Love requires us to dig deep foundations. You can’t just throw up a tent and call it a love affair.
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Lots of people handle divorce really well. Everybody’s case varies a little, but the road picture is usually pretty much the same. Little by little, they gear themselves up for the big break all the while getting more and more used to living their days and nights without the other person around much anymore.
Then one day the paperwork comes in the mail and the thing is done. They have a few drinks, maybe toast their new life with a close friend or two, and that’s the gist of it.
I’m not that guy though. Not yet anyway.
It’d be nice, I figure, to merely climb out of bed one of these days and not notice right away that I’m divorced and that I still feel like I’ve had my damn leg cut off or something.
I feel changed forever now. Divorce leaves scars where there were never any before, even if your marriage was a real shambles. Even if you are better off being alone than being with the person you ended up walking away from.
Parts of my heart feels as if it’s dead now. I still hold out hope that it’s not, of course. I’m reasonably optimistic about my shot at future love. But still, after nearly a decade of a reasonably okay marriage (I’d give it a B- or a C+) to someone I was blind enough to simply expect to be married to — no matter how tumultuous or sad things got — I’d say now that it’s understandable why parts of me might have died with the divorce.
Love requires us to dig deep foundations. You can’t just throw up a tent and call it a love affair. You have to build a basement, dude. You have to work on walls for a long long time.
I did that. I know I did. Hell, I probably built too much on my particular plot, staked too much on not enough. But there you go. Fools love hard. Then they fall hard too.
Most days now I try and look at my three little kids and let their presence wash over me, splash away what’s left of the trauma, but that’s never enough. My kids are kids and their love, as monumental as it is in my world — it’s a different thing. It’s deeply-attached to my ex and our failed marriage in many ways, but in the end their love is separate, and doesn’t touch the divorce scars.
But if nothing else, there is balm in the knowing, I do believe that. And so these days I understand that the only thing that will carry me forward through a lot of the confusion and memories scattered around my feet like car crash glass is my own ability to simply accept my slow-to-leave blues as something that will live on as long as it needs to — not one day less or more.
I’m not trying to scare anyone away from divorce. I don’t honestly care much what you do. We all make it work or we don’t. But I am telling you that the scars are very real for certain people like me. You don’t just peel them off after a year or so. At least I haven’t, not yet.
The way I’ve been seeing it: divorce will change you forever.
I’m banking on that being a good thing. Only time will tell.
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Originally appeared at Babble.com
Stop looking at it as a loss but rather an opportunity for a do-over. My divorce ruined me, but it was the best thing that could have happened as it opened my eyes, and opened my life.
I moved on, have a great wife, great life, not one regret.
Need to stop looking back and start looking ahead. Life is way too short, but it is there for the taking.
I was married and divorced 14 years ago. it’s been hard. It’s been weird. My friend once said maybe one never get’s over a divorce. it’s not the same as breaking up with someone it’s real. It’s deep. He was my husband we bought a house together we had a child together. and now we don’t have each other if feel often empty even after being divorced for so long. I’m alone and I have to solely take care of myself. I have no real help. I feel like something is missing all the time. I miss him and I… Read more »
Excellent thoughts. I’ve been divorced nine years, and my life will never be the same. Neither my ex-wife, nor I have remarried, and simply because we shared so much through sixteen years, it has been tempting through time, to inquire of her — “isn’t what we shared, imperfect though it may have been, superior to not sharing life with ANYONE?” But slowly — very slowy — in fact, not until eight years had elapsed did I come to grips with the fact that we would NEVER be together again. Time does indeed change your circumstances. The good we had built… Read more »
Thank you for writing this. I feel exactly the same way, and I’m the one who walked. I never expected divorce to be so devastating. It is life changing.
My new beginning has had rocky moments after my divorce. BUT… I can tell you that 4 years later, I am in the best emotional health of my life.
I wish the same for you!