So Your Marriage is Over, Now What

There is light at the end of the road!

So many people I know seem to be going through breakups lately.  Some are in the fresh, deep wounds of it and some are already fully down the path, but not knowing where the hell it will lead.  


While I may not know where the path is going, I am further down said path.  I know which shortcuts aren't worth taking and I know where the clearings are.  Or at least sometimes I do.  Actually a lot of the time I have no idea what's going on in my own life, but I have a good knack for being perceptive about other people's, so I thought I'd write a bit of an outside view of where my friends might be finding themselves...  Maybe they won't feel quite as alone as they might be feeling after they read this.  Or maybe they will, but I'm writing it anyway.


So your marriage is over, now what?  Oh God it hurts.  Maybe it's been hurting for a while.  Actually I guarantee it has been, but you might not know how deeply it's been hurting, and now the band-aid has been ripped off and taken some hair and skin along with it.  Well it's going to bleed for a while.  For the first little while, you might believe the hurt will never stop.  You might think that there is nothing that will ever feel like joy again, that everything is empty.  You might wonder where you went wrong, how you could have been so stupid, how you could have ever loved someone who has hurt you so badly.  You might wonder how you can get them to take you back, you might wonder how to set them on fire without anyone knowing it was you.


This sucks so fucking bad is normal.  If this stage lasts longer than say, 4 to 6 months, you might want to consider some drugs and heavy drinking medical intervention.  (For real though, if you encounter feelings of deep, dark hopelessness, talk to someone.  I think a good gauge is to ask yourself if your reaction to your current situation is situationally appropriate or whether the darkness might be a little stronger than it should be.  Talking to someone is not a sign of weakness.)

The second thing that is important in order to move forward is to actually let yourself feel.  When I first left, I had the kids full time except for every other weekend.  You would think that that one weekend every two weeks on my own would have been heaven, but I did my best to get myself out of my apartment and keep busy for as MUCH of that weekend as possible.  I took on extra teaching jobs and would walk round the city for hours.  Why?  Because the moment I would settle into the quiet of my awesome little apartment, I would start to feel.  EW!  That wasn't something I wanted to do!  Nonononono!  When that would happen I would feel like I was back at stage one.  At some point though, I realized that I had to stop.  In those moments, I would sit and cry, sometimes for hours, about nothing specific.  It was exhausting, but I realize now that it was an important part of the letting go.  Even if it was a hellish relationship, you need to grieve it, it needs to be purged from your soul.  You may not need to spend hours crying, it might be that spending a day stacking and splitting 20 cords of wood while yelling profanities, maybe it's taking up running, kickboxing or, heaven forbid, poetry.  The point is that a physical release needs to take place.


That brings me to point number 3.  A physical release is not the same as distracting yourself immediately with a new squeeze.  That first exchange that happens outside of your old relationship can be intoxicating.  I mean quite literally that it can be toxic to your system.  It is your first foray into intimacy with someone you have NOT sworn to spend the rest of your life with.  It's exciting, it can potentially mess with your self esteem because you think, Oh hey, he/she-Ex was WRONG!  I AM desirable!  Screw you, look I've got a boyfriend/girlfriend!  And then it can become like a drug and there is a neediness that seeps in.  Whether that neediness manifests in wanting that same person to be around, or looking for multiple people to, ahem, fill that hole, it's not a healthy headspace to be in.  It's a way of looking for fulfillment outside of yourself and that is not fulfilling in the long term.  


This is not to say that sewing some oats is bad, quite the contrary.  Take this time to learn about the opposite sex (or same sex if that's what you're into).  Really learn about them, go out on dates, pay attention to what the dates are like, pay attention to what people are saying beneath the words.  My personal adventures taught me that (and this *is* a generalization, but one that has proven to be true for more than just myself) men have a tendency of telling you everything you need to know about them, in a macro fashion, within the first hour.  Even when presenting their best possible face, look beyond the words; a lot of the time, what they spend a lot of time saying that they are not, turns out to be what they in fact are.  It's the side they'd prefer to hide.  One guy I went on a date with spent a great deal of time talking about how he was so pro-woman, he was a feminist and that this was so absolutely true because he even took women's studies in University and was part of a lesbian wedding.  That should have made me believe him right?  "Oh, you were in a lesbian wedding?  Wow, you ARE a feminist!"  But after a little more exposure to him, he wound up being one of the most misogynistic men I've ever gone out with, but in a very insidious, hidden way that gives me the willies to this day.


Anyway, all that to say, date, explore, learn.  Do it in an expansive way rather than in a "trying to fill a void" way.  


My last piece of advice is this, there will be a day when it doesn't hurt anymore, when you realize how awesome *you* are and in that realization, you become ready to share yourself, your whole self, in a very real and honest way, with another person.  It might be a little scary, but not as scary as the prospect used to be.  This process may be fast, it may be slow, but it takes place.  For everyone.  The more you allow yourself to move through it, the faster it will be.  Therapy can speed things up, self awareness and self care is necessary.  When you come out of a relationship that you believed that you would be in for the rest of your life, where the betrayal cut so deep, it's so important to realize that you are the most important piece to truly preserve.  The cuts aren't as deep as you thought and you have the strength to be free of that useless burden.


I promise.