The shock factor

Someone asked me a while back: What was the thing that shocked you most when your husband left you? I’ve been putting my response off for a while, to the point where days of avoidance have turned into weeks. I think I was a little fearful that raising old memories might hurt my heart all over again, but I’m actually sitting here laughing at how ridiculously horrible we can be when we’re parting ways with our partners. If I could give one piece of advice to anyone about to end a relationship and break a heart, it is simply this: Be kind.

That said, here is my answer… 

As any jilted wife will tell you, having your husband leave you for another woman is unbearably painful. There’s the heartbreak and the humiliation to contend with, but there is also plenty of shock value. It really is an experience that just keeps on giving.

There were many things that shocked me when X walked out the door… Firstly there was the initial horror of realising that he had been fully engaged in another relationship for quite some time, to the point where he had obviously been mapping out a whole new life for himself.

Then there was the realisation that our 17-year relationship really was completely over and there would never ever be any going back – X had absolutely no intention of returning and I was officially separated and a single parent.

But the thing that shocked me the most was how he suddenly started treating me as a complete hindrance to his happiness. I was no longer his loving and loyal wife or someone that he cared deeply about; instead I was an insufferable pain who he now had to endure on a regular basis as we began the process of shared parenting and headed down a one-way street toward divorce.

From one day to the next I was quite literally discarded and told by X that he had “transferred” his affections. Apparently I was no longer attractive to him, we had little in common, I was too old for him (there’s a six-year age gap), I was an imperfect mother and I just wasn’t needy enough.

I had been lied to, cheated on and dumped, but it was entirely my fault.

My personal favourite parting comment, however, was that he had NEVER BEEN IN LOVE WITH ME! Obviously those magical feelings he had developed for the girl from work were so overwhelming that the previous 17 years of our lives no longer held any meaning or currency.

He seemed to forget that he had relocated from London to live with me, that we travelled the world together, made lifelong plans, celebrated our marriage on two continents, bought our first home together and were both completely ecstatic when our first son was born. He had also clearly forgotten about the love letters he penned every week when he was overseas studying, and the beautiful things he would make for me when we were apart for long periods.

 

Made on a UK beach by the man who had never been in love with me.

There were times when the situation was just laughable, like when X would arrange for me and our boys to have some “family time” with him, but he’d spend the whole time texting his new love. Needless to say, I put an abrupt end to these pseudo family outings – they were untenable on so many levels and I just didn’t want to spend any more unneccesary time with this man I no longer seemed to know.

My diagnosis was that X had a bad case of being in love with love… A fatal disease that kills good and honest relationships, builds new relationships on sandy foundations and leaves behind a trail of heartbreak and destruction.

All I could wonder at the time was: At which precise moment were his affections transferred? And exactly how long had our relationship been a farce? I remember yelling at him on more than one occasion: "You watched me give birth to your children!"... Not that it made an ounce of difference.

Initially it was excruciating to think I had become nothing more to X than the woman he had children with. This man I had been so devoted to was treating me with absolute contempt and did everything possible to exclude me from his life. But as time passed and the sessions I spent with my counsellor became more focused on me and less on him, the pain subsided. Unexpectedly meeting another man just a year after X left me also went a long way toward piecing my broken heart back together.

Even though my heartbreak had been cured, for a long time it would still hurt whenever X said anything remotely nasty to me – sometimes it still surprises me that he has been quite cruel but seems to live without remorse. I’m of the opinion that he still needs to apologise to me for the way our relationship ended, but am not holding my breath. And as my counsellor so reassuringly said: “The Universe will apologise to you on his behalf.”

Nearly nine years on, my skin has thickened and the impact of X’s words is pretty minimal these days, and nothing about his behaviour really shocks me any more. I’m actually extremely thankful he left me and was so utterly awful in those early days – he made it pretty easy to fall out of love with him and his actions led me directly into the arms of a man more worthy of my heart. The Universe seems to have said sorry in the most perfect way, and I'm willing to accept that.

Oh, the pain

Recently I’ve been asked a lot of questions about my divorce and the affair that led us there. So, I'm going to answer those questions one by one…  

WHAT WAS THE HARDEST PART? 
Ask anyone who’s been through a divorce and they will tell you that it’s hard, whether it was a mutual decision or came about as the result of an affair (my scenario). There are lots of difficult things about divorce – the emotional pain, the great sense of failure, the logistical aspects of separating two entwined lives, the general letting go and trying to move forth with your pride and dignity intact. 

I found all of these things just as horrible and gut-wrenching as everyone else who has walked the same path, but for me nothing was harder than having to hand my children over to X knowing they would be spending the weekend with THE OTHER WOMAN. 

I swear that the first few times I had to send my sweet angels off to be in the company of my archenemy, I actually vomited. It felt like someone had stabbed me in the heart a thousand times and I was throwing up chunks of my severely damaged organ. It’s the most violent physical reaction I’ve ever had to anything. 

My counsellor attempted to console me by reminding me that I survived my own parents’ divorce, and that X and Y wouldn’t exactly be playing happy families. But I was utterly inconsolable. I felt like screaming out my own version of Ellen Ripley’s classic line in Alien… “GET AWAY FROM THEM, YOU BITCH.” 

It just didn’t feel at all natural to be handing over my baby, who was only 16 months at the time. The thought of Y holding him or kissing him or trying to mother him in any way was just too excruciating for words.

And knowing that my eldest son (then aged 7) was putting on his bravest face each time he left me was devastating. Every single night for 10 entire months his big blue eyes would pool up as he tried to make sense of why his Dad would want to leave us to go and live with another woman.

I kept reiterating the point that Daddy had left me, not him and his brother. He simply didn't understand and it was so agonising to watch him go through his first experience of heartbreak. He took to painting pictures of his fractured family, where the four of us would typically be standing outside of a house. It was quite literally the house with no heart, and just looking at those paintings still makes me cry.

One of our eldest son's 'divorce' paintings.

It took a very, very long time for me to get to a point where I didn’t feel any pain or fury or despair every time my boys headed off to be with X and Y. It was extremely difficult to accept that I had absolutely zero control over the situation – X had the right to see whoever he wanted when our boys were with him, and I had no choice but to get used to it. 

Counselling was key to delivering me to a place of peace. And I guess I realised after a while that even though X had deemed me replaceable, my boys would only ever have one Mother – and that great privilege is all mine. 

Once I had gotten through the grief of our relationship breakdown and my world started opening up again, I began to treat my child-free weekends like a magical gift. I even started to feel a little sorry for Y – she had no children of her own but had to work hard all week then spend most of her weekends helping to care for mine. I definitely don’t think she got the best deal.

Now I can honestly say that I don’t give it another thought when Friday comes around. In fact, sometimes I’m so completely exhausted from working and managing the whole school week single-handedly that I can’t wait for the weekends to arrive. I know my boys are in good hands and I want them to both have a healthy and happy relationship with their Dad, and I truly appreciate his ongoing devotion to them. 

While I don’t like the fact that Y continues to ignore my requests to meet up and move forth (after all, it’s been over eight years and I'm happily in love again), it doesn't pain me to know she's a part of my boys' lives – and I have to give her some credit for hanging in there. On the whole, despite the challenges I think X and I have done a pretty fantastic job of ensuring that our boys feel secure and well-loved and normal.

Our eldest son (who is now 15) says he loves having two homes in two completely different locations (X lives in the city and I live in the country) – he's well-adjusted and confident and at ease with the fact that his parents are divorced. Our youngest son (almost 10) is completely enamoured of his Dad at the moment, so is always thrilled at the thought of seeing him and goes off without a care in the world. 

As for me, I’m happy knowing my boys are content. Really, what more can a parent ask for!

He loved me not

“Why do you want to be with a man who’s telling you he’s not in love with you?”

Posed by my counsellor after my first few sessions with her, this was the question that completely woke me from my post-separation stupor.

                                                                             Image: Source unknown.

I had never had any counselling before, and I felt awkward and self-indulgent and vulnerable at first, but my counsellor was so gentle and kind and knowing that her bright and sunny room soon became a beautiful sanctuary. Being able to talk so freely about myself was a revelation in itself, and – after being in a relationship for so long – I was pretty keen to make some sense of my unwanted new reality. 

On the first few visits she listened intently as my heart was bleeding out, and now it was obviously time to shake things up and give the conversation a whole new direction. Her question seemed so obvious, yet I hadn't considered it at any point.

Apart from the fact that I desperately didn’t want our sons to follow in my footsteps and hail from a broken home filled with fractured hearts, I didn’t really have a worthy answer. But even when the session ended, I couldn’t get that question out of my head and it marked a turning point as far as my heartbreak was concerned. 

Really, why would anyone want to be with someone whose actions have stated loudly and clearly that love has left the building? And, more specifically, why would I want to be with someone that was prepared to completely betray my trust and tear our lovely little family apart? 

That single question made such an impact that it stays with me still, and I think it’s something we should all ask the young men and women in our lives to ponder as they start entering into relationships. Hopefully it will go some way to teaching them the importance of loving themselves over and above all others.