This Will Alter Your Perception of Divorce

I’m hanging out with friends in my building. We’re all divorced. It’s an average night. Or is it? Little do I know a guy is about to alter my perception of divorce.

He’s going to flip it on its head.

Me. The woman who became a love, relationship, and divorce columnist on Beliefnet a decade ago. The girl who’s devoted years to the counseling, research, and study of these topics.

I rarely hear anything new.

It’s often a regurgitation of old things.

It’s one of the reasons I strive to look beyond the obvious. It’s why I dig deeper to develop my own insights after years of study. We need more revelations about the complexity of love.

On this evening, the wine flows amongst us. We’re conversing and laughing. The mood shifts. There’s a need for emotional triage.

My guy friend tends to us.

A herd of divorce.

The peeps whose marriages have expired.

“Think of a relationship as complete instead of over,” he says. Because over implies loss and victimhood, and complete implies it served its purpose.”

Wow!

I’m struck by his words.

Talk about flipping a topic on its head.

I’m all in, I’m inquisitive.

I’m struck by his ability to make even me witness something in a brand new light. Me, who’s seen so many repetitive philosophies. I ask about his comment.

“Did you read or hear this somewhere?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says.

But he can’t remember where.

He’s into growth, personal journey, and healing. He’s a sponge. He is constantly evolving, and learning. Hence, why he doesn’t recall the source of his comment.

One succinct thought (quote) can transform the way we think.

We know this in the field of writing and psychology.

It can pierce through the noise. It can eradicate the emotional confusion. It can provide, comfort, relief, and respite. It can foster growth, and optimism.

It’s what I strive to do in my own writing. I want to yank out the not so obvious truth that helps us love, process, journey, or heal better.

I can’t remember the last time (except for my own marriage counseling) that something transformed the way I thought about the end of my marriage and my divorce this drastically.

I’m thrilled to be single.

I’m happy.

Divorce was the right decision for me.

But that doesn’t mean (like many of us) that it wasn’t tortuous to leave behind my guy, my college sweetheart, my best friend, my person. It was agonizing. It’s why I chose to leave my work as a freelance journalist, business columnist, and marketer behind me.

I needed to process it.

What’s made me happy today is that I discarded what made me happy yesterday. The easiest part of my current reality was derived from the hardest part of my past.

I picked myself up…emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

I walked away from a man I’d promised my 19 year-old heart to. And believe me that 19 year-old fought bitterly with her middle-aged self.

Everything I’d built, promised, and hoped for was over. Over, gone, unretrievable, never to be recovered, or found again.

I was a victim.

I felt it, I lived it, I hated it.

But it was how I felt.

Where was my tall charming hunk of handsome? Where was my guy? Where was my person? Where was that man that I put on a pedestal? Where was my happily ever after?

I’ll tell you where it was.

It was gone.

“Gone Girl” gone.

It was gone whether I remained in an unhappy fairy tale farse, or if I was my own heroine-strong, brave, and resilient enough to leave. It was gone whether I remained a victim, or if I was the leader I’d always been.

Leaders don’t stand by and watch unfortunate situations, they move to action.

I did.

And I left.

My friend’s comment reminds me of a conversation my ex-husband and I had. It was during our marital problems. We were sitting on our porch at the Jersey Shore. The exterior aspects of our life were good. We were blessed that way.

“20 years is a good run,” says my husband.

“It is,” I say. “Good for us.”

We both laughed.

Because neither of us truly believed it was over, at least not then.

But my college sweetheart and I had run our course. Our marriage was complete. I now understand this. Thanks to the words my friend repeated from somewhere, either a book, an interview, or a podcast. Wherever he heard them.

Our marriage wasn’t over.

We weren’t over.

We were complete.

We took each other as far down the path as we were meant to travel together. Best friends who went our separate ways. Even if neither of us wanted to. Our love, friendship, and relationship had served its purpose.

In this context it wasn’t sad.

It wasn’t finite.

It wasn’t catastrophic.

It wasn’t love halted.

It was a wonderful time that led to an unfortunate time.

One that told us our purpose was leading us both elsewhere. Together we were complete. We were unable to move forward. We needed to free each other.

If only everyone could view divorce this way it might lessen the angst, the anger, the animosity, and the devastation.

I seldom cry and I mean never about my ex-husband anymore.

He was unrelentingly abusive during our elongated divorce. I write to raise awareness to this type of financial abuse so that it never happens to any women and children again.

But I’m crying.

Because those words are healing.

They are freeing.

They flip the worst part of an adult breakup (divorce) on its head. They debate our brain, quiet our thoughts, and triage our hearts.

They insist no time was wasted as we once feared.

Because we absolutely feel that way. Divorce makes us think that we wasted years. We believe they were lost. We agonize over it. We lament. We feel victimized.

We feel like we can’t make up for that lost time. We want it back. We want a do-over. It creates an emptiness within us.

A sense that a chunk of our lives was lost.

But it’s not true.

It’s a lie.

Don’t believe it. We didn’t waste love. We didn’t waste time. We didn’t lose everything that we thought we did. It wasn’t a chuck of our lives. It was a part of our lives.

A part that took us in a new direction.

Our younger selves didn’t want this. Our older selves fought it. We wanted love. We wanted our person. We wanted marriage. We wanted our fairy tale. We didn’t want divorce.

But we took each other as far as we could.

Our marriage, our relationship wasn’t over.

It was complete.

It served its purpose.

One simple philosophy altered my perception of divorce. It proffered healing. A profound and advanced healing. It gifted me with peace I was unaware I needed.

My tears represent this.

Because somewhere down deep I still had a sense of continued loss, and wasted years. I still had a sense of the ‘wrong’ man and the ‘wrong’ relationship.

I still had a sense that I had made a mistake.

And that my mistake in choosing the ‘wrong’ man had wasted years.

But he wasn’t the wrong man. I was looking at it the wrong way. He just wasn’t my forever man. My tears aren’t just for the gift of releasing the sense of loss.

They’re forgiveness.

They’re restoration.

They’re permission to remember a man in a better light. And not the resentment of making a mistake. They’re allowing me to see him as a part of my path, rather than my past.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.