This post is hard to write.
“If it’s so miserable that you don’t want to live anymore, why don’t you just file for divorce and leave?”
Those words, and dozens more before them, should’ve been the slap in the face I needed to wake the fuck up and see that there was nothing left of my marriage to save. I’m ashamed to say they weren’t. Ashamed to admit it took eight more days and so many more hurtful words/information before enough was enough. Ashamed to say that even after my world came crashing down around me and everything about the previous three years finally made sense I still gave him more chances he didn’t deserve.
When you ask someone, with tears streaming down your face, if they still want to be with you, if they are still interested in you, and they stare at you with a blank expression saying nothing, offering no comforting reassurance its breaks you in ways I can’t explain. Even though no words were being said I had my answer. What wasn’t being spoken was being shouted in the silence.
We went in circles like that for months as I clung desperately to the hope that a spark would reappear in the long burned-out fire and cold ashes of what used to be our love. Me begging him to choose me when I was too scared, too weak to choose myself. Me giving him “just one more chance” while the life was slowly draining out of me.
I didn’t really want to die. I just wanted the pain to stop. The circle of emotional and relationship hell that I was in to end. For the cycle of hurt and betrayal to stop repeating itself. I knew I had the power to end it all, not by harming myself, but by leaving. I just didn’t believe I was strong enough.
Because when you give your whole self to something, every single part of you, it feels impossible to just walk away. When you’ve completely abandoned yourself to save someone else, to save your relationship, giving up feels like something you won’t survive. It feels impossible to choose between staying and being a whole but empty shell of a human and leaving and shattering yourself into a million pieces because that’s how intertwined you are. How do you choose when either choice is going to cause immeasurable pain?
I didn’t choose me.
I’d like to pretend I was brave and chose myself, I mean I guess I did but not until I had all the evidence, not until it was so painfully clear there was no other choice. I didn’t choose myself months or years earlier even though all the signs were there. I didn’t choose me even when it was obvious he wasn’t choosing me either. I didn’t choose me—instead, I abandoned myself, lost my spark, my joy, and compromised my values in ways that would make me slap my sisters if they did the same. I ignored my intuition, pushed the gut feelings deep inside, and tried to pretend the constant headaches, the IBS, and the way my hair was falling out wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t choose me until it was clear there was no other way I was going to survive, and even then it felt like a reluctant choice.
How could choosing myself cause so much pain? The days and weeks immediately following me asking for a divorce and then us actually deciding to get one were a blur of tears, sleepless nights, forcing myself to eat, and a pain I had never felt before—the pain of a broken heart. It’s a physical pain from an emotional wound, which is a total mind fuck.
I was grieving the loss of my marriage and my family unit. I was grieving the massive blow to my self-esteem. I was grieving for my kids and the new life they’d have to adjust to. I was grieving how hard I’d fought and lost, and how much of myself I’d lost. I cried more than I knew was humanly possible. I was completely shattered.
My entire life, my entire self-worth was wrapped up in this person. Throughout our 13+ year relationship, I had given him the power to build me up, to give me a confidence I never knew I was capable of, and to help me grow into the woman I was, but at the same time, I had given him the power to destroy me. And whether he’d done it intentionally or not, he’d used that power—he’d destroyed me.
And I’d let him. In fact, I’d often defended him and his actions. I told very few people about how unhappy I truly was those last few years. If my family and friends knew they didn’t say anything.
Defending them.
It’s something I think about a lot. We make excuses for others so we don’t have to admit that we’ve abandoned ourselves. It’s less about defending them and more about defending ourselves. Except it never really comes out that way. It comes out as making excuses, defending their bad behavior, or omitting it altogether, so it’s easier to justify why we stay. Because that’s easier than admitting to someone who loves you that you’ve compromised every value that matters to you. That’s easier than looking into their eyes and saying, “I’ve destroyed myself to save them.”
Sometime after our break-up, I had that conversation with one of my few friends who knew more details than anyone else. I told her I had realized how annoying it had to have been for me to keep defending him. But how do you admit you’re still fighting for a relationship that makes you feel suicidal without sounding like a crazy person? How do you tell your best friend that you’re scared no one else will ever love you so you stay? How do you admit that ignored every red flag and gut feeling you had, that your intuition was right all along, but you were too loyal and forgiving to trust it?
The same friend and I talked about this again recently, and she admitted she did the same thing to me. Omitted details or exaggerated things in her last relationship so I too believed things were better than they were. Why? To save face maybe, because no one wants to admit their relationship is falling apart despite their best efforts. Because society has taught us that relationships that don’t end in marriage or marriages that don’t end with old age are failures (but that’s a post for another time).
For me, it was a combination of all of it. I was ashamed to say my marriage was failing. I knew I was being treated poorly and putting up with shit I shouldn’t be and was embarrassed to say I still didn’t have it in me to leave. I wasn’t myself because I was pouring every ounce of energy I had into something I knew I was fighting for alone, and saving a relationship is a two-person job. I couldn’t face my family with their long history of long marriages and tell them mine was over. I couldn’t break my kids hearts. I didn’t believe I’d ever find love again.
I don’t know how different things would’ve been if I’d believed in myself, if I’d trusted my intuition, if I’d faced the music sooner, but I do know abandoning myself made the whole experience so much more difficult.
I had honestly thought I was “ready” to end my marriage—as if that’s something you can ever be truly ready for—but I wasn’t. Even though I initiated it, it broke me. All of me was wrapped up in this relationship and this other person and now it was gone. Everything I had been fighting for the past several years was gone. Where did I go from here? Who was I without this relationship? I had missed so many signs and ignored so many others, how could I trust myself again? How could I forgive myself for all the mistakes I made and the way I allowed myself to be treated? How did I get over someone I thought loved me hurting me so badly? And how could I keep this from happening ever again?
This post is part of Evolution of a Broken Heart, a section of Sex, Love, & the Naked Truth. Thank you for being here and joining me on this journey.