A reader writes: Two months ago my wife of 5 years came to me out of the blue and asked me for a divorce. To make a long and painful story short, she had been seeing another man and in the time since discovering this I have found out our entire relationship was one lie after another.
I feel foolish, naive, weak, and sad. I am an intelligent, attractive, passionate, funny, 32-year-old and yet I find myself sobbing at times for this loss. I am deeply spiritual, and have found much comfort in my faith. But I just don't know how to let go. Every sign is pointing to the fact that I have really lost nothing, but instead have been given the chance to greatly improve my health and overall wellbeing.
I feel weak knowing that deaths and marriages much longer than mine abound. I realize the significance of loss is deeply personal, but I still feel irrational and very foolish.
My wife was my dream come true. I can remember nights when I would simply watch her sleep and thank God for this precious gift. The sight of her sleeping brought me joy because I felt as if I were watching over her and protecting her from the outside world. She never needed rescuing; it was simply a tender feeling I cherished and miss so very much. I miss holding her close and resting my head against her chest to listen to her heartbeat. In those moments, I could hear eternity and feel my soul connecting with the divine.
The mornings and evenings are the worst. I loved waking up with her face as my dawn and falling asleep with her in my arms.
I have always been a passionate and romantic soul, but now I curse my heart because it refuses to let go, and I am finding it hard to move on. I have made so many improvements in my life, and overall I am very happy. But I feel shackled by these deeply buried feelings of attachment.
I know there is no quick fix, but it feels good to get it out. Thank you for reading.
My response: I'm so very sorry to learn of the difficulties you're facing, my friend. You sound like such a caring, sensitive man.
Whenever there is a loss of something important in our lives, we suffer grief, and grieving is part of the divorce and breakup process. Usually when someone dies there is a recognized ritual ~ a funeral or memorial service ~ and an understanding in our culture that mourning is important. But when a love relationship dies, there is no prescribed ritual of mourning, and the grief is seldom acknowledged or accepted. As Robert Fulghum writes in his book, From Beginning to End: The Rituals of Our Daily Lives:
When we’ve changed our religious views or political convictions, a part of our past dies. When love ends, whether it is the first mad romance of adolescence, the love that will not sustain a marriage, or the love of a failed friendship, it is the same: a death. Likewise, in the event of a miscarriage or an abortion, a possibility has died. And there is no public or even private funeral. Sometimes only regret and nostalgia mark the passage. The last rites are held in the solitude of one’s most secret self ~ a service of mourning in the tabernacle of the soul.
When a relationship ends, there is often an injury to one’s sense of self ~ a feeling of failure and a diminished sense of worth. There are nagging questions about what went wrong and fears about the future, especially when children are involved.
In order to move yourself into a position where you can enjoy life again, it is important to learn whatever lessons this experience has to teach you, to get to know yourself more deeply, and to develop parts of yourself you may not have recognized before.
I'd like to recommend four books that I think you'll find especially helpful and relevant. All are still in print and should be available through your local library, neighborhood bookstore, or online:
- Coming Apart:How to Heal Your Broken Heart, by Daphne Rose Kingma
The Way of Transition: Embracing Life's Most Difficult Moments, by William Bridges
- Life is Goodbye / Life is Hello, by Alla Renee Bozarth
- Rebuilding When Your Relationship Ends (4th Edition), by Bruce Fisher and Robert Alberti
There are also some very helpful websites you may wish to visit, all of which are listed on the Death of a Relationship page on my Grief Healing website.
Here is an example of the kind of thoughtful advice one of my readers recently shared with another person coping with divorce:
Your experience is not unusual, nor is it anything less than real. Divorce and separation are often placed in a category called ambiguous loss. It is ambiguous because the person lost is still physically present, even though the love once shared is no longer reciprocated.
Don’t discount or minimize your experience in light of others’ losses. The pain and anguish you feel can be every bit as profound as if someone had died.
When love cannot be returned, grief happens. You are affected cognitively, emotionally, spiritually, physically, and socially. Two months is not a long time. You are only beginning to emerge from the disbelief of what has happened. In fact, your pain may intensify as your psyche begins to accept the reality of the loss. Many bereaved people report that around the three-month mark, things seem to get worse rather than better. The initial fog begins to lift. Observe yourself gently as you move through that process.
Those who experience loss often face four essential tasks of mourning:
- Acknowledge the loss. Even saying the words aloud may feel surreal at first.
- Acknowledge the pain of the loss. This pain runs deep because it touches the roots of love itself.
- Move gradually from painful memories toward grateful ones. One day you may notice that happy memories arise more often than sorrowful ones.
- Reinvest in the future. This means learning to carry the spirit of what was loved into a future that no longer includes the relationship itself.
While you may understandably feel victimized, you also have an opportunity, in time, to move yourself forward.
Make it okay that you may not yet be ready. Allow yourself to feel the sadness when it comes. Set it aside when daily responsibilities require your attention, but try not to repress it altogether.
Grief will make itself known one way or another. If you allow yourself to process the sadness, you will feel pain. If you repress it, that same grief may reappear disguised as guilt, anger, or bitterness ~ and you will still feel pain.
Your grief is as real as you are. Applaud yourself for taking the risk of sharing it with others. An online forum may be “talk therapy” carried on in cyberspace, but it heals just the same.
I hope this information proves helpful to you, my friend, and I hope others who have experienced similar losses will share their own insights with you as well. Meanwhile, I wish you all the best as you continue working your way through this difficult time.
Afterword: Well, I suppose I have been guided onto the right path after all. I truly thought I was going crazy. I had been doing so well for the past few weeks, and then all at once I became overwhelmed with sadness again. I think it is the acknowledgement of the loss. As much as I told myself I was moving on, a small part of me was still holding on, even if I didn’t realize it.
I suppose I am doing the right thing. When I feel sad, I cry and let myself feel it, trusting that it will pass eventually ~ which it always does.
Even in the depths of sadness, I feel deeply thankful. Some people never get to experience love, but I was blessed to know it in abundance. It is gone now, but I don’t believe that anyone capable of loving this deeply is destined to live without love forever. I remain hopeful that love will always exist in my life ~ through family, friends, and perhaps one day, a future relationship.
I am also in a unique position because I moved away from all of my family and friends five years ago to be near my wife. My family is not terribly far away, but they are not close enough to drop in for support. Recognizing that ~ and also recognizing my desire to remain in a place I have come to love ~ I had a decision to make.
I chose to stay in my home.
Faced with long days and nights of solitude, I realized I needed to care for the three parts of my life that felt the emptiness most deeply: my spirituality, my physical wellbeing, and my mental health.
I began attending church again and found tremendous comfort and support there. I started writing again after a three-year hiatus, which has helped nurture my emotional and mental wellbeing. I also returned to the gym and resumed the healthy eating habits I had before my marriage. I am now eighty pounds lighter and feel healthier and happier physically than I have in years.
I share this because, despite the emotional floundering I still experience almost hourly, if there is one piece of advice I could offer anyone going through something similar, it would be this: focus on caring for your own needs. For me, this is the first time in my life I have truly been able to do that.
I miss my wife terribly, and the emptiness still feels raw and exposed every day. But I am surviving, and I am discovering just how strong I really am.
Thank you for your advice. It means so much, and I am profoundly grateful.
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