that can’t be unsaid. The kids caught in crossfire. The friends forced to pick sides.
“I spent thirty thousand dollars on lawyers just to hurt him,” one woman admitted. “Money I didn’t have, for pain that didn’t heal.” Another man won every custody battle, then watched his kids struggle for years. The collateral damage outlasted the marriage itself. Most wish they’d chosen future peace over present revenge. That they’d remembered this person once meant everything to them.
Final thoughts
After all these conversations, I noticed something profound. The regrets aren’t about staying married. They’re about being better humans while married. Every lesson applies whether the marriage survives or not—fight fair, get help, stay friends, acknowledge change, choose grace.
The couple from that coffee shop—number thirty-seven—surprised me at the end. They thanked each other. Not for the marriage, but for agreeing to dissect its failure with a stranger. They said talking to me had given them unexpected clarity about what went wrong.
Sometimes the hardest moments teach us the most. These divorced couples found theirs too late for their marriages, but maybe not too late for everything else.
Just launched: Laughing in the Face of Chaos by Rudá Iandê
Feel like you’ve done the inner work—but still feel off?
Maybe you’ve explored your personality type, rewritten your habits, even dipped your toes into mindfulness or therapy. But underneath it all, something’s still… stuck. Like you’re living by scripts you didn’t write. Like your “growth” has quietly become another performance.
This book is for that part of you.
In Laughing in the Face of Chaos, Brazilian shaman Rudá Iandê dismantles the myths we unknowingly inherit—from our families, cultures, religions, and the self-help industry itself. With irreverent wisdom and piercing honesty, he’ll help you see the invisible programs running your life… and guide you into reclaiming what’s real, raw, and yours.
No polished “5-step” formula. No chasing perfection. Just the unfiltered, untamed path to becoming who you actually are—underneath the stories.
