Heart
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Divorce Feelings & Dreams
🕑 Added 2023-01-16 05:38:45 +0000 UTCI woke up this morning agitated from a dream where he was throwing a huge party in my house. (The house that used to be our house.) I was frazzled, confused, I felt out of control. People were in every room, he wouldn’t explain anything, brushed me off. I marvel at my sleeping brains’ ability to distill my real feelings this way. It’s artful really.
In our quick exchange with the kids tonight he mentions (another) vacation with his girlfriend. To New York. I cringe. I bite my tongue. Don’t react. Stay peaceful. Happiness can’t enter a crowded room. Let go.
I asked him for years to come with me on my trips to New York. Come to this party with me! Come meet my friends! Come and skip through Brooklyn and get away with me! There was always a Really Good Excuse. A reason. And then next time a reason again. It never happened.
Which was fine! We’d been together decades, I could accept his no! I needed the me-time anyway! It was fine! I’d go alone! I needed to work on being alone! How perfect! It’s fine!
We dress things up when we don’t like them. We see them through filters and rosy coloured glasses. We believe in the redemption arc and the bigger picture. We hope and keep on working. And then after a divorce we look back and see things with a different lens. It was fucked. I never stood a chance.
So he’s going to New York with her. How I wish I could be happy for them. How I wish I could respond with “How nice! It’s lovely in the Spring!” But I can’t. It’s just another hurt on the pile of hurts. I wish it didn’t get to me. I wish I wasn’t petty and jealous. I wish I wasn’t wishing for their misery. That’s not very poly or evolved or witchy of me. That’s not very me of me.
Joie says I have to remember their relationship is different, less factors to balance, “focus on giving yourself what he never could.” Max says he does stupid shit all the time, why let it get to me? Piper says it’s callous and fucked up, that I always deserved better. Bear says it’s bullshit he didn’t try harder, and reminds me I’m grieving. O is sleeping but she’ll send stabby emojis in the morning.
I am so grateful to have these reminders to be compassionate to myself. These hurts are real and some days it feels like there’s no bottom in the free fall that comes when you blow up your own life. A thousand tiny cuts from the shrapnel. A lost kind of feeling.
“The thing is it was easier when” my therapist stops me mid-sentence. “I was there Heart, it was never easy.”
Comments
♡Hetty♡
I was finally super brave and did the thing and now currently in the thick of separation and the death of our marriage. I’ve known him since I was 14. All of the rose coloured glasses I switched through the years- OOF. Thank you for your writings and candid emotions. It honestly really helped me realise that you can feel all the emotions and still survive it and thrive. ❤️❤️
Cari
Stupid phone... or maybe losing you taught him to man up and go on trips with New Woman so he doesn't lose her too.
Cari
Maybe New Woman is meaner about him going than you were. She's making him go but no way in hell he's going to let you or her think he's anything but happy about it.
Heart
Thankful every day that I got our couples therapist in the divorce. 🙏 Thank you for this message, it really validated what I was feeling. And made me feel less foolish for sharing. ❤️
Brooks Moses
Sometimes it's really useful to have a therapist who's been there with one, indeed. And it stands to reason that you'd be jealous. My beloved ex always said that jealousy is a warning signal that something is wrong. And there was definitely something wrong there, and even though it's in the past, so's he. It was a long slow trauma, and those get triggered, and though the triggers are small, they're not petty. It's not that he hurt you by going to New York with her; it's that he hurt you by not going to New York with you. I dunno if there's anything useful to learn in there for you (I sort of doubt it; Bear's right), but somehow this hit me right to tell me to think about some of the "New York" things in my own long-term relationship. So there's that.
Daniel Drew
💛💛
