Ladies Don't Consider Divorce. They Pray For Resilience.

In this episode of That's Not Very Ladylike, we're redefining what resilience really means and explores how building your inner strength isn't about staying or leaving. We get clear on what you truly need. Whether you choose to fight for your relationship or walk away, resilience gives you the grace and love to make that decision on your own terms. Because a lady doesn't just survive her circumstances, she decides them.

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What is That's Not Very Ladylike?

That’s Not Very Ladylike is the podcast for every woman who was told to be polite, stay calm, or stop being so dramatic, meanwhile her hormones, boundaries, and sanity were quietly falling apart.

Hosted by Tracey Willingham, licensed social worker and the voice behind That Hormone Girl™, each episode starts with one rule: Ladies don’t…and then they do it anyway.

Together, we unpack the unspoken expectations, the emotional labor, the generational BS, and the hormone chaos modern women are carrying and we get honest about what it actually takes to feel like yourself again.

If you’re ready to question the rules, trust your body, and stop shrinking to make everyone else comfortable, you’re in the right place.

Tracey: 00:13

You're listening to That's Not Very Ladylike, the show where every week, we start with one rule, ladies don't, and then we do it anyway. Welcome back to another episode of That's Not Very Ladylike. This week, we're talking about something that I have not completed but that I have considered before. And my husband is aware of this episode. So, it's not going be like, he's like, what it what is this girl talking about?

Tracey: 01:06

So, this week, we're looking at ladies don't consider divorce. They pray for resilience but I wanted to start this episode by recognizing one, I have not gone through the process. However, that doesn't mean that I can't speak to it, that I have not thought about it, and that I can't encourage you to do the same if you're at this point of considering divorce. So, please know that I am coming from a framework though where I understand I have not gone through that process. So, let's look at the rule though behind this concept of ladies don't consider divorce.

Tracey: 01:43

They pray for resilience. So, ladies don't ask, is this still right for me? What they do is they ask for strength. They ask for patience. They ask to be less reactive.

Tracey: 01:55

They ask for better communication. They ask for resilience. Because good women don't quit marriages. You just endure them. So guess what?

Tracey: 02:05

If you're unhappy, work harder. If you're lonely, try to be grateful. You've got someone. If you're exhausted, sorry. Try harder to connect.

Tracey: 02:15

We're all tired. If you feel invisible, well, then maybe you should lower your expectations. And for a lot of women, you don't, we don't get to question the structure. We start to question ourselves. So, I want to share a story.

Tracey: 02:28

There there was a season in my marriage. This year will be twenty six years that I've been married which is insane because I think I'm still 25. So I don't know. Don't know how I've been married twenty six years. But there was a season of my marriage where my husband and I were growing in different directions.

Tracey: 02:47

And I'm not gonna unpack what got us there because that's not the point of the story. The point is what happened when we tried to get help. Because ladies don't consider divorce. They consider therapy a lot of times. And in that moment of looking for a therapist and all that, you're praying for resilience.

Tracey: 03:07

And you're praying for things like, may, you know, you're or you know, even if if you're not a prayer person, you're striving to be more patient, forgiving, flexible. So, we did what all marriages usually are like, hey, you know, asking friends, go to marriage counseling. So, we went to counseling and let me tell you all. You'll probably hear about this woman a few times. The first counselor was wildly inappropriate.

Tracey: 03:31

First session. I am I am always looking for a therapist who's going to challenge me, ask the difficult questions. But when you're in marriage counseling, unless it is like 100%, I don't know, like they're abusive and a cheater. Most likely, we both have some things we gotta work on. This this typically isn't going to be a one person thing.

Tracey: 03:52

But boy, when we got into her first session, she ripped me up and down. I mean, critiqued me, corrected, corrected me, analyzed me like I was the entire problem. And so she gives me worksheets. She gives me homework. I mean, it felt like I was going to be writing a dissertation for her.

Tracey: 04:10

And then she turned to my husband and she said, well, for your homework, could you at least try to pick up your shoes? And that was that was her idea of balance and I got dismantled. I got dismantled and he got told to tidy up And here's what I, here's what I love. He left the session not saying like, yeah. Girl, get your together.

Tracey: 04:34

I gotta just pick up my shoes. He left the session saying, she did not just do me any favors and as a matter of fact, I'm whore. I feel horrible because now I am worried that she has pushed you to just say, I'm done. I quit this marriage. And I was close because I thought, alright, you know what?

Tracey: 04:52

I am tired of this. I am tired. We both are in this marriage. We both have things to work on. And it wasn't because I wanted to be single.

Tracey: 05:00

It wasn't like I was like, hey, I'm going to blow up my life today. I was tired. Because when you feel unseen long enough, whether that's rational or not, you start imagining freedom as oxygen. And that counselor, had we not known better, had I not been a licensed social worker, had I not had therapists as friends, I may not have known that that was inappropriate. And that counselor, she really could have done some real damage.

Tracey: 05:29

And here's the thing, I wasn't going to put up with it. I reported her to the board in our state because I was terrified that she was ruining marriages left and right in my community. But here's the part I want to talk about that changed everything. We didn't give up. We found another counselor.

Tracey: 05:48

And you know, that's one thing I want to say is like, it's not always going to be a one size fits all. Like, if you're with a counselor and it's not a fit, that's okay. That's nothing on them or you. It's just not the right one. I was looking for someone a little edgy, someone who would be like, that's You know, like, no.

Tracey: 06:06

But I remember this counselor that we ended up with, we I did some individual with her and she was like, one time I was like, given all the social work answers and she was just like writing. And I was like, you know, do you have anything to weigh in on? And she goes, oh, no. I'm making my grocery list right now. And she's like, because here's the thing.

Tracey: 06:21

If you're gonna BS this whole session, that's fine. You're still gonna pay me, so I don't care. And she said, but there are no notes for me to take because everything you have said has been bullshit. So I'm going to make my grocery list and then here's the thing, some of you right now are like, that is horrible but that is the therapist I needed because I looked at her and I started crying and I was like, you're right. I've been bullshitting this whole session and she's like, you ready to do the real work?

Tracey: 06:46

I'm like, let's go. So, you gotta find the right one and she fit us and she did two things that shifted the entire direction of our marriage and actually saved it. The first thing that she asked was so simple and no one had asked us this yet. Do you want to fight for this relationship? Or do you want to wish each other the best and release each other from this commitment?

Tracey: 07:09

And she didn't shame either option. She didn't weigh on one. She didn't make divorce like a moral failure or like making it a badge of honor. She asked a simple question and then she put the choice back in our hands. And that's the first time that I realized resilience is not the same thing as staying.

Tracey: 07:29

And then she said something that I think about every single year now. And it changed our marriage. She said, one of the biggest problems in marriage is that we expect our partner to be who they were the day we got married. As if growth is betrayal, as if evolution is abandonment, as if change means that this marriage now is no longer right. And she said, what if every year on your anniversary, you reintroduce yourselves to each other?

Tracey: 08:01

And she's like, here's like, this is literally what I mean. She's like, I want you to say, hi, I'm Tracy. This is what I battled this year and this is how it changed me and this is what I need now and it's not the same as what I needed last year and what I'm asking you is, do you have the capacity and the desire to move forward with me and to support me in this new human that I am in this next year? And I gotta be honest y'all. That wrecked me.

Tracey: 08:30

It wrecked me. Because I had been quietly changing. I mean, when we got married, we were both going to school to be a pastor and a youth minister. We weren't that anymore. I was now a social worker.

Tracey: 08:43

We were living somewhere else. We had different types of friends. A lot of our values that those young kids had, they didn't exist anymore. But we hadn't we hadn't had that conversation. We hadn't said to each other, this is who we are now.

Tracey: 08:59

And then all those layers because I had been quietly changing and I was expecting him to just know. And he had been changing. And he expected me to keep up. And neither of us had updated that map. When we were loving old versions of each other and kind of resenting the new ones.

Tracey: 09:16

And what I realized is, you know, during that time, I probably was, ladies don't consider divorce. I probably was praying to just be stronger. But sometimes the strength is in asking, are we fighting for this? Are we holding on to something that's already ended? And what we don't put on the end of that sense, and it's okay either way.

Tracey: 09:38

We can fight for it or we can end it. And we can end it with mutual respect and love if both parties are mature. And sometimes the strength is in saying, hi, I'm not who I was when you married me. And giving the other person the chance to say, okay, introduce yourself again. So, the emotional cost.

Tracey: 09:56

So, here's what happens when a woman feels trapped but tells herself she just needs more resilience. Her body goes into a chronic vigilance and I mean, you are monitoring not just your tone, not just your mood, you're monitoring the conflict. You're bracing for that next comment, that next tension, that next fight, that next disappointment, and it starts moving out of a partnership and it moves into survival. Survival of the fittest. Who's going to make it?

Tracey: 10:24

And for hormones, one of the worst things that can wreck hormone health is survival mode. Because you've got that chronic stress elevating the cortisol. Elevated cortisol, now it's going to start suppressing your progesterone. Low progesterone now allows you to amplify your anxiety. Guess what?

Tracey: 10:43

Now you're anxious. Now your sleep is disrupted. Your sleep disruption tanks everything. But in a relationship, it's definitely going to tank your libido. And then when we say, why don't I want sex anymore?

Tracey: 10:57

Maybe because your nervous system doesn't feel safe. And resilience then becomes the code for endurance. And endurance without peace. It's just prolonged stress. So you can love someone and still feel unsafe in the dynamic.

Tracey: 11:16

You can care deeply and still be chronically activated and your body knows the difference. So let's look at a historical context. So for most of history, divorce was not a realistic option for women. So, white, middle class women often couldn't own property or open credit in their own names until the nineteen seventies, my friends. Again, not eighteen hundred something, nineteen seventies.

Tracey: 11:43

Black women faced both economic barriers and systemic racism that made financial independence even harder. Immigrant women risked immigration status or even community exile. Indigenous women were navigating colonial systems that completely obliterated traditional kinship structures and many of these beautiful tribes. So marriage wasn't just romantic. It was economic survival.

Tracey: 12:15

And so women endured. And some fought for change within the system. So, of course, we have my girl, women like Betty Friedan, who pushed conversations about fulfillment and dissatisfaction in the public view. Black feminist scholars like Bell Hooks wrote openly about love, power, and the ways patriarchy shapes relationships. You had Latina activists who were challenging rigid cultural expectations around womanhood and loyalty.

Tracey: 12:45

And women have been questioning marriage for decades. Because let's be honest, it hasn't changed much to where we are today, but marriages were alliances. And many men had mistresses. And many of those men loved those mistresses. This was a business thing.

Tracey: 13:03

And also, you are to endure. So you give me children, you're soft, you're pretty, you do what I say, the mistress gets to be a little bit wowser and fun. So even, I mean, we're looking at history of marriages being alliances, not all, but a good chunk. But culturally, we still glorify the women who stay. The long suffering wife, the patient one, the strong one.

Tracey: 13:29

Strength has been defined as silence. And resilience has been defined as staying. So, let's reframe this. Resilience is not the same thing as endurance. So, what resilient can mean is setting boundaries, demanding change, going to therapy, separating, and maybe even divorcing.

Tracey: 13:50

And resilience can mean rebuilding. So, you're allowed to evaluate your life and you're allowed to ask, is this partnership nourishing me? Do I feel emotionally safe? Am I adjusting to keep the peace? Am I carrying more than my own share?

Tracey: 14:09

And here's the big one. If nothing changed, could I live like this for ten more years? And that question alone usually gives you the answer that maybe you haven't allowed yourself to say. Because considering divorce does not mean you will get divorced. It just means you're being honest about where it's at right now and where how you feel.

Tracey: 14:31

And honesty regulates more than suppression ever will. So, if this were allowed to be said the way it should, it would sound like this. I'm not crazy for wanting peace. I'm not weak for being tired. I'm not selfish for wanting partnership instead of survival.

Tracey: 14:49

And I might even say sound like I deserve a relationship that doesn't require me to abandon myself. So you can pray for resilience. But you also can strive for truth. And sometimes the truth is not try harder. Sometimes the truth might be this isn't aligned for me.

Tracey: 15:09

So let's look at some reflection and I want you to be honest when you think about these. Are you asking for strength when what you actually need is information? Are you asking for patience when what you really need is change? Are you confusing discomfort with growth? Or are you tolerating harm and calling it character development?

Tracey: 15:35

Because your body knows the answer. Your sleep knows the answer. Your libido is telling you a lot of things and your anxiety is shouting the answer at you. So ladies don't consider divorce. They pray for resilience.

Tracey: 15:54

But resilience is not meant to keep you stuck. It's meant to help you adapt. So you are allowed to assess, you are allowed to question, you are allowed to want peace. And if the bravest thing you ever do is admit even privately, this might not be working for me anymore. That is self love and awareness.

Tracey: 16:24

And that is the most unladylike thing of all. Thanks for joining me today for That's Not Very Ladylike. If today's episode lit a fire, pushed your buttons, or called a little BS on the stories we've been sold, share it with another woman who's tired of being told to tone it down, smile more, or play nice, and help a girl out by making sure you subscribe, leave a quick review, and catch me on Instagram at that hormone girl. And until next time, keep getting loud, messy, and raising hell because being ladylike is overrated.