'I'm stuck in an unhappy marriage. But I can't afford to leave.'

It's 2025, and I am trapped in my marriage — I cannot afford to get divorced. Contemporary feminism promised freedom, but it has let me down.

Feminism fought for the right of women to choose divorce. When it became a legal right in Australia in 1975, it meant freedom for those trapped in unhappy, violent, or abusive marriages.

Now, 50 years later, while I still have the legal right to choose to get divorced, in reality it's not an option.

I didn't imagine when I took my vows, that I may be making the wrong choice. The man I married struggles with mental health issues that only became apparent years into our marriage.

A lack of support infrastructure, huge financial costs and the stigma around male mental health has made it difficult for him to get regular treatment.

Modern marriage carries the illusion of choice, yet society almost demands us to partner up to afford somewhere to live, to procreate and to raise a family.

As a woman, I look back to women of the past — women who didn't have a choice in marriage, whether it was strategic unions to secure financial position, a union to hide a surprise pregnancy or a marriage to escape their own childhood domestic suffering.

Watch: Someone you know struggling with a separation/divorce? Here are some tips on how to support them. Post continues below.

If I compare myself to women of the past — and women of the present who are led into forced marriages — it appears that I have a great deal of agency. However, I later learned, when I took off the veil, that this was a guise.

Divorce rates are at a record low, the lowest since 1975. Not because humanity is any happier in their partnerships, but because they can't afford to separate.

Marriage in 2025 is expensive to get out of.  Add a few children to the mix, and you are trapped to your 'ball and chain'.

The cost-of-living crisis has made it difficult to sustain family life as we know it. This uninvited financial pressure has burdened my marriage and caused additional strain on my relationship.

Add in a lack of childcare, the second, most expensive daycare fees in the world and the strain of the missing 'village' to help raise our children, perhaps it isn't so surprising that my husband and I are 'unhappily married'.

I hear what you're thinking, and it seems as simple as making some compromises to my lifestyle.

Cancelled subscriptions and no-takeaway coffees aside, I don't know where I am meant to live with my two young kids. How to afford such an exuberant rent.

We can barely afford my mortgage on a combined salary, so I am not sure how my husband and I are supposed to finance two rents per week.

Thanks to an inflated property market, a housing crisis and a social housing deficit, I don't see any options for where my two children and I are meant to live off my single-person salary.

Trapping women in unhappy marriages, a by-product of the housing crisis?

So, here I am in the present, trapped in my unhappy marriage, like the women of the past who didn't have a choice to get divorced. I don't either.

I feel let down by feminism, I feel let down by the illusion of the simplicity of freedom.

For now, we need to stay put in our own matrimonial mess.

The author of this post is known to Mamamia but has chosen to remain anonymous for privacy reasons.

Feature Image: Getty. (Stock image for illustrative purposes only).