Marriage Is Just a Fancy Cage. And I’m Not Meant to Be Caged

They say marriage is about love, partnership, and forever.

But for me, it felt more like a well-decorated prison with gold-trimmed walls and a smile I had to fake daily.

I wasn’t unhappy. I was numb.

People talk about the bad marriages. The ones filled with yelling, cheating, slamming doors. Mine wasn’t like that. Ours was quiet. Civil. Respectful. Which is exactly what made it so suffocating.

I didn’t have a husband who hit me.

I had a husband who forgot I was a woman with dreams.

He loved me in a way that felt more like ownership than intimacy. I was the wife who made the dinners, who handled the birthdays, who remembered his mother’s medication and his niece’s graduation. He got the “perfect partner.” I got the slow death of self-erasure.

At some point, I stopped being a person and started being a role. The Wife. The Reliable One. The Constant.

And what scared me the most wasn’t that he didn’t notice.

It’s that I had stopped noticing too.

Marriage, for me, became a performance.

I laughed at jokes I didn’t find funny.

I had sex when I didn’t feel desired.

I smiled at family gatherings and said, “We’re doing great,” while silently screaming into the walls of my mind.

And everyone applauded the show.

“You’re so lucky.”

“You’ve built such a solid life.”

“I wish I had what you have.”

What I had was a beautiful cage. Decorated in curated Instagram moments. Family portraits. Vacation highlights. Empty conversations over dinner while our phones lit up with everyone else's lives.

And here’s the truth no one likes to say out loud:

Sometimes, love isn’t enough.

Especially when that love asks you to disappear.

I woke up one morning and felt... nothing.

Not anger. Not sadness. Just this vast emptiness — like I had handed over my identity and forgot to ask for a receipt.

He asked me if I wanted eggs.

I said no.

He kissed my forehead.

I flinched.

That was the morning I knew I was done pretending.

And let me tell you — leaving wasn’t brave.

It was brutal.

It was guilt-ridden.

It was being called ungrateful. Immature. A quitter.

But I didn’t leave because I wanted more.

I left because I wanted me.

The real me. The loud, messy, ambitious, complicated woman I buried under years of compromise. The woman who once dreamed loudly, laughed unapologetically, and wanted a life that felt like hers, not a life she was supposed to want.

This isn’t an anti-marriage essay. It’s a pro-self essay.

Some people thrive in marriage. That’s beautiful.

But some of us? We lose ourselves in it.

We bend, mold, and soften until we’re palatable. Until we’re pleasing. Until we’ve sacrificed every ounce of fire that once made us unforgettable.

I’m not here to make divorce sound pretty. It’s not.

It’s lonely.

It’s messy.

It’s hard to explain to people who think “stable” is the same as “happy.”

But choosing myself — in all my flawed, raw, angry, powerful glory — was the first real act of love I ever gave myself.

And that? That’s freedom.

Final thought?

If marriage ever feels like a cage, even a fancy one, you owe it to yourself to ask:

Who did I become in this relationship?

And is she someone I still recognize?

Because peace should never cost you your identity.

And love should never ask you to disappear.