Despite the turbulence, divorce offers some positives. A deeper understanding of ourselves, insight into where we've been stuck and a reimagined future.
Divorce is like throwing every element of your life up in the air and trying to catch them as they fall. Where the relationship once acted like a container it’s now like a cracked snow globe, leaking and unpredictable. The entire dynamic of your life can shift, creating financial uncertainty, disrupting friendships and your idea of who you are. However, accelerating personal growth and shining a light on your underdeveloped areas isn’t always mentioned. The process itself will also allow you to see what’s at the core of yourself and your partner. Not only is this life transition a way to address what you’ve neglected in yourself, you’ll develop much greater clarity about your hopes, fears and values.
What I’ll describe here takes courage and dedication. And I completely accept how unrealistic it might seem in places. Essentially, the parts of the process that feel the most raw are where you need to bring the most attention. This is particularly challenging as they are the same areas that have been avoided for so long or hidden out of sight. Money, friends, love and self-esteem are the perennial topics. And somewhere in this mix, you’ll find your unique battlefield. The place where you finally have to dig in and face your opponent. Which in most cases is yourself.
Money is the pre-eminent arena in many divorces. Mainly because it can be a proxy for multiple unresolved issues and feelings. It can be a way to pressure your partner into submission or withhold something that is dear to their heart. Greg, a successful photographer, had worked hard to become financially comfortable. He was very attached to the large sums of money he’d saved despite having little use for it. But as his legal bills rolled in and got larger by the month they started to feel like a punch in the stomach. His ex-wife made outlandish and surreal claims to complicate any possibility of an agreement. Therefore what could have been resolved in months took years. He began to dread the first of the month as he knew an invoice would arrive. Just seeing the email in his inbox made him feel physically sick.
“A symptom is an opportunity as well as a suffering” James Hillman
Eventually, Greg was able to see that he was being confronted with his relationship with money and less so his ex-wife. The question became, what did he value most? His impoverished early life had given him a drive to make money and he began to understand that it made the world feel safe and predictable from some distant abstract threat. It shored up his shaky self-esteem and allowed him a level of security he hadn’t known as a child. Yet, the money in his account had little practical use for him, he just took comfort in seeing a number with lots of zeros.
He was soon given a choice, give in to his ex-wife's demands or back himself to do what he felt was right. He would no longer be able to rely on money for the external validation it offered. But if he didn’t stand his ground now he would lose any self-respect he had left. His divorce was demanding he reorganise his priorities. And finally address the very thing that had driven him to rely on money in the first place. Where he’d used money to avoid conflict or difficult conversations he had to learn how to be assertive and direct about what he wanted.
No matter the challenge, managing the raw panic is the first step. But once you can see the narrative being placed on top of the actual practicalities you’ll make a significant step. A good illustration of this is the Buddhist story of the second arrow. The first arrow is what is actually happening, the simple facts. But the second arrow is the story that’s built around those facts. The catastrophizing, the self-blame and the inner critic. The first arrow is probably unavoidable, but we are creating the second one ourselves. And this is often where the most pain is inflicted.
Matt, an MD of a charity, hadn't seen the social isolation coming when his relationship ended. His partner was a charming, well-connected life and soul of the party type who orchestrated their social life. The feeling of being surrounded by funny, smart, glamorous people was second nature to Matt. Yet he’d never really grasped that his partner facilitated this entirely. It felt as if one day he woke up and the party moved on without him. The social structure of his life had fallen away and he noticed how he’d been particularly passive in this part of his life.
The charm and skill to seamlessly bring new people into his life wasn’t one that came naturally. A part of Matt was living through his partner. He realised he’d hidden his social anxiety and awkwardness under his partner’s cloak of affability. Now almost completely isolated and living alone he had no choice but to rebuild his social circle one person at a time. He identified a persistent habit of limiting how intimate friendships could become. His concern was that if people saw him for who he really was he’d be rejected. On one hand, he was trying to pull people towards him yet pushing them away with the other. Addressing the shame he felt wasn’t resolved overnight but eventually step-by-step he learnt to let people see more of what was under the surface. And being more comfortable in his own skin he began to navigate social situations confidently. Not in the same way as his ex-partner but in a way that was true to him.
“What am I expecting of this person which I ought to do for myself?” James Hollis
Slowly Matt developed into someone he respected and even liked. As things went on he built a number of intimate and deep friendships with a greater variety of people than he’d ever had before. The confrontation with the underdeveloped part of himself meant he now had access to an openness and spontaneity he’d only experienced in his partners. He was no longer reliant on another person to feel complete and this ultimately transformed his sense of self.
Over the course of any long relationship, people adapt and mould themselves around their partner. When you no longer need to do that, the opportunity is to form a life that originates from you. It begins by asking yourself what you have been putting off because of the demands of the relationship. And what got squeezed out by the presence of the other person. Holding in mind that this is a process and not a linear one, is vital. Darker days will roll in but a positive and inspiring vision of your future is all the motivation you’ll need to keep moving forward.
*names and vignettes are taken from a variety of sources and are not linked to client work.
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