‘Sorry, I thought I loved you’

It’s almost impossible to escape the statistic that half of all marriages in the United States end in divorce.

  Most people enter into a marriage with the best of intentions; a lifetime commitment to one person, till death do us part. The reality is that having a successful marriage is hard work.

Michielle DJ Beck of Navarre knows this lesson well. First married at the age of 17, Beck had been through five divorces by the time she was 34. While many would have run from their own past, Beck has worked through the issues that contributed to her string of failed relationships and has come out the other side.

In her new book, “Sorry, I Thought I Loved You,” Beck chronicles her life choices and examines her own relationship addiction, in the hopes that her experience can help others who find themselves crippled by the pain of codependency.

Beck describes herself as having a relationship addiction; someone for whom having a romantic relationship was a defining factor in self-esteem. Breaking the cycle of this kind of addiction is particularly difficult, since all adults depend on relationships of one sort or another to function.

For more on this story, see the July 28 issue of the Navarre Press or subscribe online.