Divorce Recovery: Piecing Together the Broken Dreams

THE HOUSE OF HORRORS

Have you ever walked into the house of horrors at a carnival? It’s a room full of mirrors, each one different, reflecting a grotesque image of you and always changing. One time you see a tall, skinny you. The next time it’s a short, fat you. Then you’re fat at the top and skinny at the bottom.

It’s a room of confusion. You stumble and grope your way through from one ugly reflection to the next, always wishing you could just find the exit and get out of there: there are some funny things about it, but for the most part it’s an uncomfortable and unnerving experience.

This walk into the house of horrors is comparable to your relationship with your former spouse. The relationship changes as rapidly as walking from one mirror to the next in that room full of mirrors. And some of the views are just as grotesque and shattering.

Sometimes you can talk to your former spouse. On another occasion there is no talk, just quarreling. The atmosphere is unpredictable. A person you once viewed as precious becomes a raging, unreasonable maniac. It doesn’t make sense. That person is always changing. Sometimes these changes preceded the divorce; sometimes they follow. It makes you wonder,”What’s up?”

PLOP PLOP FIZZ FIZZ

Postmortems don’t last forever. In the divorcing process, you can’t keep sitting at the postmortem. You have to get on with the funeral and the burial. Moving on to the post burial stage requires making changes. Changes in life can be difficult, even painful, but holding on to a painful past isn’t any better. When the past is painful, there is nothing to lose (and everything to gain) in going through the difficulty of change in order to have a better future. The changes can only result in growth and a pain-free existence.

Chuck was eager to talk about the changes in his life during the last two years.
“ When my wife said she wanted a divorce, I was furious, and I thought she was crazy. I had never done anything to her. I was an okay husband. I wasn’t the perfect Tom Selleck or a soap opera romancer, but I was okay, like everybody else. If she wanted anything else, she must be off her gourd. I thought she was tearing up a home for nothing.

It didn’t make sense. How dare she find fault with me! No complaint could be so serious as to call for divorce. I could not believe my ears. Nothing I said made any difference. Her mind was made up. She had always listened to me before, and I couldn’t figure out anything to say that would make her listen again. I would talk softly --- it didn’t matter. Then I would yell --- it still didn’t matter. Nothing I said mattered any more. It was so frustrating. I just knew she had gone crazy. That was the only explanation. Everything was crazy to me now.

“ Despite all my pleading, she went through with it. I quit my job. It wasn’t going to last much longer anyway, and I just couldn’t face the people at wok every day. I didn’t see any purpose in working anymore.“ I would sit in her driveway and wait for her to come home. She never was really ugly to me, just politely cool. For months I just drifted. Many nights I slept in the van either in front of her house or somewhere near by. Occasionally I would work, a day here, a day there, sometimes a week. All the time I was thinking ‘If only we could get back together…’ or ‘What if I worked regularly again,’ or ‘If only I had remembered this or that, like her birthday’ or ‘If only I hadn’t gone to the drag races every Saturday.’

“ About five months after the divorce, one Friday when she came home from work I was sitting in her driveway having these thoughts and wanting to talk to her. When she drove up, she stopped and talked to me and even listened to me. I listened to what she said this time. She probably had said the same thing before, but this time I listened.“ She patiently told me, ‘Chuck, you’re going to have to change, not for my sake, but for your sake.

Whether we get back together or not, you still have to change. You can’t keep going through life not taking charge. You are the captain of your ship as the saying goes, but you don’t act like it.

Your ship drifts at sea as though without a captain. I don’t want to talk to you anymore until I can see some change in you. You tell me you WILL change, but I don’t see it. You me to tell you what to do, that won’t work. The change needs to come from within you, not from me.’
“ She said more, and I listened. I thought about all she told me for days to come. I have done a lot of soul-searching, and still am. I truly am listening for answers, answers that give me some direction to my life, some direction to my ship.”