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Nobody’s Ready for Marriage

Nobody’s Ready for Marriage

by | Dec 6, 2019 | Identity Growth and Change, Relational Spaces, Relational Spaces - Family, The Bookworm Therapist, The Divorced Therapist

Nobody’s Ready for Marriage

One of my favorite relationship books is “Passionate Marriage” by Dr David Schnarch because of this quote: “Nobody’s ready for marriage. Marriage is what makes you ready for marriage.” It’s in the introduction of the book.

I started reading it a little before I got divorced because I didn’t want to get divorced.

I started reading it a little before I got divorced because I didn’t want to get divorced.

As a therapist, we tend to think we have the skills to avoid marital calamities like divorce.

In my relationship, we had survived unemployment, underemployment & grad school, we could survive infidelity, right?

We could have, if we’d gotten help,  if we really wanted to change ourselves and change our relationship to meet both of our needs.

That discussion is a post for another day.

Passionate Marriage was a beginning of more awareness building for me. It was a text that did a lot to me and for me. (Books are why I affectionately call myself the Bookworm Therapist. I believe that I can’t be the only person to go through what I’m going through and someone somewhere else has probably gone through it and ideally writte a book, article, song or poem about it. At least I hope for it with crossed fingers and toes, because the alternative is unsettling to say the least!) 

Primarily, it was one of the important first steps I really needed in the continued development of my self and identity as a person. It made me become the wife in my relationship instead of the therapist I’d been operating as for the past 12 years in being connected to the kid’s dad (TKD).

It’s a book primarily about differentiation of self and within relationships. It’s become one of the books I reference in couples work & recommend when working in the family relational space generally.

I’ll share some of my favorite phrases, pages & takeaways in future posts.

It’s been 3 years.

It’s been 3 years.

by | Nov 16, 2019 | Identity Growth and Change, Relational Spaces, The Divorced Therapist

November 14th & 16th are my divorce-aversary (divorce-anniversary) dates. 

November 14th because that’s when my divorce was finalized but I didn’t realize it. 

November 16th because that’s when I got an email from my lawyer that the decree I thought I was reviewing was actually the finalized decree. 

A friend commented “Congratulations on your nupiticide” and I quipped “I need that on a shirt!” I still think that I do, even thought it’s been three years. 

 

Nupticide: he destruction of a nuptial union.

It was November and I’d actually just moved into the home I would rent as I sold my house aka “the marital home.”

I made another withdrawal from my 401k to cover expenses, as I’d just started a new full time job in August and was trying to “get back on my feet” as they say. At some point during the moving of the things that I needed and sorting through the things he’d left behind and finding out how many more things were lost or destroyed during the divorce process, I told myself: “I’ll give it three years to get back on my feet. If I have to drain my 401k to get by paying rent here and my mortgage until the home sells, I’ll do it – as long as me and the kids are taken care of. They need as little disturbance to their lives as possible considering what they’re too little to understand they’re going through right now.”

And I did drain my 401k that I’d had after 10 years of working for the state, just to get through the divorce.

Then I got equity from the home sale, too. It took me 2 years of full time work plus the equity from my home sale, to realize that raising a family of 4 between two homes with $100 in child support from the kid’s dad (aka TKD) every month and only one job was a significant struggle. 

And then I fell in love in year 3…. with a house. 

After the divorce was final, the kids said they wanted their own house. I felt like I did too. Maybe it was to prove to myself that I could do it again. I’d bought my first home before I was married and i bought my second home while TKD was unemployed (he will always say that it was his credit that got us the home, although he wasn’t ever on the mortgage loan or the deed and couldn’t qualify to buy the home from me in the divorce). Something about having a home of our own kept coming up. We liked our neighborhood and our neighbors. And the kids wanted a two story home. Everything we saw was a one-story rambler or very old and dated and would need more money put into it to bring it up to date. 

And then…. 

We were driving to the store and saw a home for sale. It was a two-story home. I texted my realtor (who became like a sister to me during the sale of my home during the divorce as she was also divorced) and asked her to get us a showing. She told me it was above my price point and asked if she should increase it for my search. I said no, we’re just gonna walk through it, not buy it. 

And then we did our showing… and i had the same feeling in this house that I did in my second home. I walked in and said “this is my house.” Except this time I said “oh no.” and “uh oh.” as I walked through the house and fell in love with each room, the layout, the shower, the closet, the basement, the backyard & the kitchen.

It was my home. 

After the walk through, I had to talk to myself and my Self said, “…but it’s almost been 3 years. And you said ‘2-3 years to get yourself together and back on your feet.’ and here is a home… together and here you are with feet, so???” And it really was a lot like falling in love because I didn’t feel like I was ready for what I deserved nor did I feel that I necessarily deserved it. 

But I was ready on the inside and I do believe I deserve it.  

The home that stole my heart

This is my third home purchase in almost 15 years.

Oftentimes people will hear my divorce story and praise me for getting this purchase “without a man” and then i look back at the 3 properties I’ve owned in my life and I’ve always done them “without a man.” My only co-owned purchase was acreage with TKD that we’d planned to build on – had plans drawn up and everything, but then the divorce happened instead and the land was a short sale. 

But here I am 3 years later, from a process that truly drained me emotionally and financially. 3 years later and I know that it’s time to rebuild, to truly build with intention and purpose in ways that I have done before but didn’t realize it when it was happening. Divorce isn’t easy and I can’t say that divorce is necessarily worth it when there are kids involved. It was worth it for me and it’s very difficult helping them navigate their reality inside of my own, but this is where we are. 

I look at how hard I work and how hard it really is to try and do all of this like a Pinterest-perfect person. My own life story is as much of an impact on my present circumstances as my divorce is. The divorce just highlighted it to a place that I could see it and make sense of myself and the life I want for my family and my kids.

I intentionally try to create and provide and sustain for my kids. That is the only truth I hold right now. It is my start and my finish line. It is my one true thing. We talked yesterday about what our reward would be when I get a promotion at my job in two years. We set a reward for when I finished my dissertation back in 2017 and it helped us cope with the stress of it all (aka during the divorce) and we will do it again as we enter another busy year preparing for promotion and tenure.

So we’re going to set some intentions and plan our life and expectations with each other for that time period this weekend. I look at the last three years and think that it could be worse (and it has gotten close more than I have time to write about in this moment) but it can and is and will get better. I love the quote “God didn’t bring you through a storm to drop you in a puddle” because none of this has been easy, but it has taught me to invest in rain boots just as much as sturdy umbrellas. 

And to look forward to the next 2-3 years because it’s time to bloom. 

Cycles in the aftermath of divorce

Cycles in the aftermath of divorce

by | Oct 19, 2019 | The Divorced Therapist

I’ve been divorced for almost 3 years.

I was married for almost 10.

The last 18 months of that 10 years was the divorce process – so, actively married, say 8.5 years. My divorce was final about 40 days before what would have been our 10 year anniversary.

I hesitated to call my marriage relationship abusive, but I did notice how suffocated I felt over time. It felt safe to discuss my experiences in those terms instead of saying it was abusive. But it was abusive… emotionally abusive, psychologically abusive, relationally abusive… all of the invisible and intangible ways that show up in anxiety and depression symptoms. I had, and still have, those symptoms. That’s a story (or series of stories) for another day.

Today, I’m deciding to share my story. It’s not my “divorce” story, although that will surely come, it’s my story now as it happens and evolves and develops. It’s my realization that a divorce involving children and attempts to effectively co-parent with another person can, at times, make divorce a wound that never heals. It’s less of surviving a living death (a la Daphne Kigma’s “Coming Apart”) as it can be more of enduring an illness and its injuries and trying to heal an open wound as a result of the illness, over and over.

In my experience, it’s a wound that needs time to heal that it never fully receives. Not because the time isn’t there, but because the illness is treatable but not curable.

Every flareup is another injury. Every flareup is generally manageable but so annoying to have to live with. Every flareup won’t kill you but the process can be so thinly veiled with violence that you’re almost worried it will.

Today’s been one of those days.

A day where I had to ask myself how long it had been since he’d had a meltdown where I felt worried for my safety. I was able to think back to the last time (the weekend of July 28, 2019 – that story will come) and said to myself “oh… it’s been about three months, almost exactly, since the last time the kid’s dad has had a triggering event that results in him telling me how awful I am.”

So, here we are again.

What was said as a joke to survive my attempt at a family vacation with him for our kids – “he usually only lasts three months before he remembers that he hates me, we’ve been cordial since May – I give it til the end of July. As long as we make it to the end of the family vacation and the kids got to ride roller coasters, he can get pissed off and leave us in St. George like he did the first time we went to Disney and I’ll be fine.” – has become a reality. Every three months, he hits this low and I bear the brunt of his anger that seethes under the surface.

This is the open wound of divorce.

The heavy paradox of taking the high road when he consistently uses the low route. The reflex to guard for my safety, limit my interactions with him, try not to do anything that would provoke or feed this frightening undercurrent (like speak up for myself, argue against his attacks on my character or match his comments on my failures with my own comments/perceptions of his failures), and in all of this, probably most painfully, watching the manipulation happen with my three kids whose reality, relationship & experiences with their dad do not match my reality, relationship & experiences with their dad and-plus-also….  knowing that “a good mom” doesn’t pit her children against their father by showing them what he says and pointing out what he does as harmful (even when he did it to them in July).

I wish divorce was truly an ending to tolerating abuse for the sake of your children. Many of us stay in awful relationships because of our kids. We wish our spouse would hit us, cheat on us, do something visible that makes divorce acceptable. What do you do when your spouse is “just” mean to you and blames you for their actions?

Divorce isn’t really an escape from the same awful relationship. What divorce offers is a separate physical location that provides a general refuge. For the refuge, I’m grateful. Managing the abuse for the sake of my kids having as neutral a relationship with their father as possible is the part of my reality that I hate the most.

This is the cycling aftermath of divorce.

Therapy isn’t a bad word, it’s just misunderstood.

Therapy isn’t a bad word, it’s just misunderstood.

by | Jan 24, 2019 | Identity Growth and Change, The Divorced Therapist

When your mentor says it, all you can do is repost and share your own story!

Therapy was not a dirty word in my family, it just wasn’t a real one. I say that to mean that it wasn’t something discussed in my family growing up. We were an active-duty military, Southern, Christian Black family.  My parents were first generation college graduates. We survived, “we made it,” we were successful, we prayed. We didn’t have to go to therapy.

Therapy wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t real. 

Therapy wasn’t anything we saw as a resource or an option. However, talking was important to our relationship with my mother and it was probably the closest we got to experiencing the listening ear of a therapist. 

Could I have used a therapist for any of these major life events?

– adjusting to mom’s remarriage? Yup.

– adjusting to step dad?Yup.

– figuring out the relationship with my bio dad? Yup.

– and step mom? Yup.

– multiple moves? Yup.

– having 4 siblings enter my “only-child” world? Yup.

– maintaining relationships with siblings on my dad’s side? Yup.

– meeting a new sibling as a junior in high school? Yup. 

– changing schools, homes, church congregations & friendships? Yup.

With our frequent moves, creating a relationship with a new therapist after every move may have negatively impacted the therapeutic relationship. (A good fit and consistency is important!) Therapy may not have been conducive to our lifestyle and I realize this in hindsight. So while therapy wasn’t real to us, I can definitely acknowledge that it could have been helpful for me as an “only-turned-oldest child” in a new family configuration as one of many reasons. 

I got closer to therapy experiences before I finished elementary school. My near-therapist was a Catholic Priest in my 4th and 5th grade (and only) years of private school. I don’t remember his name, but here’s what I do remember:

Whenever it was time for weekly confessional, he always came from around the mesh divider and sat in front of me. He always listened. He didn’t interrupt me. He was approachable enough that I trusted him with my story and my struggles of being a stepchild, a jealous older sibling, a new kid at every school (every year!) and a confused kid about having two sets of parents and trying to get along with all of them. I don’t know that there were any huge “a-ha!” moments for me when we would talk – I was barely developmentally ready for “talk-therapy.” I just knew that it gave me the energy and perspective I needed to try again for another week. Every week. I really appreciated him for the safe space he gave me to explore my thoughts and feelings. 

I didn’t officially enter therapy until I was an adult. First it was pre-marital counseling, which shifted into marital counseling, which evolved into divorce process/individual counseling. 

I have loved and grown from the work with most of my therapists (not every one was a good fit)! For me, being a therapist “on the couch” of another therapist, either alone or as a couple, I really was able to appreciate our therapy training.  It gave me insights into myself as a person being seen through the eyes of another professional.

I have appreciated having my own, very necessary, safe space via another therapist’s expertise. I have appreciated the accountability and the support, the belief and the empowerment that I’ve received in therapy. It has been what’s helped me feel better prepared to show up for not just my own clients, but for my family, my friends and my profession, too! Being in the same shoes as your client is validating! We really care that you have the right fit because the connection and potential work truly depend on it.

I echo the words of my mentor who shares her journey here: therapy isn’t a bad word! It can be a mystery, but it is a mystery with a real solution for your life and the lives of your loved ones. 

A few reminders if you’re considering therapy for the first time:  

  1. Remember that it is its own relationship and needs time to establish itself. Give yourself 2-4 sessions to establish a rhythm.
  2. It’s important that you feel safe, heard & understood. You want to know that your therapist can comfortably speak your language (literally and figuratively). Ask about their specialties and preferred approaches. 
  3. It’s okay to see a few therapists before you make a decision to receive services. Ask about free consultations!