We’ll Get Through This Together

Posted on by stilllearning2b
get through

There are many words that feel amazing to receive:

 

“I love you.”

“I’m proud of you.”

“You are amazing.”

“I appreciate you.”

 

There are times those are the words we need to hear. They let us know that we’re seen, accepted, valued and cared for. These words are the valuable currency of relationships that both build bonds and and help to provide reinforcement against outside assaults.

Yet there is a phrase that can be even more powerful. One that often follows on the heels of difficult news – a death, a diagnosis, a loss, a revelation of a closely held secret. And in those moments, when we’re feeling skinned and bare, shivering in naked fear and uncertainty, the best words we can hear are –

 

“We’ll get through this together.”

 

Those words don’t minimize or project meaningless platitudes. They fall short of promising an optimistic outcome yet they still carry the scent of hope. Instead, the phrase suggests that now will not be always and there is a way through, even if it is not yet known.

And most importantly, those simple words reassure you that you’re not alone. They speak of shoulders ready to accept tears and strong arms prepared to render assistance. With that utterance, you know that you have a safe space where you can break down without concern for appearances or consequences.

It’s amazing how powerful a simple hand can be when it folds over yours during life’s most difficult moments. Sometimes, just having someone there makes the difference between giving up and getting up. The presence of another both gives us a reason to try and the encouragement to try again.

“We’ll get through this together.”

 

Powerful words to hear. And even more powerful words to believe. We are not meant to face these hardships on our own. We’re in this life together. And we’ll make it through together.

Signs You’re Holding On When It’s Time to Let Go

Posted on by stilllearning2b
holding on

Letting go is hard.

Damned hard.

I first learned this as a young child, exploring my grandmother’s basement, packed to the ceiling with carefully labeled and organized items as though she was preparing to seek refuge from the apocalypse.

Which, in many ways, she was.

She lived through starvation and disaster on the Dakota prairie that followed the first World War. Later, she experienced the Great Depression and the subsequent war that followed. She felt the burden of providing for three children while also caring for a sister and a husband that faced medical crises.

All of this occurred long before I was born. So I puzzled at the multiples of cans stacked on a windowsill that approximated a grocery shelf when a fully-stocked pantry and fridge occupied the kitchen above. From my perspective as a middle class American kid, the grocery store was a constant. I simply couldn’t understand the need to create an additional level of food security at home even as I could see how deeply the need went within her.

Then my parents divorced. And for the first time in my young life, I felt that overwhelming need to hold on to something – anything – in an attempt to create that sense of security and certainty that I needed to feel safe in the world. In fact, that need was part of what drove my attachment towards my first husband. Sometimes I wish that hindsight could be aimed forwards.

At some point, most of us experience that sense of life pulling the rug from beneath our feet. We reach out. And grab on. 

Only to realize much later that we’re still holding on long after it’s time to let go. 

The following are possible signs that you’re still holding on when perhaps it is time to let go:

The person, object or situation no longer brings you joy or fulfills a purpose.

The first hosta that I planted in my old front yard brought me endless pleasure. I admired its immense green span when I pulled into the driveway and marveled at the unfurling of its new leaves. As the sun intensified over the ensuing weeks, the once-pristine leaves began to brown, turning shriveled and deformed in the face of the sun’s relentless beating. The plant no longer brought me joy. Instead, the sight of the failing foliage brought me guilt and shame and frustration. Even as I refused to admit defeat and replace it with something more suitable.

We all have a tendency to that, to stubbornly hold on to our choices even when we no longer find joy or usefulness with our selection. Life’s too short for placeholders and clutter. If it doesn’t bring joy (to you or someone else) or fulfill a purpose, why continue to hold on?

You show signs of anxiety when you consider letting go that are out of proportion with the actual loss.

Have you ever removed a pacifier, favored toy or security blanket from the hands of young child? Did they act as though you were threatening their very existence? This just goes to show how easily we assign great meaning to things that can be relatively inconsequential.

We use these things – whether people or items – much like first responders use gauze to pack a wound. We stuff them in around the bleeding spaces in an attempt to halt the flow of emotion. Their presence means that we don’t have to examine the wound. And we fear that if we remove them, we will succumb to the underlying injury.

The opportunity cost is beginning to be a burden.

I was in contact with a person who was in an on-again, off-again relationship. They were torn. On the one hand, they were afraid of being alone and were appreciative of the positive aspects of this particular partner. On the other hand, there were significant communication struggles and work that both needed to do to past this. Ultimately, this person decided to move on – literally – because continuing to say “yes” to this relationship meant saying “no” to many exciting opportunities that were presenting themselves.

Whenever you are holding on to one thing, you are preventing yourself from holding on to something else. Are you finding that you have goals that you cannot seem to meet because your attention is still directed towards this other thing? Are your hands too full to pick up what you desire?

You find yourself making excuses and becoming defensive when questioned.

My need for my ex husband was extreme. So extreme that I was not able to face the thought of losing him, much less confront the reality of who he was. I made excuses for his excuses and defended him to myself and others. And the one time someone asked if I was afraid about infidelity while he travelled? Let’s just say that they never tried to bring it up again.

We often feed ourselves the narrative that we’ve made choices and now we have to live with them because it’s easier than facing the fact that maybe we made the wrong choice and we have the power to change it. Denial is powerful and it puts up quite the fight when it feels threatened. As such, when you feel yourself gearing up for a battle when there are no weapons drawn, it’s a sign that you may be grasping onto something that would be better off released.

The fear of the leap is the only thing in your way.

It’s scary to take a leap of faith.

The thought of letting go when you fear that you may plummet seems like a fool’s mission.

Yet if you’re always holding on, you’ll never know what you can reach.

Related: The Danger of Holding On

Let That Sh*t Go!

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I Was Married to a Con Man

Posted on by stilllearning2b
con

I thought he loved me. It turned out that he was more con man than confidant. 

If my husband had been Pinocchio, his nose would have been a giant redwood. While we were married, I thought he was a real boy. Once he disappeared, I learned otherwise.

My husband and I used to watch “Lost” and shake our heads in disbelief at Sawyer’s deceptions. We laughed at “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” when the con artists were conned themselves. We were shocked at the audacity of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in “Catch Me if You Can“, and we were disturbed when we discovered the movie was based on a true story. While I thought he shared my disdain for the trickery and fraud in these tales, it seems as though he had been taking notes. Overnight, I went from an ordinary life to one that felt more like a movie.

 

My husband was a brilliant and talented man whose skills included creating and maintaining a separate existence. He had two cameras. Two bicycles. Two wallets. Two wives. Two distinct lives. When the financial mess he created in his life with me became too great to keep hidden, he broke up with me via text and vanished. That was when I learned that my husband was anything but a real boy — he was a con man.

 

My life was a virtual reality — my home a movie set consisting of false fronts.

 

He was an expert lie crafter; he always knew the exact proportion of truth to weave into the falsehoods to make a story believable. He always had an answer; he never hesitated. His office must have been like a busy air traffic control tower as he directed emails, texts, and phone calls to support his various tales. The extent of his deceptions was made clear when I sat with an auto insurance card in my hand — my name had been digitally removed — while I pulled up the file from the insurance company and verified that both names were present on the actual document. He thought he could erase me as easily as he could my name using Photoshop.

 

While my husband was in jail after being arrested for felony bigamy, I talked with his other wife, who was as stunned by the situation as I was. No woman should ever have to have a conversation about “our husband,” even if it is a cordial and informative discussion. I learned that when he was pulled in for questioning, his lies became increasingly absurd as he struggled to maintain his façade. My favorite? He claimed that he and I had divorced years earlier and I had since married a chiropractor named Mark Mercer. Mark, if you’re out there, I’m sorry that I have no recollection of our marriage and that I have never recognized our fictitious anniversaries.

 

One of the saddest aspects of the situation is that he was conning himself just as much as he was fooling those around him.

 

In trying to pull the wool over others’ eyes, he inadvertently knitted himself a mask with no eyeholes. He told so many lies for so long, he began to believe his own fabrications (he even admitted as much in a text to my mother). It became impossible for him to tell where the lies ended and the authenticity began. In trying to keep everyone else in the dark, he lost himself. The real boy was replaced with a hollow man.

 

I came out of the marriage confused, unsure of what was real and what was fabrication. I was embarrassed. How could I have been such a fool? My anger was explosive as I came to the realization that I had been literally sleeping with the enemy. The crime was intensified by the fact that it was carried out by the man who had sworn to love and protect me. Yet, eventually, I began to feel compassion for him, as I saw through the lies to the pain that must have born them.

 

I have come to the realization that the life I knew was real to me, and that has to be enough. I will never know what prompted his moral malignancies nor will I ever find certainty in truth.

I was conned, but that is not the end of my story. I am now exploring the world un-shaded by his lies.

Don’t Believe in Divorce? It Doesn’t Matter

Posted on by stilllearning2b
don't believe in divorce

Search for “divorce” on Twitter, and you find countless posts like the following:

I don’t believe in divorce….when me and my partner have problems we will sit down, talk and work it out! Commitment for life

As though one can make divorce not real simply by pretending it doesn’t exist. I hate to break it to them, but divorce is kinda like gravity’s impact on an aging body; it exists whether you want to admit it or not.

I didn’t believe in divorce either. I believed in commitment. In working things out. In staying together. However, my husband did not feel the same way.

The problem with the Twitter quote above is that it completely neglects to acknowledge your partner’s view and actions, neither of which are under your jurisdiction.

You may not believe in divorce but if your partner stops believing in the marriage, you’ll change your mind real fast.

I try to remember that these statements are coming from ignorance and a lack of exposure. These are people who have not been touched by divorce. These are people that believe that promises made can never be broken. These are people who think that their wishes are strong enough to ward off any unwanted situations.

I both envy and pity them.

I was them.

I had that certainty, that confidence in my marriage. I believed that divorce couldn’t happen to me because I didn’t want it to. I didn’t realize that my husband had developed a different view. My certainty that it couldn’t happen to me meant that I was blindsided. I was betrayed, not only by my husband, but also by my beliefs.

I worry about those who believe that it can never happen to them. I hope they are right and they never face the pain of lives torn apart. However, I worry that many of them will realize that belief is not enough to hold a marriage together.

The most difficult aspect of any relationship is the acceptance that your partner is an individual with his or her own thoughts and actions. You cannot control them. You cannot change them. All you can do is love them and embrace them while being the best you can be.

Maybe instead of saying, “I don’t believe in divorce,” it should be, “I believe in doing everything possible on my side to ensure that we do not divorce and I hope that you can do the same.”

Now that’s something I can believe in.

Why It’s Time to Stop Googling Your Ex!

Posted on by stilllearning2b
Googling your ex

I am a recovering Google addict.

For eight months, typing the names of my ex or his other wife into that tempting little search bar was my drug of choice.

 

I was Googling my ex, but what I really wanted to find was respite from the pain. 

 

Of course, what I was hoping to find was a full-page ad taken out in the New York Times where he proclaimed that I was the best wife ever and that he made in the biggest mistake in the history of the world when he decided to cheat on and abandon me. I would have also been rewarded by the news that his new wife stole all of his money and abandoned him with a hastily-written sticky note.

Or, at the very least, the news that he had contracted rabies from the monkeys he was showering with in Uganda.

But none of that ever happened.

I mean, the showering with monkeys part happened. Thanks to my sleuthing, I was gifted with the pictures from his other wife’s blog. But as far as I know, there was no rabies, no sticky note and no full-page spread in the New York Times.

And from my perspective now, I realize that even if I had found evidence that he was miserable or regretful, it really wouldn’t have changed anything. Sure, I might have felt a little “zing” of pleasure at his misfortune (probably immediately followed by a jolt of guilt for feeling that way), but then I would have been set on a path of looking for more evidence of his struggle. Like a little breadcrumb trail feeding shots of dopamine to distract from my own pain. As you can imagine, that’s a path that is destined to lead to nowhere good.

 

Maybe you feel as though your ex took your happiness. So why are you gifting them your attention?

 

When you’re Googling your ex, you’re basically going to come across one of three things –

 

You discover that they’re doing great.

And, in turn, you feel like shit. Their endless pictures of smiling faces only serve to make you feel more alone. The upbeat nature of their posts makes it seem like they moved on from you without hesitation.

Intellectually, you know that you’re comparing your reality to their carefully curated presentation, but your heart doesn’t listen. For every good thing in their life, you find a negative counterpoint in your own.

Yet you can’t stop watching. It’s like a train wreck of happiness. It is unbearable to look, but you can’t look away.

 

You learn that they’re miserable.

Which is what you secretly want, right? You want them to feel the pain you’re experiencing. You want validation that you were important to them and that your loss has impacted them negatively. Maybe this urge is coming from a need for things to feel “fair” or perhaps you’re desperate for them to understand what they’ve put you through.

But the result is the same.

You learn about their misfortune and indeed, you may feel a little pleasure at the news of their pain. But then, you feel a little dirty. After all, that’s not like you, to want others to hurt. And, as you soon realize, that their pain doesn’t actually eliminate yours at all.

 

You are bombarded with pictures and information that show that they’re human, with both good days and bad.

This is the most likely result of your internet sleuthing. You see some utopian pictures of your ex with a new partner and later learn of a loss that they’ve experienced. Your brain thrives on these intermittent rewards, which are just as addictive as a slot machine in Vegas. You feel an intoxicating mixture of highs and lows depending upon the nature of what the day’s search reveals.

It’s a distraction from your own life, as you convince yourself that you need to know what they’re up to. Much like reading a daily horoscope, you allow this information to shape your day and shift your perspective.

Your ex let you go, but you’re still holding on. Tying your happiness to theirs.

 

Ask yourself this – How does your ex’s life REALLY matter to yours?

 

It’s not as though there are a limited number of “happiness tokens” available and you and your ex are fighting over the same cache.

Nor are you playing some sort of sport where one person is deemed the “winner” and the other has to accept the moniker of “loser.”

And, there is ultimately nothing that you can discover that will make your pain disappear or undo the past.

 

It’s time. Time to stop directing your attention into the endless chasm of Googling your ex. And time to start spending your time and energy on something far more valuable –

you.