Going “No Contact” – What Are the Benefits?

Posted on by stilllearning2b

Are you debating if “no contact” is the best decision for you after a divorce or a breakup? This strategy has benefits for many people. Here are some of the common advantages:

 

It Helps You Establish and Maintain Your Personal Power

For all of us, the lines between “me” and “we” can become blurred in a relationship of any significant intensity or duration. When a no contact policy has been adopted, it gives you the space and time to again figure out who you are separate from them.

It’s easy to begin to internalize the words that others speak about us. We begin to see ourselves as they see us. And as long as there is contact, these words will continue to echo in our thoughts. And the only way to handle a possession is with an exorcism.

 

No Contact Encourages Healthy Boundaries

For many people, setting and maintaining boundaries is difficult. You may state where the line is, but when challenged, you oblige, moving it back just a little bit. And then, you slide it just a little more. Before you know it, the boundary has been completely ignored. As a result, you feel under-appreciated and overlooked.

If you’re one of those who always puts other’s needs ahead of your own, no contact is a gift to yourself. It gives you permission to no longer worry about your ex’s well-being. This is a time when you can learn how to secure your own oxygen mask first and to ask for – and accept – what you need.

 

Your Focus Can Shift to Healing Yourself

When you have contact with your ex, it’s easy to focus on your ex – Are they happy? Are they dating? Do they miss me? Have they let themselves go or are they in the process of reinvention?

Especially if your ex struggles with addiction, mental health issues or other problems, it’s common to be worried about – and even consumed by – their state. And in many cases, an unhealthy ex will encourage this focus on their problems.

When you fully remove them from your life, you take away the excuse that you need to look after them. Which means that you can shift your attention to healing yourself, learning from this relationship and eventually putting those lessons to good use in another relationship.

 

Distance Helps to Provide Perspective and Clarity

Relationships are like the ocean – when you’re in it, you can feel it, but you can’t really see the whole of it. When you cut off contact and create some distance from your ex and the relationship, you allow yourself to begin to see the entirety of the situation more clearly.

Even occasional contact can act as a filter, a lens that blurs your view and makes it harder to see the relationship with more detachment and rationality. If you want to be able to fully understand and process where things went wrong, you first need to be able to see without undo emotion.

 

Space is Opened Up For New Possibilities

As long as your ex is taking up space in your life, that spot is occupied and nobody else can come in. When you remove them, you are making space for new possibilities.

 

 

Going “No Contact?”

Read the rest of the series:

 

Why is it So Hard?

Signs That It’s Needed

Strategies to Make it Work

Why You’re Struggling to Stay Away

Understanding No Contact

 

Six Reasons Smart People Are Dumb in Love

Posted on by stilllearning2b
smart people dumb love

I’ve always considered myself a smart person. And so, when I was confronted with the harsh reality of how stupid I was in my first marriage, it was a tough reality to accept.

How could I be SO dumb when it comes to love?

1 – Smart People Are Still Subject to the Addictive Nature of Love

No matter how smart you are, you are still impacted by your biology. And our biology has evolved to encourage us to form strong social bonds and to procreate. Oxytocin and serotonin help to create the feeling of love and encourage us to stay close.

But those aren’t the dangerous one.

That moniker goes to dopamine, the neurotransmitter that gives us a little jolt of pleasure whenever it is stimulated. And the best way to stimulate is through intermittent rewards.

Dopamine is present in high amounts at the beginning of a relationship when you cannot stop thinking about the other person. It’s the first, heady rush of the drug in your system. And it can easily become the dragon you keep chasing.

Manipulative people are masters at controlling the dopamine response in their partners. These are the abusers that follow their assault with copious amounts of affection and attention. Or, the ones who ignore your bids for attention and then randomly provide you with the love hit that you crave. They control you as surely as researchers doling out treats to the rats in the cage.

Much like any addict, when you’re under the influence of love, you can do some irrational and dumb things while seeking out the next high. And like any addict, it’s difficult to see the addiction while you’re still under its spell.

2 – Smart People Set Goals for Themselves and Are Used to Achieving Them

Smart people are used to dictating their lives. When they set goals of getting married by a certain age, they fully intend for that to happen. The problem arises when the goal of marriage becomes the sole focal point and the nature of the specific relationship is viewed as secondary.

In school, there is a direct correlation between the hours of study and score on the exam. At work, more effort leads to better results. When it comes to fitness, more hours at the gym results in a more favorable outcome. Yet in love, the corollary between energy and results is much more nebulous because no matter how much we try, we cannot control the behaviors of others.

You can set all the goals you want for your relationship. But if your partner does not share those goals or refuses to put forth the effort to reach them, those goals become moot. This is a difficult truth for smart people, especially when they see the potential within their partner. The question then becomes, are you in love with the person or with their potential?

3 – Smart People Have High Expectations of Themselves and Assume the Same of Others

Smart people are experts at reflection and course correction. They have high expectations of themselves and are often on a lifelong journey of self-improvement. They naturally assume that everyone else is capable of self-reflection and can articulate what they want. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. 

There are people who go through life taking advantage of those who see the best in others. People who do not hesitate to operate behind the veil of optimism and good graces. It’s almost impossible for those victimized by this behavior to understand it because it is so far removed from their very nature.

4 – Smart People Adapt to Their Environments

When you put sane people into an insane environment for any length of time, they will begin to adapt in order to survive. The analogy of slowly turning up the heat in order to boil the frog is apt here; even as the situation becomes dire, there is a constant recalibration of “normal.”

Smart people are good as assessing a situation and responding in a way that is advantageous for survival. Often, this is a desirable response. But when the response means that you have to continually bite your tongue or hide your true nature, the reactions have become maladaptive.

When the situation is toxic, it may be better to escape rather than to continually acclimate. After all, even if the water no longer feels hot, it can still scald.

5 – Smart People Often Trust Their Brains More Than Their Guts

When you’re smart, you learn to trust in your perceptions and your conclusions. You become adept at analyzing a situation and assembling evidence to support your case. This trait, useful in most areas, can be dangerous when it comes to love.

First of all, we want to believe that we made a sound decision when we selected our partner. So we’re reticent to admit to any signs that perhaps we made a mistake. Additionally, we fear losing love and ending up alone. So we create complicated narratives that excuse red flags in order to avoid facing that painful experience.

Smart people often dismiss their gut feelings, viewing intuition as a lesser skill than reasoning and believing only in things that can be proven through factual evidence.

Even when we can’t prove them, our gut feelings are important. They often operate like the sensors placed to recognize even the slightest increase in seismic activity. The disturbances are so slight that they operate below the level of conscious awareness, yet the gut can still tell that “something” is off.

6 – Smart People Fall Into the “Sunk Cost Fallacy” Because They Don’t Like to Quit

Once you have invested years into a relationship, it’s easy to use the time spent as justification for spending more time and energy. Sometimes, this inclination is advantageous. But if the demise of the relationship is inevitable, it’s simply throwing good money after bad in a desperate attempt to keep from admitting defeat.

Smart people have learned that success comes from effort and perseverance. They may struggle to understand the distinction between quitting (born from fear or frustration) and letting go (which arises from courage and acceptance). As a result, they will often do – and try – anything to keep from giving up. Even if it means giving up on themselves.

There is a silver lining to all of this…

Smart people learn from their mistakes. They understand how to break down a situation and reflect upon its merits and detriments. Smart people don’t shy away from responsibility or hard work. They see the correlation between effort and outcome and know that anything worthwhile isn’t easy to obtain.

Smart people can learn how to become smart in love.

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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.

Taking the Long View

Posted on by stilllearning2b
long view divorce debt

Yesterday was a big day for me.

After two decades of carrying the burden, I finally paid off the last of my student loans.

I have to say, I was a little disappointed in Discover’s response to the zero balance. I wasn’t expecting anything too major, maybe just some balloons dropping down from the ceiling, applause coming through the speakers on my computer and a moderately-sized parade in front of the house. As it was, I had to make do with a sentence sandwiched between the ads for a credit card and a personal loan: “Congratulations. The balance on your student loan account is now zero.”

It’s been a long journey getting to this point. Much longer than planned-for or anticipated.

Life is funny that way.

And in so many ways, this slog back to financial health mirrored the emotional healing from divorce.

I don’t know what my credit score was on the day my world exploded. I refused to look. The last time I had checked, it was just above the 800 mark. But that was before my then-husband maxed out my credit cards, stopped paying my student loans and took out additional credit lines in my name.

I considered bankruptcy. The financial counseling session that I was required to complete as part of the pre-qualitification for the process left such a sour taste in my mouth. The advisor kept questioning my claims about my budget, unable to understand how I ended up in such a mess with a relatively frugal spending pattern. No matter how many times I explained what my husband had done, she didn’t seem to get it.

She blamed me. And I blamed me too.

Not for spending the money, but for being so stupid as to allow it happen without my notice.

So I hung up and took out a pad of paper to work out how I could pay back the money on my teacher salary without resorting to filing for bankruptcy.

I had to be strategic, although I wanted nothing more than for all of those debts to be instantly reduced to zero (and for my checking account to rise above sea level since he had left me with a negative balance). Silently, I yearned for my credit score to again be solid, instead of the shamefully low number that I knew I carried as a virtual scarlet letter, branding me as someone who didn’t have it together.

Over the next five years, I slowly and steadily paid off his parting gifts – a sum total of $80,000, if you include the legal fees that he was ordered to pay and never did. Three years after he left, I finally summoned the nerve to check my credit score. It wasn’t good, but I knew it was better than it had been.

I understood that this wasn’t a quick fix. It may have been destroyed in an instant, but rebuilding was a long game.

But even then, with the bulk of the debt resolved, it wasn’t over. The foreclosure (yet another gift from my ex and a legal system ill equipped to deal with manipulators), still pulled down my credit score, an anchor to the past. And the student loans, which were supposed to be paid off (according to the financial plan I had with my then-husband) in 2012, had instead been relegated to minimum payments in order to focus on the accounts with higher interest rates first.

Last year, the foreclosure dropped off my record, instantly catapulting my credit score almost 70 points. And then yesterday, I wiped out the student loans, which should bring me back up to my starting place of just over 800.

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It’s taken 9 years and 51 days to get here (But who’s counting?). There were certainly improvements along the way, some major and some so small that they were barely noticeable. But until yesterday, I didn’t feel as though it was “done.”

And that’s how the emotional work felt as well. I wanted it to be resolved quickly. I told myself that once the legal process was over, I would refrain from looking back.

Yet just as the foreclosure pulled down my credit score, the divorce still weighed down my heart.

It was a long, slow climb back to emotional health and stability. Some days brought great improvement. Most heralded imperceptible improvements. And still others sent me tumbling backwards, leaving me bruised and fearful that I would never make the climb.

Yet, at some point, it happened. Unlike with the financial health, I don’t have a single event that I can point to where I was informed, “Congratulations. The balance on your emotional trauma has now reached zero.” But I can look back at my writing and see a difference. In 2016, there were still posts where I was struggling with trust and abandonment and vulnerability. In 2017, those are absent. And that continues. That doesn’t mean that life is always easy, but it does indicate that I am no longer responding to the events from the past.

Healing from anything requires taking the long view. It demands patience and persistence, especially in those times when progress feels sluggish and uncertain.

Keep at it. One day you’ll be able to look back and realize that it’s no longer a reality, simply a memory.

Understanding Projection

Posted on by stilllearning2b

My ex husband accused me of cheating.

Never to my face, maybe because he feared my response or because on some level he knew the claim was baseless, but to his friends and coworkers. After he left, I learned that others had been hearing graphic and disturbing stories of my supposed infidelity for years.

He then went on to detail my irresponsible spending in his “suicide” letter to his other wife and to my mom (he made a suicide attempt when he was released from jail). He described how I wouldn’t take “no” for an answer and I always needed the latest and greatest things.

My initial reaction to my discovery of these accusations was one of unmitigated horror. You see, I trusted him so much and had slowly been groomed to accept his description of reality, that I initially believed that his claims must be true.

And then I grew confused. Because none of the facts, which I obsessively detailed to those who surrounded me in the aftermath of the tsunami, matched his claims. I struggled to understand what was real as the oil of his accusations failed to blend with the water of my recollection.

Finally, it became clear. He was charging me with the exact misconduct that he was guilty of. He was projecting and I was the screen.

 

 

What is Projection?

 

Projection is a common cognitive dance where self attributes or actions are shifted to another person. Much of the time, it is relatively harmless. Yet in the hands of an addict or abuser, projection can be used in a more detrimental way to distract or to transfer blame.

We all engage in some amount of projection. In some cases, projection allows us to empathize with others when we superimpose how we believe we would feel in a given situation over their stated experience. Other times, we may assume that someone feels the way we do or that they have the same aptitudes or perspectives. You see this when people caught behaving badly offer up the excuse that “everybody does it.”

Projection is also used as a defense mechanism. When there is some aspect of your beliefs or behavior that does not align with your view of yourself, you experience something called cognitive dissonance, where you either have to alter your view or amend your behaviors. One “solution” to the discomfort caused by this misalignment is to assign the disallowed characteristics to somebody else in the classic, “It’s not me, it’s you” move.

Often times, projection occurs when we are aware of something, yet we’re not yet ready to see it in ourselves (an example of this would be the claim that, “You don’t love me” when the reality is that we’re starting to doubt our own love). After all, it takes quite a bit of courage to look within.

 

Projection As a Weapon

 

I’ll never know to what extent my ex husband was aware of his projections. It’s possible that he was so deluded that he accepted his lies as truth (in fact, he actually told my mom after the suicide attempt that he had started to believe his own bullshit). But it’s also likely that his projection was largely conscious, distilled and aimed in order to cause the maximum damage.

By accusing me of horrific misdeeds, he excused his own undeniable choice of abandonment. When he projected his deceptions on me, he painted himself as the victim. His indictments acted as a slight of hand, keeping me distracted from looking too closely at what was happening on the other side of the stage. And finally, he used projection as a form of gaslighting, blurring and altering my view of reality.

If you’ve been in a situation where you have endured emotional abuse or faced the helplessness and frustration that comes from living with an addict, you’re vulnerable to believing the displaced accusations. Your self-image and confidence are likely low and you’re prone to assume responsibility for another’s well-being. When these accusations arise, refrain from blind acceptance. Ask yourself first if those claims are actually a better fit for your accuser.

As the divorce proceedings progressed, I found my new awareness of his tendency to project helpful. Whenever he accused me of something (withholding information, lying on a discovery document, etc.), I knew what to expect from him. Because even though his projections were aimed at me, they were simply a reflection of him.