Divorcing Yourself

For some leaving a relationship and for others staying in one requires divorcing ourselves from our own heart and self respect. The relationship may be with another person, a career, a member of our biological family, our birth country or perhaps even our lifestyle.

I am on my third marriage at age 47 having left two good men because I was divorced from myself.  I also chose these men as husbands one in my twenties, the second in my thirties, when I was divorced from myself so these guys didn’t stand a chance of making it work with me.  I couldn’t make my own relationship with myself work, so how was I going to partner anyone else?

It wasn’t a sudden out of the blue break up with myself.  It was gradual.  Over the years of my childhood I slowly drifted away from myself and lived in a world of make believe.  This actually saved my life and sanity as a little girl, but as a woman it kept me pretending and living a lie.

In adult years turning off the disconnection option when on emotional overload for me anyway required assistance.  I needed an emotional surgeon (therapist) to help me with the re-wiring and it has taken some time as my disconnection file like a virus had infected all of my emotional wiring.

The volume of life in my teenage years and my inability to meet life on life’s terms seemed to keep hitting me in the face and I attempted the ultimate act of divorce as a teenager.  I attempted suicide.  I was angry when I awoke in a hospital bed after overdosing in a toilet cubicle.  I wanted to end my relationship with myself once and for all, but my heart would not give up on me.

Alcohol became my new disconnection friend from then on as make believe alone was no longer strong enough.  In my twenties a variety of drugs that I sometimes secretly and at other times socially took were also very effective, for a while.

I got clean and sober at the end of my first marriage and the shock of waking up to whom I had become and the party lifestyle I was living was traumatic.  I gave my power away to pleasing others and living a lifestyle that suited my ego but not my heart.  Divorcing that lifestyle and the father of my two sons was my first step in honouring my truth, and him.  He was and still is a good man but my heart wasn’t in it.  He deserved a woman whose heart was.

Clean and sober for only four months I met my second husband another good man who I hoped would rescue me from myself.  I had put my main addictions down, drugs and alcohol but men and the illusion that they could fix my life was another addiction I picked up to replace the booze and drugs.

Seven years later I also needed to divorce and leave my second husband when I realized that our hearts were moving in different directions.  To stay would have meant divorcing myself from my truth.  To honour my marriage to myself that I had committed to at the conclusion of my first book A Helping Hand with Life, I even bought myself a ring, meant divorcing this good man.

Word vitamins from that beautiful reading “The Invitation” often play in my mind when I have to honour my own heart.   This sometimes means concluding relationships with others, even if my ego is fighting it every step of the way, worrying about what others will think of me.

“Can you bear the accusation of betrayal from another, and not betray your own soul?”

Easier said than done.  But these days my answer to that question is yes.

I spent a year living alone after the divorce from my second husband having quiet time out of relationships with anyone else other than myself.  I met my third husband Mr. Delicious at the end of that year, and then dated him for the following year.  My emotional surgeon encouraged me to really take my time in getting to know him slowly and for the first time in my life, I did not rush the courting process.  After a year of dating I lived with him for another year still keeping my home full of furniture rented to a friend, I only moved my clothes and a few essentials to his house.  Eighteen months later Mr. Delicious dropped to his knee and asked for my hand in marriage.  We have been together five years now and my heart has never been stronger and happier.  It has been a hard road believing that I could grow up enough to learn how to partner myself and another simultaneously.  I am so glad I did not divorce myself from this heartfelt dream to learn how to live and love without fear of betraying myself or another.

For many people who have childhoods that include living in violence, abuse, sudden death of loved ones, abandonment, war zones, and consistent emotional detachment from their biological tribe, living in a world of make believe can actually save the child’s sanity.  To be able to disconnect or disassociate is Mother Nature and Father Time’s way of parenting that child and keeping it as emotionally safe as possible when others are not emotionally available.  However there always comes a time, when that child has to return home, to their own heart.  It may not be until mid life, often called the mid life crises.  This is when Father Time and Mother Nature invite us to take time to have a good look at our heart, and our marriage to self.  Some people pass on the invite and never do this work.  Others do a complete U turn and run away from themselves even more.  And there are a few who are courageous enough to stop pretending, and start getting real with themselves regardless of what anyone else says or thinks.  It usually starts in our thirties, for some earlier and others later.

I spent yesterday afternoon in the Royal Brisbane Hospital Detox Unit running a group I have been privileged to run there for the past ten years.  These brave souls are facing the truth about the state of their relationship with themselves.   They are all divorced from their own hearts; otherwise they would not be there.  It is no surprise that none of them have healthy relationships with partners.  For until they, like me, learn to partner, love and respect themselves it will be impossible long term to have a love filled relationship with anyone else.

They say that relationships come into our lives sometimes for a reason, or just a season and some are for a lifetime.  The only lifetime relationship we are ever guaranteed of is the one with ourselves.  So why not make it a wild romance and a wonderful marriage?

In order to maintain a quality marriage with ourselves some of us have to divorce a person, a career, a member of biological family, a geographical space or a destructive lifestyle.  These are tough decisions to make, and most don’t make them.  Instead they stay married to the approval of others and their own ego and divorced from themselves and their own heart.  Or some people at times sadly even resort to killing themselves or others as the only solution they can come up with.  A tragic, permanent solution to a temporary problem.

The quality of life we live is always up to us.  We can have a shitty life, an appropriate and safe life that will be as boring as bat shit, a good life or … my choice is ….a great life!  It is our choice and that’s a wonderful thing, how does that saying go? If it is to be, then it’s up to me.

As I left the detox unit yesterday I was honoured with hugs and tears of thanks for my visit to them in the holiday season.  As I looked at their beaten faces and I mean bruised and stitched as some have been in not just emotional wars with themselves but physical wars with others, my heart went out to them all.

“It is so hard, this honouring yourself stuff, but I want a wonderful life like yours, so if you can do it I can too, can’t I?”  An anorexically thin, blonde young teenager pleaded for reassurance through her tears.

“Without a doubt! ” I stated emphatically.

You are already a high achiever.  Most young women your age don’t have the courage to face themselves as you are today at such a young age.  You are doing the heart work of a young Queen, you have moved through the naïve years of a princess who waits for a prince to come and save you.  The only one that can save you is you and your beautiful heart needs to be connected to love and it is otherwise you would have given up by now.”  I felt humbled to be in her presence.

I will leave you with these word vitamins this morning and hope to connect with you again tomorrow.

‘It just got too hard’, said the player

‘It’s suppose to get hard,’ replied the coach,

‘If it wasn’t hard anyone could do it.  The hard is what makes it great.’

Story/Script: K. Wilson, K. Candaele, L. Ganz, B. Mandel ‘A League of Their Own’ 1992