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#2750106 07/07/17 03:07 PM
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I have been divorced for over 7 years. I was on this forum daily for over a year – first when we started to have problems, then during counseling, up to the point when it became clear the marriage was over. Once we began negotiating terms and planning the split, I stopped reading and posting here. I wanted to come back and offer some encouragement to all of you who are in the thick of it. I have had some painful experiences in my life, and my divorce brought that pain right to the surface, and every fear, every insecurity, every wound became raw and persistent. I thought I was going to die from the pain. When I finally realized it was over forever, I truly believed I would never feel happiness again. I literally thought my life was over. My two little babies, who at the time were 3 and 5, were so innocent and helpless, that it broke my heart into a million pieces every time I looked at them, and imagined what they would have to go through as we moved into separate homes and began separate lives.

I don’t know what triggered it, but I was inspired to come back on here and offer my post-divorce perspective. I hope my comments can help someone in some small way. The first thing I want to say is that you can get through this, and there are very specific things you can do to achieve a more positive outcome. Take what helps and ignore the rest:

1. YOU WILL GET THROUGH THIS: Unless you are suffering from long-term depression, you will feel happy again, and possibly happier than you ever thought imagined. It is virtually impossible to see it when you are in thick of it, but there is a beautiful light on the other side of divorce, as long as you don’t let yourself become bitter, cultivate your anger, blame, or shame. Marriage is really, really hard – and when marriages end, it is important to focus on the opportunities that lie ahead instead of the mistakes of the past
2. THIS IS ABOUT YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN, NOT YOUR EX OR ANYONE ELSE. Focus on yourself, not your ex/ soon-to-ex or his or her family, your family, your community, or our society as a whole. It is important to understand and own your role in the failed marriage. It is never one person’s fault. And in fact, who is to blame is not relevant to your own personal happiness. Even if your ex-spouse was awful to you – you made mistakes too. Don’t get caught up in your spouse’s mistakes. The goal of divorce is to find happiness for everyone involved. But mistakes in marriage are tricky – in human relationships – what works and what doesn’t is specific to each unique union. It is not like driving a car, where there are uniform rules that everyone must follow, and any deviation is an undeniable mistake. The rules of the relationship must be co-created by the two individuals involved. That said, when you reflect back on what you did to contribute to the dissolution of the marriage, it is critical that you bring compassion and forgiveness to yourself. Not self-pity, not self-aggrandizement, or letting yourself off the hook – just humble, genuine, and gentle inquiry with the goal of understanding your own heart and mind. Divorce is an incredible opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of who you are, what you believe, and what you hold important and sacred. A greater understanding of yourself, and the inherent wisdom and sanity you possess is what will guide you towards a brighter future.
3. IF YOU HAVE KIDS, YOU WILL STILL NEED TO WORK ON THE RELATIONSHIP POST-DIVORCE: This is tough. It is common that by the time two people get divorced, they simply no longer like each other, respect each other, or trust each other. But as the mother or father of your children, it is in your best interest, and the best interest of the kids, to cultivate a sense of goodwill, forgiveness, and investment in your ex’s well-being. This does not mean you must be friends with your ex, or even like or respect him/ her….it just means that you are still tied together as co-parents. Of course, if your spouse was unwilling to work on the relationship during the marriage, then he/ she will likely continue to fail to invest in and work on the marriage post-divorce. That does not mean you must suffer. Don’t get entangled in his/ her dysfunction, negative qualities, or actions. Of course, in extreme cases where there is mental illness, addiction, etc. which puts the kids at risk, then some entanglement is necessary in order to protect your kids. But post-divorce, you no longer have any real authority to demand that your ex act, think, or parent to your specifications. There is a lot of letting go during this process.
4. LET YOUR NEGATIVE KARMA BURN AWAY, AND DON”T LET YOURSELF GET ENTANGLED WITH YOUR EX’S NEGATIVE KARMA: First, to define Karma, it is not fate, it is not some new-agey spiritualism, there is nothing cosmic about it. It is simply the cause and effect relationship between our thoughts, actions, and words and the results that they produce. A first and critical step is to recognize that you cannot change what happened in the past. It is gone and done. When considering mistakes of the past (e.g., our negative karma), the only thing we can do is to understand why we made the mistakes we did, and identify what we need to change today and going forward to avoid those same mistakes. Many people I have met get so consumed in regret, blame, and justification that they fail to do recognize how they must do things differently today. When we analyze our negative karma, we must develop clarity and accuracy about what happened. No one wants to feel like they failed, so often times we develop a narrative that lets us off the hook, usually by placing all the blame on someone else, whether it is our parents, or ex, our boss, etc. This is where humility and curiosity come in. We live in a society of profound emptiness – where the darkest hues of our humanity are pathologized. Don’t be fooled by the veneer of success or strength. Most human beings are broken in some way. Negative emotions like anger, jealousy, arrogance, etc. are what make us human. They are unavoidable save for the most enlightened among us. But us mere mortals must face these negative emotions – not to avoid or suppress them, but to respond to them in a healthy way. This is how we avoid creating negative karma in the future. We can’t completely control our thoughts and feelings, but we can control how we respond to them. The phrase I always use is “strong back, soft heart”. Cultivating a gentle strength, so that we can stand tall and strong in the face of deepest human suffering, and at the same time keep love in our hearts. There is an inherent sanity that every human is born with – the toughest times require us to access this sanity – at the core of our sanity is the universal truth that we are all seeking meaning in our lives, we want peace in our hearts, we want to be happy. This is the core of our shared humanity. No one wants this more or less than anyone else, or deserves it more or less than anyone else. It is a matter of waking up, being curious about ourselves and other people, and having clarity about the cause and effect relationship between our actions, thoughts, and words and the circumstances in our lives. Done in an honest way and with compassion towards ourselves and others – this clarity brings wisdom, and with wisdom we begin to see what brings goodness into our lives and what brings suffering. I can guarantee that cultivating sanctimonious blame for our ex will not bring goodness – even if they treated us awfully….we have to remember that is their karma, not ours, and if we get entangled in the negative karma of others, we will always suffer….every single time.
5. HAVE FAITH: This is harder for some than others. Belief in a higher-being who is watching over and protecting us brings a built in faith….but if you don’t hold such beliefs, then faith becomes a little more work to develop. Regardless of what your belief system, the idea of faith here relates to a sense of confidence that we control many aspects of our destiny. Not all, but many. Connecting with the truth that we can not only influence the trajectory of our lives, but that we have a responsibility to give our best effort, and to do so from a place of goodness and humanity. Like our sanity, human goodness is encoded inside us….and they are integrally connected. No matter how much we have suffered, been mistreated, or been profoundly confused and misguided, our sanity and goodness are still there and available to be accessed. For many of us, our sanity and goodness are buried under a mountain of pain and suffering….so it might take some digging and require us to get dirty…but our faith tells us that peace is possible, whether granted by a higher being or encoded at birth….we all are equipped with the tools we need connect with our goodness…and the more we connect with our goodness and manifest it in our day to day lives, the happier we will be…it’s not that we will no longer suffer, but we gain the strength to hold our suffering while still keeping love in our hearts.

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What a beautiful post Stardust - thank you xx


T 13 M 7
Me 48 H 46
SS 15
BD 7.14 PA
D final 5.16 (H filed)

We receive & we lose, and must try to achieve gratitude & embrace with whole hearts whatever of life that remains after the losses - Dubus
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Stardust,

A very nice postings with a lot of wisdom in it. Thank you for sharing.


Sit quietly, the answers will reveal themselves when you least expect them to.
The past is gone, the present is a gift and you need to focus on today, allow the future to reveal itself when it is ready.
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Thank you for posting this. So very much appreciated.


Me: 48, XH: 42
T: 18 years, M: 15 years

EA/PA 1: 6/2012
EA/PA 2: from autumn 2012-present

BD: 5/2013
ILYBNILWY BD & left: 10/2015

OW conceived: 8/2016
Born: 4/2017

H filed: 7/2017
D final: 28/12/2017

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