Saying goodbye to your loss

You finally reach the point where you can say goodbye and move forward and suddenly your dealing with new issues. A laundry list of emotions hits you like a brick wall. After all this time struggling with the issues between you and your loss, then suddenly its done, over. The new issue, dealing with was the loss of the stress. It's something that is never expected.

Devin wrote:

I was very happy to have the divorce final because I knew it was about time and I needed to move forward, but what was I going to do next. I was faced with the fact that something on the list of things I needed to do was done. I was totally prepared to move on to the next item on the list, but I really hadn't made a list of things to get done when the divorce was final. It had ended suddenly with a settlement hearing when I was expecting to deal with it for another couple of months, at the very least. Where do I go from here?"

Once we're finally to the point where things are finished, and we're past the loss of the marriage, it opens a whole new world for us. I am not sure what Devin is facing, or which direction he is speaking of facing after his divorce. It could be any number of things like dating, or suddenly having time to do other things besides worry about his divorce or squabbling with his ex.

For me personally, the number one issue I was facing was morality. I felt free to date or actually let someone else be a part of my life. But morality in this day in age is rare and very old fashioned and a big issue for me. I felt that if the laws still considered us married, although separated, I still couldn't commit to anyone else. I did try before the divorce was over, but it just seemed to hold me back. That is all part of grieving the actual divorce itself. I was over the marriage and felt that I could have someone else in my life and battled with the moral issue of still being married. Once the divorce was final a new process had begun. Another stage of grieving perhaps for some people, the acceptance. The marriage is finally totally over. Legally I was single. What do I do now that the morality of being married wasn’t issue anymore?

Of course, fear stopped me in my tracks. I had no more excuses to stay in, to keep people at a distance. Now it was all just me making excuses. I found myself cutting the ties I did have, left and right. All the people I had stacked up as potential dates were being deleted, so to speak, out of my life. The part of the grieving process that I had not counted on had hit me. I was pulling in and starting it all over again, not over the marriage, but over the loss of the divorce. He was not my estranged husband anymore; he was my ex-husband. He was not my soon-to-be, he was my past. Maybe that is what Kristin is facing.

She wrote:

"I find myself keeping people farther away, now that I can let them in. My ex and I do get along better now that it's over. The stress of arguing over things is gone, but I still seem to be faced with this incredible fear from the closure. A new fear I guess that if I let him in and made that mistake, I could do it again."

So how do we deal with all these new issues? What can we do to help ourselves step out for "real" and start our lives? That's a huge question. I could sit here and give you a bunch of ideas and tell you how you should feel, pump up your ego, give you advice, but I am not even sure I could take my own advice. I've been sitting in the house and avoiding phone calls, emails and texts. I'm terrified. Why? Because I have made mistakes in my life. I have taken the wrong path a number of times, I think we all have. It's the fear of making the same mistake again that keeps us from trying anything at all. This newfound issue is facing that fear. You are able to take people into your life, able to make the decision to have a relationship, but afraid to take the road again. This can't keep us from living so we must find a way to get through it, not over it. I don't really think this new fear is the over the divorce or actually being single, I think it's more a fear of ourselves. Not trusting our instincts or our decisions. How do you avoid that?

I don't think you do.

We all need to get to a point where we have the confidence and security that we are OK, alone, or not, we need to find a new balance. We need to shift our focus from the fact that we are single and realize that we are free. Free to make new choices and start over, a clean slate. Free to make new mistakes, which is OK. I think that society has dictated for us that we need to have certain things by a certain age, and it just can't be expected. We can't let other people force us into being something that we are not ready to be or be somewhere we are not ready to go. We need to be emotionally healthy, emotionally confident, know what we want and seek it, instead of filling a void that someone else feels we have.

The only void that we feel at this moment should be the loss of ourselves. Instead of filling it with other people we should search for ways to fill ourselves with something that will make us whole again. I know that it sounds selfish but if you can't love yourself the way you are then how would you know how to love anyone else that way. The love of family and friends is a completely different thing. When you are in a relationship with them it doesn’t involve romance and intimacy, it is an outside type of love. Being in a relationship, you become one, it's more of an inside type. If you are not full yourselves then one of you will consume the other, there won't be balance. I’ve heard people say that if you can’t love yourself then no one else would love you; but that is far from true. What they’ve misconstrued is this “if you do not love yourself, then how can you show love to another person? How can you know how to give it?” Again, we need to have that balance in order to have a healthy relationship. We need to be able to be ok within ourselves to be able to be ok with someone else; and it isn’t a receiving issue, it is a giving one. You’ve given your love to someone who took for granted, and since they did not receive it properly, or took advantage of it, then you were taught that you loved wrong.

Losing a relationship does not mean you loved wrong or do not know how to, it just means that you were not meant to be together. There is someone out there that will recognize the type of love you give and receive it in a way that makes you feel unafraid to share it. They will receive it in a way that makes it grow; not run and hide. So, I suppose what we need to do to move on is to figure out how we enjoy loving people. What makes us feel we are giving enough? It is within that giving of love and having it accepted that we would find our way forward. When our love is accepted, or we are loved as we are and how we love then we will find the hope to move forward. It’s within the balance of those two things, giving love and having it accepted, that we find the balance.

Thank you for reading my article today. Hopefully we can all find a way to get more balance in our lives and become whole enough to find the happiness we deserve. If you have any suggestions or would like to share your story you can comment below or email me at [email protected] or find me on my Facebook page.