once again, it's all about me :D

I started to answer a post on SI about effort, and my reply quickly turned into an "it's all about me" response, when it should have been about the person who posted in the first place. So I decided to post here what I was going to reply there. Because here really is all about me. lol

The SI poster said: I can still be positive and be divorced, huh?

and I started my reply:

yep, sure can. :grin:

I'm not saying divorce is your answer. Only you can make that call. I am saying that divorce is not the end of the world.

I will also say that I thought I had a decent marriage, until the day my life imploded. It wasn't a great marriage, but I wasn't unhappy.

At least that's what I thought, until ex left and I had time to step back from everything and process and think. Turns out the marriage really wasn't hadn't been all that good for a long time and I hadn't been as happy in it as I liked to think I was. Don't get me wrong. I was mostly happy with my life. But I hadn't been getting the emotional support from the marriage that marriages are supposed to have.

Had ex not left, I would have stayed married to him for the rest of my life. I also would never have found out what I was missing out on.

And now that I have the kind of relationship where I have that emotional support, where I am clearly a priority, where what I feel and what I think matters, I can't for the life of me figure out how I stayed in my marriage as long as I did, and did without this.

Divorce might not seem like it's the answer we want, but sometimes it ends up being the answer we need.

adding some links

you may have noticed I've been adding some links to websites and books on amazon. just wanted to say I'm getting nothing from that, no affiliate programs or anything like that.it's simply books I've either read (so far all but 1) or had highly recommended to me (the 1 I haven't read) that may or may not help someone else. take from it what works for you, if anything.

wow, I got there in my head

I have this tendency to over-think things. I also have conversations in my head as a way to prepare me for situations I might find myself in. I'd rather know what I was going to say ahead of time, than be put on the spot, kwim?

Just nod and say yes, even if you don't. It'll make me feel like I'm less nuts than I really am. <laugh>

Anyway, I'll be going with my boyfriend to his company's huge annual event next month, and since I want to make a good impression, etc, etc, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about it and having conversations in my head. Including the one where I possibly have to explain meeting my boyfriend while I was in the process of getting a divorce.

I realized, for the first time in these pretend conversations I have, that I was able to describe the end of my marriage without anger or pain. True, I was using some of the more trite phrases like "we just wanted different things from the marriage" and was picturing me rolling my eyes as I said it, but still, it's a far way from what I used to say, in my head. A definite improvement, I'd have to say.

backtracking, sort of

I got Brene Brown's other book, I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't), yesterday and decided to read it first, before I continue reading The Gifts of Imperfection, since she wrote it first. So far it's a tougher read, in terms of recognizing things in myself that she's writing about that are tough to see in oneself.

It's all part of my journey of self discovery though, so it's all good.

I Am Enough

It started when a friend shared a link to this:


There was something about this video, this speaker, this subject, that made me stop and think. I've been on this journey to rediscover and recreate myself, and hearing what Brene Brown has to say on this TED talk made me think about myself, and my journey.

So I wanted to learn more about what this woman had to say. I "liked" her on facebook, I follow her blog, Ordinary Courage. When I saw she had a new PBS special I had to watch it. And then of course, I had to get the book the show was based on. So now I'm reading The Gifts of Imperfection. I just started it last night, but so far it's an excellent read. 

Let me leave you with a quote from the beginning of the introduction of the book, Wholehearted Living.

Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It's going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn't change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.

I am enough. Aren't you, too?

confronting the old me

or more like, running head first into reminders of a me I had forgotten I had been.

I think my sister was the first one to point how how different I had become in my marriage, compared to the young woman I had been before I met my ex, and in the early stages of that relationship. Funny how a simple question about what happened to the young woman who always used to dress fashionably and wear cute shoes can sum up so much. It wasn't just that how I dressed changed, it was that the parts of my personality I expressed that way went into hiding.

It's probably not a big surprise that after talking to my sister about that, one of the first things I did was go shoe shopping. :)

Yesterday I started clearing out some of the accumulation of dross, the leftovers of my marriage that I get to deal with since I got the house, with all the remaining contents. I went with the easier stuff, the boxes of old papers, statements, receipts. Crap I knew I could dispose of without any issues.

In one of the boxes I went digging through, I came across several cards and a letter I had written to ex a great many years ago. Seeing the old me, on paper and in writing no less, was a bit unsettling. On the one hand, who really wants to see the embarrassing drivel one writes as a naive teenager? But what got to me was seeing the evidence that I really had been a different person before I met ex, and for a wide assortment of reasons, conformed over the relationship to what I thought his expectations of me were. Obviously I started that process fairly early in the relationship, too, because I didn't remember being the girl whose personality shines through in the letter, despite the drivel.

The contrast between that young woman, and the woman I became in my marriage, is what was unsettling. It highlights how much I was willing to change, in order to feel lovable, and loved.

But the similarities to who I feel I am now were also glaringly obvious, and I find that incredibly reassuring. I'm back to being the me I was supposed to be. Only now I'm loved for who I am. What an amazing feeling that is. :D

want vs need

This came up for discussion on an online forum I post on, and I've been pondering it ever since. At first I thought about it only in the context of the relationship I have with SO. But invariably that led to thoughts of how different this relationship is compared to my marriage and well, there you have it. I've been thinking about the want vs need dynamic in my marriage. So even though I was only going to go forward with this blog, I think for tonight I'll be looking at the past, because I want to learn from that so that my present and future are better.

Hindsight is so wonderful, in its 20/20 perfection.

When I met my ex, I was needy. At the time, I didn't think I was, but looking back, oh baby, was I ever. Some of it was the neediness  and immaturity of youth, but a great deal more of it was the neediness that came from issues in my family of origin. I unwittingly was looking for a rescuer, and found that in my ex. He was needy as well. Again, some of it because of youth, but I think now a lot more of was because of issues in his family of origin. If you were to ask him though, I doubt he'd see it, even now looking back.

But there we were, me needing to be rescued from my dysfunctional family and ex needing the attention that he hadn't gotten from his parents growing up. That dynamic worked well for us for years, because I gave ex the attention he wanted, when he wanted it because he was my knight in shining armor who rescued me.

Somewhere along the way things changed. We got married and had children. I didn't have as much time to give ex the attention he needed, when he needed it. I also started to realize that I didn't need him to rescue me, I could learn to do that by myself. Now, I didn't just wake up one morning and know I didn't need him. It was a very gradual process, made in part because ex withdrew from me and our family as he became more discontent. I grew stronger because he wasn't there to be my rescuer. I stopped needing him.

That was really good for me, but I think it's what doomed my marriage. Ex equated need with want and assumed because I didn't need him, I didn't want him. And honestly, I didn't do such a good job of letting him know I wanted him as a husband. I thought I had plenty of time for that, when the kids were older. I was wrong.

So now I know that I don't need anyone to rescue me. I still have the tendency to want to have that knight in shining armor come to my rescue, so I really have to watch that. But even with that, I know that I do not need to have my SO in my life. I know that I can have a perfectly good life without him. However, I want to have SO in my life. And I will make sure he knows that, and how much I enjoy and appreciate that he is in my life. It's a lesson that was well learned.

went to my divorce support group today

and something the moderator of the group said made me wonder if he knows this online persona of mine. Or perhaps I've just been more vocal in group about the subject that came up than I realize.

It was a small group today, only 7 of us including the moderator, and despite only attending for not quite a year, I'm considered one of the old-timers. I think a lot of that has to do with my attitude as much as the progression of my divorce time-line. Being officially divorced puts me on the other side, at least as far as being able to help those just starting the process.

Anyway, half of the group today was in the trying to reach a settlement phase. It's an extremely frustrating time during a divorce, particularly if the soon-to-be-ex isn't cooperating and is trying to drag things out. Because that's where half the group is, we spent a lot of time talking about anger, resentment and forgiveness.

It was when the subject of forgiveness came up. That's when I got the feeling the moderator knows who I am on a forum I post on, under this name. Either that, or I live a life with a whole lot of coincidences. lol  But I've posted on that forum several times within the past week about forgiveness. Of course, I do tend to be rather outspoken in group at times so there's a good chance whatever I've said about forgiveness before made an impression. Not that it bothers me if he knows who I am on the forum, and he may not. But the timing of the subject, and his comment, was just a bit odd. Oh well, such is life.