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When Love Is Not Enough: Making the Case for Divorce

When Love Is Not Enough: Making the Case for Divorce

Last updated on: September 25, 2026 at 2:34 pm by Heron Michelle

When Love Is Not Enough: Making the Case for Divorce 2026-09-25T14:34:23-04:00 Heron Michelle

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Way too often, folks come into my shop asking for magickal help to make their partners love and cherish them more, treat them better, stop cheating on them, or stop outright abusing them. Way too often, I find myself advising them about the necessity of allowing an abusive relationship to end—and making my case for divorce.

I’ve spent a lot of time ruminating on what makes for a healthy, long-lasting romance. I learned the stupid way what not to do in a marriage, so I’ve come here to report that any ol’ love is not enough. In our partnerships, we deserve to be cherished. Rather than waxing poetic about sticking it out at all costs, I’m here to make a case for divorce.

Now, now…hear me out. I’m not just bitter and bitchin’. I’m in a GREAT relationship. I LOVE romance. In fact, I’m not sure I would understand what this cherished blessing can look like if I hadn’t first known the lessons of heartbreak. To be cherished is the golden opposite on a spectrum from being abused, and there is a slippery slope between those extremes that I would caution you to avoid.

To Be Cherished Is to Know Respect

To cherish someone implies more than feeling love. It means desiring to protect and nurture your partner, to treasure them because you know better than anyone else how awesome they are, even with all their foibles. You feel honored and proud to be in a relationship with them.

All these dimensions of a cherished relationship require humility from both partners. This is love accompanied by reverence, responsibility, and deep gratitude for one another—love that is never simply taken for granted.

To Be Cherished Is to Know Freedom

To feel cherished is hopeful and empowering, and, for me, it is the most deeply satisfying expression of love. I knew that I was cherished by my parents, and because of the confidence they instilled in me through their devotion, I felt safe enough to fly the nest and become my most daring self. Thanks to my Mama and Papa, I know how being cherished feels on the receiving end of that bond. My feelings for them are mutual, though it required growing up well beyond my teenage years before I truly understood and returned that same sense of responsibility.

Taking my turn, I cherish my children with a fierce devotion and gratitude that I can only hope they will someday fully understand. I’m so grateful they chose me to be their mom. It is a cliché, but I really would lay down my own life to save them without hesitation.

To love your child is to raise them into their own sovereignty without allowing your ego to get in the way. That is perhaps the most difficult paradox of parental love: you devote every iota of your being to preparing them for launch into lives of their own.

To be cherished is emotional freedom—the freedom to fly, coupled with the desire to return.

To Be Cherished Is to Know Your Own Value

As both a beloved child and a beloved partner, when I feel cherished, I know that I am treasured as a person of great value. This adoration lifts me up and imparts the confidence I need to sally forth into the cold, cruel world and kick some ass. No matter how brutal the fight, I know I can return to the safety and rejuvenation of loving arms.

To cherish your lover also requires cherishing yourself. Neither partner is owned, and neither is owed the other’s presence. Through free will, your lover chooses every day to remain by your side and to do the work necessary to deserve that place. You reciprocate. In relationships, as in all endeavors, to be successful, you must be present to win.

To feel cherished means I can trust the love between us without surrendering myself to it.

To Be Cherished Is to Become a Priority

All these ruminations bring to mind an old meme:

Don’t make someone your priority if, to them, you’re only an option.

When you cherish your partner, the bond between you naturally becomes a priority in your life. You cease to think much in those terms because, in your heart, you aren’t shopping around for other options.

By that same token, a cherished relationship MUST be mutual, or devotion can deteriorate into exploitation and codependency. Healthy boundaries require both people to be willing to respond to disrespect and abuse rather than normalize them. Neither partner gets a free pass for habitual violations of love and trust.

“Stepping away” doesn’t mean running off to seek solace in someone else’s arms, either. That is some weak tea. I give zero passes for cheaters, folks: emotional, physical, or otherwise.

Listen, everyone has the occasional bad day. We all falter, and there are circumstances that can be understood, compassionately forgiven, and corrected. There is a considerable difference, however, between extending grace for human imperfection and accepting a sustained pattern of hurtful or abusive behavior.

In a relationship between sovereign beings, neither person controls the other’s choices. We do have control over our own presence and participation.

If your lover habitually violates your trust, you can clearly name the behavior that is harming you and state the boundary necessary for you to remain in the relationship. You can discuss alternatives, seek counseling, renegotiate agreements, and work together toward a solution that honors everyone involved. Ultimately, however, a boundary governs your own choices. You decide what you will participate in and what you will do if the violation continues.

Sometimes love requires staying and doing the hard work together. Sometimes love requires leaving.

I understand that this kind of “boundary maintenance” doesn’t sound much like vows that include “until death do us part.”

So, let’s make that the first tenet of “the patriarchy” we smash today.

Original Magickal Candle art to draw cherished love by Heron Michelle

How I Learned This the Hard Way

Sixteen years ago, my ten-year marriage was in free fall. I had discovered the hard way how little I was valued. My devotion could not be returned, despite our vows to tough it out “as long as we both shall live.”

Between the ages of twenty and thirty-five, we had grown in different directions. It was sad, but natural. Sometimes the honorable thing to do when you no longer cherish your partner is to end the relationship. The temporary hurt caused by an honest ending may pale in comparison with the harm caused by remaining out of duty, fear, or convenience. Sometimes you have to accept playing the “bad guy” in someone else’s story and leave with honor before resentment and betrayal create wounds that cannot be repaired.

When you no longer respect your partner, twisted seeds of compromise and denial can take root like invasive weeds in the rose garden. The emotional and psychological contortions required to maintain the ruse eventually choke out the sun. In my case, what had once been a dream romance grew slowly and almost imperceptibly into a dark nightmare of delusion that continued for years.

At last, the Universe rang the alarm so loudly that I was forced awake.

The long lie was the heartbreaking part. That is the wound I might have been spared. I live from my heart, so every revelation of betrayal felt like a fresh murder. What self-loathing I couldn’t starve, I drowned.

There was a time when I wanted nothing more than to be enfolded back into the cherished love of the Goddess—to disappear from this life and return to Her embrace. Had longing alone been enough to accomplish that, I would have been ash in the wind. My sanity was touch-and-go for a while, but through the swift intervention of my closest friends and the care of excellent mental health professionals, I survived to bring you this advice.

Check that: I did die.

That husk of the forsaken wife I had been? I shed that dead skin because it didn’t fit me anymore. From that death, the empowered woman I am today emerged.

All of this was forced into reckoning after my initiation into the Craft. I dedicated a year to working with FIRE and asked that everything that did not serve my highest good be burned away so that I could fulfill my sacred mission.

<BOOM>

Apparently, the Universe took me seriously.

Turns out that to become my most effective self, I needed both to feel cherished and to cherish myself. I had to confront my delusions, examine the sincerity of my relationships, and leave behind those who did not appreciate the gifts I had to offer.

You won’t be surprised to know that The Tower card just kept popping up in all my readings that year. <snark>

The love I had for my children helped save my life. When there wasn’t enough self-love to keep me going for my own sake, my desire to raise them in unconditional love gave me a choice I could still make. Motherly devotion motivated me to dust myself off, open my shop, and try to make the world a more loving place for their sake.

For them, I chose to let the fires temper me rather than destroy me.

The Moral of the Story

Perhaps reading this sparks a hard look at your own heart. Maybe my story makes you uncomfortable, defensive, or even offended. Sometimes discomfort is an alarm bell worth investigating. Lean into that yucky feeling long enough to ask yourself why it is there.

If you’re in an unfulfilling relationship—even one in which you still love your partner on some level—but you know damn well that you don’t cherish them, or you know they don’t cherish you, consider what that truth is asking of you.

Look at your relationship through the day-to-day grit of choices, actions, and truths spoken in moments of frustration. Is this relationship still a priority? Is there gratitude and mutual respect? Do you still admire one another? Do you each feel valued?

Most importantly, do you feel free to choose?

If you do not feel free to choose whether you stay or leave a partnership, your sovereignty may be compromised. Need I remind you that Witchcraft requires personal sovereignty to be effective? Do you feel exploited, demeaned, controlled, or taken for granted?

Weigh your next move carefully.

Choose to cherish yourself. Cherish those who return your care and appreciate your gifts.

Every day, we have choices to make. We can invest the hard work required to cherish our partners with such consideration that they never have reason to doubt our loyalty. We can communicate what we need in order to feel that same consideration in return. We can listen when our partners tell us what they need. We can seek help, renegotiate, repair, forgive, grow, and recommit.

When the relationship can no longer sustain mutual respect, freedom, and care, we can also choose to set one another free.

It has been sixteen years since I made that hard choice. Consider this my love letter to you from the other side of divorce. I now have an amazing partner who cherishes me faithfully and adoringly, and I return that respect in equal measure.

I wish the same cherished love for you.

When you’re ready, this spell will help. A Bond-Breaking Spell for a Magickal Divorce.

In Divine Love,

~Heron

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About Heron Michelle

Heron Michelle is a witch, priestess, mom, artist and shopkeeper living in Greenville, North Carolina. Connect with her on Facebook: Witch on Fire: Heron Rising Services, and follow her on Twitter @HeronMichelle13. You can read more about the author here.

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