I Now Know Why Women Divorce Their Husbands

I had a long career designing computer chips before we moved to Knoxville. In those early years I loved the work. I liked inventing a machine, designing it, seeing it get built, and then watching it run. When a deadline came close, I worked long hours. That is common in that world. Engineers do that from time to time.

One weekend I went further than that. It was a three-day weekend. I worked from Friday morning through Monday evening. I did not sleep. I stopped only for food and for the bathroom. I do not think I could do that now.

There was also a project that was not a short burst. I worked unreasonably long hours month after month. For some people that kind of schedule is a burden. It was not a burden for me. I liked the work. Because I liked it, it was easy to give it all of that time.

Then, in the middle of that season, Cynthia called me at the office. The words were quiet. An ordinary person listening in might have missed what she meant. I knew this woman, and I did not miss it. All she said was, “I now know why women divorce their husbands.”

I hung up the phone. I sat there for about a minute. I thought about the hours. I thought about the deadlines we kept missing, and how those deadlines just got moved again. I thought about the tradeoffs I had been making, and how my relationships had been paying for them. Then I left the office and drove home in the middle of the work day.

That day was the end of the most out-of-balance season of my working life. I should say this clearly: I still have to work at balance. I did not become a different species after one phone call. What changed that day was the daily decision. Before the call, I was deciding, each day, to work excessively. I was deciding, each day, to put my relationships on hold. Work, work, work. Me, me, me.

It is easy to miss how much the next hour matters. The little choice does not look like a life. Then you look up and the little choices have become the life.

Years later, in ministry, I sat with a few people who were dying. Not many. A few of them had done what I had done. Work had been first for a long time. Friends and family were not there at the end. The old coworkers were not there either. Those men and women had time to think about the tradeoffs. I never heard one of them say they were glad they had spent the whole of life at the office.

I do not tell that as a threat. I tell it because the phone call and the deathbed are the same kind of moment. Somebody finally tells the truth about the hours.

In John chapter 12, in the story of the grain of wheat, Jesus says that unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. If it dies, it produces much fruit. He also says that whoever loves his life loses it.

In that out-of-balance season I was the grain that would not fall. I loved my life. I clung to it a little bit at a time. Day after day I chose the work I enjoyed and I put the people I loved on hold. A person can live a long time that way and still, at the end, be only a grain of wheat.

I understand that passage differently now. Dying to myself, in that season, did not look like a festival. It looked like leaving the office at two in the afternoon while a project was still open. It looked like I might lose the thing that mattered most to me at work. I thought the reduced hours would cost me the career.

The opposite happened. I started listening more and dictating less. That listening eventually led me toward God, and toward Jesus. When I acted on what I heard, the relationships away from work began to recover. The relationships at work began to grow as well. I kept waiting for the punishment. Instead I was promoted. I still find that hard to explain. I only know that clinging to the hours did not produce the fruit I thought it would.

If your spouse could say Cynthia’s sentence today, you do not need a new five-year plan. You need the next hour. The work can be genuine joy and still be how you leave them. Loving the work does not make the tradeoff disappear.

The practice is simple, and it is not easy. Leave. Go home in the middle of the day if that is what the marriage requires. Or shut the machine down at the hour you already promised. Or tell the truth about the weekend before the weekend is gone. It will feel like dying to something. That is not proof you are making a mistake. That is often what the fruit costs on the way in.

This is a pastoral reflection, not clinical care and not a substitute for it. If you or someone you love is in immediate danger, call 988 or local emergency services.

Drawn from a Deacon Robert homily first preached in 2021.