When you were a married woman, you probably felt safe and secure and things in your life were predictable. The loss of your husband is so much more than just the end of a relationship. It strips you of meaning and many women feel lost. Who am I now?
Sabrina, a woman in one of my groups remarked: “I keep saying ‘we’. We saw that movie. We love that restaurant. We had a great vacation in Punta Cana.” She said she’s struggling with the language and language matters. It would sound weird to say: “I had a great vacation in Punta Cana.” It sounds like she went by herself.
Her operating system is still running on “wife”. She went on to say, “While I don’t consider myself a wife anymore, much of my identity and behavior is woven into being that person.” After twenty-seven years of marriage, she doesn’t know who she is without it.
She said she chokes on saying, “my ex.” Ex-husband conveys what society assumes it means. That you grew apart and worked on it but couldn’t solve the problems. Not at all the reality of a woman who has been abandoned. Plus, she used to be the one people came to for support, the one others could rely on. Now she hates appearing like a hero because she’s surviving as a struggling single mom who needs other people’s help. She has an identity but it’s not the identity she wants!
You’re at a crossroads. You can’t go back; that’s not an option. But it may feel like if you move on, you are accepting all the hurt that was thrown your way. After all, isn’t moving on exactly what your former husband wants you to do? It may feel that moving on would be not honoring the pain. Maybe part of you doesn’t want to give it up. As long as you are suffering, the world can see what he did to you and shake their proverbial heads saying, “Do you believe what a low-life he is?!?”
You are transitioning from an identity that you cherished, being a wife, to one that you may feel is cloaked in shame, being an ex-wife. But thinking that being an ex-wife is shameful or “less than” is a belief, not a fact. What about if you started to shift your thinking so that you could erase that self-limiting belief and start to neutralize it? If roughly 40% of marriages in the U.S. end in divorce, that means that you are part of a large number of women who define themselves as ex-wife. Can you start re-wiring your thinking so that you can begin to get comfortable in this club you never wanted to join?
It seems to me that two factors are taking place simultaneously. First, there are all the losses that you legitimately need to grieve. The loss of the partner, perhaps the home, financial losses, worries about your children and the loss of the dream of the future. Those are significant enough.
But do you really need to lose your self-image as a person who is valuable and whose life has meaning, too? Wouldn’t it make it a bit easier if you held your head up high and said to yourself, “I may not have been the perfect wife but he wasn’t the perfect husband either. I tried my best and devoted myself to my marriage. I am deciding to not blame myself for the fact that it ended.”
In other words, to shower yourself with self-compassion as you work through this painful period in your life. When you’re soaked in regret and sorrow, Dr. Kristin Neff, the psychologist who works on self-compassion, would recommend you tell yourself these three things:
"This is a moment of suffering." (This is mindfulness - acknowledging the pain).
"Suffering is a part of life." (This is common humanity - remembering you aren't alone).
"May I be kind to myself in this moment." (This is self-compassion - offering yourself grace).
And then she’d probably recommend that you put your arms around yourself and give yourself a big long hug. You deserve it!
A divorce is the death of a dream. Kristin Neff would remind you that you cannot heal a broken heart by beating it up. Fierce love for yourself and gentle acceptance are the only ways forward and over time, you will stumble across your new identity which you can learn to cherish, just as you are.
Although you may feel you have lost your identity along with the end of your marriage, you have a life ahead. It will be different from what you expected but don’t assume that being divorced makes you less than you were when you were married!