This post is also available in: Español (Spanish)
After we decide we want a divorce, there are thousands of questions bouncing around inside our heads. And I can almost guarantee you the reason behind every single one of these questions is based in fear. We are so used to the life we were living that the thought of such a huge change makes us sick.
I was terrified right after making the decision, and I had all types of fears come up—from silly ones, like who do I call now if my car is not working, to the most important ones, like would he let me keep the dog? (Don’t panic—I kept the dog ☺)
In my case, one of my biggest fears was the simple thought of letting someone in again. This fear was based on the fact that for so many years, I felt guilty. My twenties were kind of crazy, and I was always dating the wrong people. I mean, I know we all go crazy at that age, but I did not feel good or proud about my love life. I actually hated my relationship decisions. For a long time, I had this belief that my love life would always suck because I did wrong things in my past. I also had the perception that God would penalize me forever for acting the way I did. Silly me, thinking that God works that way!
When I got married, that guilty feeling kind of disappeared. I felt loved and valued (for a time), so I let the good feelings take care of me. It is really amazing how love can shelter us from fear. Everything was beautiful until I crashed back to reality and realized that my fear did not disappear—it was just hidden. I was so busy loving my husband and our marriage that I forgot about feeling guilty. When I found out he was cheating on me, all the guilty feelings and fears hit me as hard as they could. I was under the impression that the cheating was my fault. For a long time, I felt that it was my punishment for acting the way I did in my twenties. And the worst part is that I thought I deserved it! Now I can tell you with absolute certainty that thinking that way is nothing but a consequence of not loving ourselves. We tend to think everything is a punishment when we cannot see our true worth.
It is normal to have ups and downs through the separation process. One day, we feel we are recovering and everything is healing, and few days later, we feel like we’re back at square one. It is a process. It is supposed to be like that so we can grow. Feeling down is nothing but a test. During the separation process, we need to be prepared to have these tests thrown at us often, and we need to meet them without any anticipation. Awareness is the key, and it will help us stand up after we fall. We need to be completely aware that we have fallen in order for us to get back up again stronger. I became aware of my ups and downs once I started practicing meditation. (I will talk more about meditation in later posts.)
For a long time after my divorce, I was under the impression I was doing amazing and nothing would take me back to the horrible feelings of guilt and fear. One day I was listening to a great audio book called The Universe Has Your Back by Gabrielle Berstein, and right at the first chapter, I was hit with the realization that I was in deep, deep fear. Even when I was feeling great in many ways, I discovered I was deeply afraid of love.
Listening this audiobook was a major eye-opener for me. And because writing is my solution for everything, I sat down and started writing why I was so afraid.
My first thought about it was the guilty feeling:
I feel guilty for past experiences.
I read this sentence and thought, I need to fight this.
So I replied to my own sentence:
I am not guilty. I had few experiences that do not define who I am now. God loves me, and he is not punishing me.
I smiled at my reply. It felt so good to see it, say it, and believe it.
My second thought was my rooted definition of love. I think many of us grew up listening the famous sentence: Love hurts. This is such a little powerful phrase that has defined the purest of human feelings in such a wrong way.
I needed to fight this one too, and I knew that it would not be an easy battle because I would need to demolish 37 years of deeply-rooted beliefs.
How do you fight that belief when you’re recently divorced, when your parents are divorced, and when you think you have experienced the most intense emotional pain in the name of love?
The exercise went like this:
Love HURTS………
I read this, took a deep breath, and let my soul reply:
Love DOES NOT hurt!
Our expectations hurt.
Our perspectives hurt.
Our ego hurts.
Our need to control hurts.
Our lack of empathy hurts.
But love is and will always be a pure beautiful feeling.
When we feel hurt, it is not because of love—we feel hurt because we are resisting love! Once we let love in, there is no pain. There is no hurting. Love is so powerful that when we let it completely in, there is no more fear.
My divorce did not hurt because of love. It was painful for a moment because I had expectations that were not aligned with reality. I did not want to feel like a failure by getting divorced, so I was in resistance mode and everything was so painful while I was like that. But that resistance mode did not last for long.
Since I do not like confrontation, I decided I wanted a friendly divorce, and I let the feeling of love and respect guide me through the entire situation. I didn’t know at the time that what I did was letting love in to restore me from the inside out. Love was beautiful during my marriage, and love was beautiful during my divorce. Love saved me from having an ugly separation.
If we get married guided by the beautiful feeling of love, we should let that same feeling guide us through every single stage of our life, especially those that are the most challenging. We should let love flow as the energy it is. It never dies, it just transforms. IT DOES NOT HURT.
Love,
Irene