Divorce and Healing

It is no secret that divorce can be traumatic. If you have been through one you already know what I'm talking about. Your hopes for a wonderful future with your wonderful husband or wife bite the dust.

You have already endured some length of time during which you vacillated, you may have even written out the pros and cons of staying or leaving.

You probably also endured disagreements and unhappiness that were beyond the pale; more intense and more painful than you ever imagined would happen to you and your spouse.

You probably carry guilt for your perceived failings as a husband or wife. You wonder what you might have done differently. If only I had...or hadn't.

And unless you are in a social circle that remains intact, and my guess is that that is highly unusual, you not only lose your relationship with your spouse, but those with all the people who side with one or the other of you.

For me, losing my social scene was one of the most painful aspects of my second divorce. After my first divorce, I missed my connections with my ex-husband's family. They did too, I know, from what he told me.

It seems to me that whether you are the one to leave or your spouse is does make a difference. I have experienced both.

When I was twenty-one, I married a man I was madly in love with. We were together for three years before our wedding. Our relationship was deep, passionate, rich, and full.

When I was twenty-two I left my husband.

In my case, I felt pressured to have children. I was not ready for two reasons. One, emotionally I felt unprepared and worried that I would be a bad mother until I was more mature.

Two, I felt unhappy in my marriage and concerned that were we to split up, my husband would have custody of my children. He was established in his profession and made a good income. I was still a student, who only worked part-time.

My husband and I came from two different cultures. He was Pakistani-American; my family came over from Germany, Norway, and Ireland so long ago, we barely identify with either country.

Abdul and I downplayed our cultural differences. He regarded himself as an "International Man." I hoped to become an "International Woman" one day.

We had a lovely wedding, with lots of guests. Nothing too expensive or fancy, but beautiful, nevertheless.

For our honeymoon, we stayed overnight at the Butterfly Trees Lodge in Pacific Grove, California. The next day we boarded a plane for France. After a few days sightseeing in Paris, we headed to Pakistan, where we stayed for six weeks of summer heat.

While in Pakistan many things happened -- we saw a lot of fascinating sights, met a lot of wonderful people, and ate a lot of delicious spicy food. Those were the good things. The bad things were that I was sick with diarrhea for most of my time there, and for months afterwards. I also developed excruciatingly painful prickly heat.

Three other bad things happened: Abdul became less cosmopolitan and sensitive to my needs. He seemed to adopt, or perhaps revert to, a bit of the male chauvinism so prevalent in that culture. He talked about our living in Pakistan one day. This thought felt unimaginable to me.

On the way back, Abdul tended to be angry with me whenever we traveled by plane. This made for many miserable hours on our flights. When I got back to San Francisco, I insisted he take me to my house, not his.

After a week or two we worked things out, rented a townhouse, and moved in. But, I was not happy. I felt the rapport we had before we married fell by the wayside.

I stuck it out for a few more months. One day a friend helped me load up a van and move my few belongings out. I neither forewarned Abdul, nor told him where I went.

My leaving felt like an act of desperation. All I knew is that I had to escape the incredible pressures I experienced.

Abdul was gracious about the situation. He tried to understand why I left. He never expressed anger toward me. He felt concerned and worried for me.

It was impossible for me to talk to him about what I was experiencing. I just could not find the words. He suggested therapy. We went to a session or two. Our therapist said he wanted to see me on my own.

I knew I needed help, that I was the one with the major issues. My therapist later explained to me that he felt Abdul was not open to change, and that I was; that I was the one capable of struggling with my feelings.

After I left, I plunged into a terrible depression. My guilt and sorrow over leaving him tormented me. Not only those, but the loss of what we had, that exciting, wonderful, vibrant relationship that gave me so much pleasure and hope. I missed him, but felt I would go insane, literally, were I to go back.

Part of it had to do with all that happened to me before I met Abdul, how damaged and forlorn I felt. My self esteem stayed very shaky for a long time in my teens.

When I became involved with Abdul, it renewed my spirit. It let me dream of an exciting, successful life.

Yet, I left parts of me behind, and missed them. I had been more adventurous, or perhaps foolhardy, before. I smoked before. I felt more assertive before.

I had tried to make myself into a perfect woman. That lofty goal was unreachable, of course. I stopped smoking, and I maintained straight A's in college.

So, when I left my feelings were mixed. Yes, I lost Abdul's world and our previous relationship, but I found another one in which I felt more myself. I branched out, found a passionate interest in folk dancing, and developed a sense of belonging in that milieu. A whole easy and expansive social scene presented itself to me. I became involved with the owner of the studio, and eventually married him.

Abdul waited for me in the hope that I would change my mind for three years. This despite the fact that I was living with another man. I truly had not realized how much he loved me.

In the end, he came to visit me one summer day and said, "Caroni, I will ask you one more time. Will you come back to me? I need to know. If you won't, I want to marry a woman from Pakistan. I want to have a family and children."

I wasn't too surprised by his question. He'd waited and waited for me. As much as I still loved him, I just could not recommit myself to our marriage.

My guilt felt much larger and intense when I left Abdul than it did when my second husband left me. I also was angry and felt betrayed. He was involved with another woman months before he announced his plan to move out.

My second husband was a generous and loving man. He supported me when I struggled with depression, when I couldn't work, when I attended grad school. Our relationship was very compatible until the end.

He also had a bad temper and when he went into tirades, I spaced out and was unable to defend myself for many years. No one ever yelled at me before, and I was not equipped to deal with that. Through therapy, I learned ways to defend myself emotionally, and to argue with Neal.

Nevertheless, Neal and I had a compatible, close relationship, and went through a lot together. We shared a passion for folk dancing, had many interesting and intellectual conversations.

We talked about our experiences and emotions freely. We respected one another. We made love often until we began to have problems. We enjoyed parenting our son, and were committed to giving him the best life possible.

Neal and I stayed together for fourteen years. Our problems began when I went to grad school and was so busy and stressed and overworked that I was more concerned with being a good mother than in paying attention to my husband.

Well, that's not exactly true. It was more than I felt my son's needs for me were more urgent than my husband's. My time was so limited that I had to chose one as priority over the other.

My anger bloomed when Neal developed sleep apnea. His loud snoring kept me awake, and when he stopped breathing I woke up. I feared he might die in his sleep.

I knew about sleep apnea because we studied it in graduate school. I knew there were treatments for it. I knew that it was dangerous. When I demanded Neal go for a test and treatment, he refused.

My other issue with Neal was that I felt he was trying to sabotage my success. I felt his demands and complaints were unfair and stressed me unnecessarily.

Looking back, I wish I had made more of an effort to respond to his needs. I wish I would have given our relationship another chance when he asked me to.

My love for Neal never went away. Neither did my love for Abdul. They were good men, and I had imagined we would always stay together.

Neal and I had a son, which added complication and concerns for him in relation to the divorce. We were both committed to parenting Ben as best we could.

I was fortunate that our relationship remained compatible and non-conflictual. Our attorney was so taken about by this that she asked us, "Are you sure you want to get a divorce?"

We worked out our own schedule of visitation, and remained flexible about it. Neal was generous with spousal and child support.

My guilt felt much less intense when Neal left. He was the one to initiated our break up.

But he lost more than I did in some ways, although he did not seem to mind. He moved from our spacious apartment in an upscale complex and into an apartment in a complex with some iffy characters. He also seemed better able to cope with being a single parent.

A major factor in our different experiences was that he had a girlfriend. I had no one. I also had never been left before. This affected my self esteem.

Dating at age 35 was a whole different experience than dating in my early twenties. Most men I met were unavailable because they were married or had been through a painful divorce and were not interested in another relationship.

As a young woman men flocked to me. I felt attractive and sexy. There was hardly a time I wasn't involved with someone. This time around I questioned my appeal, and when I fell in love with a man who remained distant, felt it painfully.

So, how did I heal from the loss of those relationships?

First, let me say that healing from them was a long process. I needed to resolve my guilt and to mourn the losses. For that I engaged in long-term therapy with an excellent clinician.

I struggled with financial issues, with exhaustion and depression at times, with some health problems, and, and after my second divorce, with an even heavier schedule now that I was a single mother.

Another element concerned my dissertation. I went to grad school because I wanted to be a therapist, not a researcher. The whole process intimidated me, and I chose the wrong chair. He was less than supportive or sympathetic to my struggles. My anxiety level rose through the roof.

I made the mistake of getting involved with the wrong person. He was a mercurial man, and coping with his moodiness interfered with my making progress with my dissertation. He was exhausting. He demanded too much sex, and at the end of our relationship did some bizarre things.

I ended up with PTSD and high anxiety over his stalking. There was a time when I lay on my Pakistani carpet and felt like I needed to hold on for fear of flying off the earth.

My next relationship started out well, but became bizarre and abusive at the end. By then I was dealing with intense chronic pain from herniated disks in my neck. I struggled for three years to continue working in my practice.

Finally my resources dropped so low, emotionally and financially, that the only thing that saved me was an invitation from my sister to live with her and her family in Wichita, Kansas.

My good fortune came when I met a man who later became my husband. He and I spent many years together. We both felt grateful to have finally found someone so compatible, understanding, supportive, and loving. That's when my true healing began.

Dave listened to me, comforted me, supported, me as I worked through the final stages of my healing. He loved me unconditionally. Our relationship was the one that renewed my hope and sense of hope and healing.

This is my story of how my divorces affected me. Yours may be different. You may have found healing in other ways. I hope you have.