Creating a second life because you hate your real life is why many marriages end in messy divorce, costing the earth and tearing families apart at the seams. There is no escape from the truth.
Living harmoniously in a partnership with a member of the opposite sex, even if it’s someone handpicked and loved, is not always easy, often resulting in growing more apart when marriage and children come along. The saying “familiarity breeds contempt” and “too much of the same, will drive you insane” and potentially in to the bed of someone else, sum up why marriage has to be worked at constantly by both parties.
It’s hard to imagine how so many people make a lifelong commitment, in the moment and the eyes of God, vowing to stick with it through thick and thin, always with truth, love and respect, yet end up lying, cheating and hurting those they promised.
So why do we do it?
Like anything else when you look outward for your happiness, you must remember sooner or later, you will become miserable. How can someone love you, if you don’t love yourself? So being centered, independent and truly happy with your lot, is where you need to be before you begin to think about sharing your life with another person.
We cannot look for love, only attract it, so if you are centered, independent and truly happy with yourself, you will be attractive to those who are the same, resulting in great chemistry and things in common. When we look for love, our expectations are high but our natural instincts are low because we lie and convince ourselves and others, we are someone we are not, in order to get noticed, spending the rest of the time living a lie. Living a lie, pretending you are straight to your wife, when in reality you are gay or pretending you are a sex maniac in order to get him up the aisle, ending up five years later with a permanent headache in order to keep him out of your bed, is not sustainable or smart.
Being honest and sticking with who you are and what you believe you deserve, is where you need to be when contemplating divorce, because if you make important decisions when you are angry, hurt, bitter, disappointed or jealous, you will make horrendous choices in the moment, that will leave scars and heartache forever. If you are using children as a bargaining tool or as a shield against attacks from your partner, their mother or father, recognise the damage you are doing and the wrong behavior you are modeling, on already insecure, frightened, confused innocents, is not reversible and likely to ruin their lives later down the road.
When it comes to divorcing someone you love but hate at the same time, you will never get a clean happy ending because it’s not a centered playing field, so be patient and pick your moments, when you are able to peak together in tune, both on the same page. It’s hard to forgive someone who you think has ruined your whole life, leaving you miserable and alone, but try and see this as someone doing you a massive favour because being stuck with someone who does not want to be with you anymore, is a waste of your life.
If you knew with solid evidence, seen with your own eyes, that your son in law was having a secret rampant affair with another woman, under your daughter’s nose, what would you do?
If you are unlucky enough to have this terrible dilemma, here is some good advice to help you, let him know, you know without being blamed for interfering and meddling, remember no one wants to hear the truth, not even your daughter. Never get involved in anyone else’s business because once you do, it becomes your business. Take your son in law to one side and let him know, you know what he is up to. Don’t judge him or threaten him, just leave him to do the right thing before you are forced to. He will not be able to continue looking you in the eye every time you meet and will be forced to tell the truth rather than face the wrath of a mother in law, scorned.
When it comes to your finances it’s imperative that you get good financial advice during the divorce process, to ensure that you maximize your assets, ensuring you are able to manage your life in the aftermath of the split. We have to remember if we arrive at the conclusion divorce is the only option, we have reached the end and will need to reinvent ourselves once the dust settles and the hurt softens, probably the biggest change we have to make in life. We have to see life after divorce as an opportunity to learn and then go on with renewed confidence and self esteem to create the life we always truly wanted and deserve, increasing our emotional intelligence by becoming more conscious and alive.
Creating a new single identity after being part of a couple, is hard but you must begin to force yourself to move on, get out and about, recognizing you are not the only person on the planet to have made a mistake when it comes to love, so do not beat yourself up.
The way to a new brighter future is just around the corner, so rule number one, accept it is over, then protect your assets, keep things civil, be honest with your children, seek support from friends and family and keep positive and healthy. Seeing yourself as a failure is self-destructive and will not help you discover your inner power to move forward, so recognize the feelings of anger, shock, fear, resentment and denial you feel in the moment, when going through big changes like getting a divorce, will one day fade with time.
Feeling emotionally crushed can take you down to the depths of despair, so beware. Finding a good outlet for these feelings is a really vital part of the healing process, so keeping a journal is the perfect way to accept them and overcome them. Like a death, you have to grieve a divorce, so have a pretend funeral and bury your feelings, once faced and dealt with, deep in the ground, never to interfere with your new beginning. There are more fish in the sea, so do some fishing and have some fun!
Photo credit: Xavier Sotomayor