Month: January 2020

Save Yourself

Save Yourself

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I have the great honor to volunteer as a betrayal trauma mentor. One of the common themes which comes up in our discussions is the wish that we could save the future romantic “victims” of our ex-spouses. I feel so blessed to work with incredibly amazing women. Their capacity to love and feel concern for others touches me continually. Even though they are barely figuring out how to survive themselves, they are worried about another daughter of God.

I too used to suffer with this need to rescue. Okay, let’s be honest, sometimes I still do. My ex-husband moved on from his relationship with me at lightning speed. Of course, it was easy for him because he never was faithful and he never felt emotions of true love for me. He had two new girlfriends before he had even moved out of our home and after he had promised to be faithful.

One of those relationships stuck and he was discussing his potential engagement two weeks after our divorce finalized. I was absolutely paralyzed with worry for this woman and her teenage daughter. I wanted to warn her! Help her to see! Save her! My mind churned with what I could do to get this innocent woman away from Cory.

Well, that relationship petered out, probably when she found out he had been lying to her all along, but then the next woman came along. Immediately. And my worry began to churn anew. One day, this new girlfriend reached out to me. I’ll admit, I was initially freaked out, but then I felt a surge of hope. Finally! A real opportunity to save a woman and her children from my ex!

Well, guess what? I was vulnerable and transparent, telling her a LOT of information. Details that she could not deny were true and should have sent her running for the hills. This woman also has teenage daughters (do you see a theme here?) and when I could not appeal to her own personal safety and worthiness for better, I appealed to her as a mother for her children’s safety.

And it backfired in a big way.

I don’t know what my ex is telling her, but she just wanted more and more “proof” that what I said was true. Finally, though devastating, I cut off contact with this woman because engaging with her was not emotionally healthy for me.

This girlfriend recently became engaged to my ex-husband. It makes me sick to think of what will happen to her and her children. I lose sleep over it. However, my experience with her taught me a valuable and needed lesson: I can’t save anyone but myself. As people who are trying to live the best life we can after divorce, we have a natural desire to help. However, some people are not emotionally healthy enough to receive our assistance. Perhaps, as in my case, the ex is a brilliant narcissist who plays the role of “good guy” so well that he could win an Academy Award. I am not match for his cunning deceit. I don’t want to try to be. I suppose I can see why she would believe him over me.

I realized the worry for this woman was hijacking my thought processes and emotional well-being. It was circumventing my own necessary efforts at healing. As a result, I went to the temple, the place I go with all of my problems. After a session, I spent considerable time in the Celestial Room. I told Heavenly Father I was turning this woman and her children over to Him. I needed to mentally walk away. After, I put her name on the prayer roll and I said out loud, “It is finished.”

Heavenly Father is in charge. He loves every single one of us, even our deeply misguided ex-spouses. I don’t know why He doesn’t stop my ex from hurting others. However, I do believe the principle of agency must be allowed to follow its natural course. When given a chance, I attempted to save this woman. Oh, how desperately I wanted to save her! But ultimately, I learned I can only save myself. This is something I have to remind myself of, at times, on a daily basis. I hope that as you navigate your journey you too can remember that the only person you can save is yourself. You alone are worth that time and energy.

You Hang in There

You Hang in There

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One of the surprising aspects of being a divorced woman is the amazing people I meet and talk to as I go about the business of changing my life. As I shift names on credit cards and other personal details, I spend a lot of time telling a lot of strangers about what is going on in my life. And here’s the weird thing: most of them have gone through it too. As a whole, I have found these individuals to be infinitely kind, patient, and willing to help.

The other day, I called up the credit card company to get my name changed. When the customer service representative asked me for the reason why and I explained, she said in a lilting Southern cadence, “I know what you are going through, when I went through my divorce, I got down to 82 pounds.”

As we concluded the call she said, “Now, Miss Azalee, you hang in there. Things are going to get better.”

I wished I could record her affirming voice, filling in the names of all the ladies I know who are traversing the living hell of ending a marriage and navigating the unbearable pain of betrayal trauma. So, I’m going to say what that sweet lady said: you hang in there. Things are going to get better. You are going to heal.

I am fascinated by the picture that I have used to head this post. The woman appears to sit on a swing over a chasm. Yet, she doesn’t give off the sense that she is desperate or unsure. She’s got her hands on a safe surface, but she’s not gripping in panicked desperation. Though it seems she is perched over an abyss, there is a confident command in her posture.

She’s hanging in there.

We may be hovering over own personal abyss. One that was not of our making or choosing. I would have given anything to save my marriage and keep my family together. The tumult of an unknown future may be all that we can see when we look forward. But we can face this with quiet confidence–because we’ve got this. Many of us haven’t been given any other choice.

We’re going to hang in there. We are going to trust that a loving Heavenly Father knows us and is in charge. Always. Forever.

Terminator Ex

Terminator Ex

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I am not what you would call a highbrow kind of gal, but I do love all the arts. Opera. Symphony. Theater. I suppose because duality makes folks more interesting, I also love things that do not fall anywhere in the arts category. Like demolition derbies.

And the Terminator movies.

I know, I know. The premise is ridiculous, the acting atrocious. Maybe the allure is because I adore the complexity of stories about time travel (still trying to figure out a way to have that work for me) but I was a huge consumer of the early Terminator movies.

Now, I’m not such a devoted fan because I have a Terminator ex-husband.

If you have seen the movies, there is that scene in the initial one where the Terminator leans in and with a menacing expression promises, “I’ll be back.” Well, my Terminator ex, he’ll be back…and back…and back.

I think we all hope that if we find it necessary to end our marriages, we can let each other go with love and an aim of forgiveness. Sure it’s sad it didn’t work out, but if nothing else but for the sake of the children, let’s metaphorically shake hands and wish each other love and light.

My ex-husband is a narcissist. Narcissists don’t let go. They don’t kindly shake hands, metaphorically or otherwise. Because these are vicious emotional vampires who do not like to lose. They can’t live with the fact that their exs now stand for themselves, are becoming strong, and are finally able to clear away the fog to discern through the nonsense.

When I first separated with my now-ex after months of him refusing to move out of our home (that’s a subject worthy of its own entire post), I could not initially distance myself emotionally. I had two self-destructive aims. First, I wanted to get some kind of rise out of the man. A hint of angst for destroying our decades-long marriage? Maybe one tear? Gosh, even the glimmer of sincere show sorrow?!

Unrealistic and unrealized expectations.

The second thing was that I kept looking to him to answer the why of what he did. How could he turn his back on his own children? How could he leave his family and rush into the next relationship with literally anyone who would engage with him on dating apps without a backward glance? I was not well enough at the time to see how fruitless it was to ask for rational answers from a man steeped in the insanity of addiction.

But I learned.

Eventually I saw the psychologically critical need I had to distance myself from his madness. The second he sensed me drifting away, he went into panic mode. The manipulation and cruelty, all packaged up in niceness, rocketed to a whole new level. Like, for example, when he had a rental car company leave a voice mail on my phone to confirm that my “family-sized van” was ready to pick up. Yep, he definitely wanted me to know that one month after our divorce finalized he was taking his girlfriend and her whole family on a trip to California.

Over time, I healed and I learned about boundaries. It was tough to let go of the control I thought I had, but I set rock-solid rules of how he could and could not engage with me. He is not allowed to contact me in any way except if it has to do with the division of our assets or our children. He can’t even text me to wish me a happy birthday. As his control over me started to fade, he did the only thing left—he turned on the children, because that is a great way to trigger me into defense mode. He is an absolute emotional brute to our kids, but couches his behavior in language of he is “just being sensitive to their needs”. When the kids see him and come home upset, it almost kills me to not defend them, but confronting him does nothing except to add fuel to his narcissistic fire. I have to remind myself that when you have no empathy, you don’t care that your children despise you and that you’ve lost their trust. My comments do nothing to change him or help him see some kind of a healing light.

I’ve come to realize that like the Terminator, who couldn’t be reasoned with or couldn’t be bargained with, my ex is going to attempt to punish me for the rest of my life. But my strong boundaries are barriers that block him at every turn. Terminators can be rendered powerless! We can transform from victims to victors!

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