by Bhavana Nissima | Aug 5, 2017 | Divorce, Love and Relationships
I am divorced.
No, it is not my only identity.
In fact, it is not even my identity.
It is something I have to say when people ask, “Are you married?”
If I say, “No, I am not”, pat comes the next question, “Why?”
The responses to “I am divorced” are as follows:
- Oh you poor thing!
- You are good-looking, so why?
- Some other woman?
- A squint of the eye, fierceness of the face, stiffening of muscles
- In-the-air statement, “These days everyone divorces. Young people don’t have patience.”
- Doesn’t matter. You will find someone.
The worse is when I remove the “am” and say, “I divorced.”
The act and the identity chases you wherever you go, whatever you do.
From sitting in a restaurant alone to moving furniture to a social gathering or a professional networking event.
You are first a woman, then divorced, then the rest of ‘who you are’ follows, shadowed and contaminated by the impressions of the first two descriptors.
In ceremonies, you sense it more intensely. Haldi-kumkum, Varalakshmi nombh, Sindoor-khela are rituals which privilege the married woman.
You are either skipped from such ceremonies or women move around unsure and uncomfortably around you. In key wedding and pre-wedding ceremonies, I am kept at a distance. I am present as a distant guest.
In short, there is direct and indirect shaming and exclusion. You are also pitied, patronised and matronised, and judged without having said a word.
What do you do? In Hindu marriage rituals, there are seven steps a couple takes.
Here are seven steps, you as a divorced woman, can take to navigate Indian social norms:
1. Take Back Power
We spend a lot of mind energy either trying to convince others to see our whole selves or resisting their judgment. The reason we do so is because we give their words and actions power. We give their worldviews legitimacy. Don’t.
Understand what others say emerge from their specific lifeworlds.
Those are the meanings they have made of relationships.
If you find someone open to a dialogue, then speak about your point of view. Else ignore.
Don’t waste your energies debating to a closed mind. And don’t waste energies giving them power.
The fact is you are divorced. You know why. You know how. You know who you are.
Anchored in your understanding of yourself and your lifeworld, ignore others and move on.
2. Disengage and Heal
Sometimes we are hurt by words and actions. We are hurt because we allow ourselves to be hurt.
Believe you can choose to be happy at any moment. Disengage from the words, examine within yourself what limiting beliefs were triggered and work on healing it.
If there is a person who deliberately and is consistently nasty to you, choose to avoid or cut off that person from your life.
Is any of this easy work?
Yes and no.
It is very easy once you decide to direct your attention to something else. It is tough until then because at some level, feeling hurt is also an addiction.
You have to be firm with yourself.
3. Reframe
Reframe what life, love, relationships mean to you.
Marriage is a powerful and oppressive social concept.
Our upbringing and socialization has conditioned us to believe that marriage is a defining feature of a successful life.
If you buy into this belief, you will feel the shame and agony of being outside it.
However, if you challenge it, then you live joyously and proudly.
You can reframe easily if you can stop craving to be acknowledged and affirmed by others. If mentally you are anchored to your own self, the meanings we give to existing social structures naturally peel off.
4. Engage Differently
Choose who and where you want to be.
You don’t need to hang out with friends or relatives who treat you poorly.
Untie yourself from those social chains and create new communities of being. It may feel uncomfortable momentarily but later you will sense relief.
The world will open out.
Create your own version of what is family and if it should mean anything profound.
If it doesn’t work for you, then it doesn’t. Walk away.
Don’t attend weddings if you don’t like to. Or attend them for other reasons.
I attend to sample food and I hardly ever give any gifts.
Attend to wear your pretty clothes, if you like to.
You are not obligated to do anything for anyone.
5. Resist Differently
Instead of reacting to social customs or social conversations, choose your time, place and process to resist.
Resist in a way the Universe of these customs change, resist to make a broad impact, resist to reach and include others in similar situations.
Create your own rituals which include women irrespective of marital status. Celebrate them openly. Write about them. Share information about them. Write about specific issues facing divorced women — analyse, challenge, reframe, provide alternatives.
I created a Divorce Ceremony, performed and then wrote about it. It helped many other women.
Define your milestones and celebrate them. I celebrate Whole Woman anniversary every year which marks the date I decided to prioritize myself and sought to be Whole.
Become the hub for other women to find community and solidarity. Become a champion
6. Redefine Identity
You decide who you are. If you don’t want to be defined by your marital status, then don’t be.
I insist people address me as Dr. Bhavana and not Ms/Mrs Bhavana.
Or address me as Bhavana without any prefixes.
If you want to challenge social categories, then define yourself in strategically new ways.
I call myself the Earthwoman and the Lightweaver.
I emphasize it in different ways so that I am identified as I want to be.
Who are you and who do you want to be?
Assert this in public space. Embrace this in private space.
7. Engage in Positive Self-talk
Become your own cheerleader.
Affirm yourself as you successfully navigate one more “are you married?” conversation.
Pat yourself in the back if you survive a wedding or religious ceremony.
Cheer yourself as you succeed in resisting and challenging effectively.
Be your best friend, your deepest love, your own partner. Stand by yourself.
Avoid pitying yourself. I know the journey has been hard and I can assure no easy future either.
However, it doesn’t help your case to be in pain.
At some point, you have to stir and emerge.
Make that point Now.
You are the only one who can pull yourself out of it, let go of hurts and forge ahead.
The easiest way to do it is change focus on what is going well in your life.
The word “gratitude” can sometimes feel like an obligation, a commitment to someone or something else.
Be easy on yourself.
Keep it simple.
Focus on what you enjoy, what is working, what your strengths are and watch how the brain resets. The reset may take few minutes to a day. You will turn around.
I started the post with the words “I am divorced.”
I will close it thus: I AM.
Bhavana Nissima is known as the lightweaver for her abilities to weave ideas, places, people and objects. You can find her writings at the Earthwoman blog. Sign up here for her rich and deep posts about women’s rights and empowerment.
by Vishnu | Mar 13, 2017 | Divorce, Love and Relationships
Not all of us get to choose when we leave a marriage.
Sometimes, our spouses make the decision for us with a gentle nudge or by packing up all their belongings and moving out. Or if you come home and find the locks changed and a stack of suitcases with your clothing sitting in front of the garage, you’re right to believe that a divorce is coming!
Yet, often in relationships, one spouse or the other has to make the first move to leave the marriage.
How do you know when you should stay and when you should leave?
For argument’s sake, let’s assume that you’ve spoken to your astrologer, checked in with your lucky tarot deck and are mentally at your wit’s end. You literally can’t take another day with this intolerable person but you’re still not sure if leaving makes sense or not.
On one hand, you know you’ll find peace, sanity and joy by leaving.
On the other hand, you think you’ll ruin your kids’ life, disappoint everyone who loves you and fear living alone the rest of your life.
So, what do you?
In my friend Lisa Thomson’s new book, A Divorce Companion, she asks and answers this question about when to leave a marriage.
It’s one of the most common questions she gets from the readers of her blog. In general, she believes the answer is different for each person because everyone has a unique circumstance and relationship.
But if you’re thinking about leaving your marriage, Lisa suggests these 5 signs to watch out for:
1. Your spouse is emotionally, verbally or physically abusive.
Lisa says that it may be abusive in even the slightest of ways but if you’re in an abusive relationship, the abuse is likely overt, destructive and unbearable.
2. You’ve tried marriage counseling and it hasn’t change anything.
Personally, I don’t think too much of marital counseling, as it may be way too late when you get there. In my personal experience, I found that counseling just made things worse. Our faults and dysfunction were amplified and more public with our therapist.
3. You are last on his list.
Hmmmmm, I would say this is definitely a sign. You may not be last on his list but you’re definitely not his priority. When you’re in a dysfunctional relationship, you don’t value or appreciate each other.
4. Your sex life is non-existent.
I’ll let this one speak for itself.
5. He doesn’t consult with you before making important decisions
You’re left in the dark on important decisions about parenting or finances. He might make unilateral decisions for both of you and not consult you on major decisions that affect both of you.
Lisa thinks it’s our inability to accept the truth that ultimately keeps us from moving forward and leaving our marriages.
“The truth can be easily justified with excuses,” she writes. “The truth can be replaced with false hope – hope for an improved tomorrow that never comes.”
Instead of accepting the truth and doing what is necessary, you make up excuses and justifications to stay in a marriage that kills both of you. You hold onto false hope and promises of a better day simply to avoid the pain and suffering that divorce brings with it.
Will you continue to accept a troubled marriage without taking any action about it?
Will you live a life that’s filled with false hope for a person you should have left long ago? Realizing you’re in a bad place and accepting that there may be no chance for improvement is a good first step, Lisa reminds us.
Rooting in your truth and accepting the circumstances as they are will give you more clarity and courage to do what’s necessary.
You could lie to yourself and live small while suffering through an intolerable marriage.
Or you could check in with the many external and internal signs about what’s going on in your life and practice acceptance. Not acceptance so you can get a divorce but acceptance so you can live your truth.
Living truthfully will give you clarity.
Clarity will help you guide your future decisions and actions.
If you’re looking for clarity in all aspects of your divorce, from when to get a divorce to how to get over your divorce, then Lisa’s latest book is for you. It will give you much needed hand-holding and guidance to make good decisions during a difficult time.
Pick up A Divorce Companion today on Amazon here.
Lisa Thomson is a Canadian blogger, writer and author. You can find her blog on leaving a marriage, dating and parenting here: http://www.lisathomsonlive.com/
* Photo credit Unsplash
by Vishnu | Nov 14, 2016 | Divorce, Love and Relationships, Uncategorized
When you’ve experienced a massive breakup or divorce, you start asking a lot of questions, and many of them are not very helpful.
You’ll ask why this is happening to you.
What happened to your life.
You might ask what you did to deserve this.
You’ll ask why God isn’t listening to you and wonder if God even exists.
Actually, some of us tend to ask these questions and then end up writing books about them! I wrote Is God Listening? asking these types of questions (you can find it here).
While writing books may be productive and helpful, asking disempowering questions of yourself is not. There’s no sufficient answer as to why this is happening. If this was a natural disaster, a tsunami, or an earthquake, what can you do? What answers will satisfy you?
Tragedies, natural disasters, and yes, even divorce, happen. Yes, divorce involves feelings and people, but ultimately they occur. Relationships start and end. It is a natural cycle of life. In all of life, we want answers to questions so we can understand the world better. “Why me?” you may ask.
It’s natural and human to ask questions like this of ourselves, but it is not healthy or helpful to healing. A couple of different ways to think about this is to believe that things happen, and sometimes for no reason at all.
There’s no positive result that comes out of repeatedly asking why certain things are happening to you because some of these questions won’t have answers.
The divorce happened because you weren’t compatible, because you married the wrong partner, because you didn’t put the time into the relationship, because of an affair, etc.
It happened for any number of contributing reasons, but the big question of “why you” has no answer.
Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people.
No point in holding the universe responsible or blaming life itself for a sequence of events that resulted in divorce. You’ll just keep swirling negative thoughts in your mind, and wasting emotional and mental energy trying to understand why this happened to you.
One way to view your divorce is that nothing happened for this to happen to you.
Your divorce happened for any variety of reasons, but there will be no answer to why it’s happening to you. Like rivers and oceans and life for billions of years, nature and human experiences is just running its course. There is no reason or explanations needed.
You didn’t cause it, your karma didn’t create it, and God isn’t after you.
Sure, you might have done things that contributed to the divorce in your life, but there’s no good answer to “why you.” Divorce happened like it rained yesterday afternoon; there’s no rhyme or reason other than possibly it’s the rainy season.
There’s no particular reason why you were singled out in life to experience divorce.
Earthquakes happen. Tsunamis happen. Forest fires happens.
Your sixteen-year-old son wants to back out of the garage and drives into your house instead.
Natural disasters and life happens.
It’s not fate, karma, voodoo dolls, or anything else that has it in for you. Life happens like nature happens.
You’re a tiny speckle of the universe who has come into it for eighty-some years and will be leaving it.
Demanding to know what your role is in the universal scheme of things or having the knowledge of why your divorce happened as it did is not going to help any.
If you look at it from a billion-year view or take a meta-view (step ten thousand feet away from your situation), your divorce is just one set of events that unfold.
It’s a small part of a much larger picture. It will be a small part of your life when you look at it globally.
You don’t have to know why it happened.
If you insist on knowing why it happened, choose this message: Your divorce is happening for your greatest good. It’s happening for your spiritual growth. It’s happening to help you become the best version of yourself. It’s helping you become the person you’re capable of being so you can attract the right partner into your life.
If this isn’t a sufficient answer for explaining why you are divorced, then I challenge you to ask yourself more empowering questions instead.
Don’t ask yourself why this happened; instead, ask yourself what lessons you can learn from this experience. What is the divorce trying to teach you? How is this going to prepare you for the future? What is this teaching you about life?
If you start viewing the end of your marriage as a teaching experience and a period of growth, your mind will start focusing on more helpful and empowering answers.
You’ll be looking for lessons and insights to help improve your life.
Another way to focus on the situation is to think about what you can do now. Yes, this happened, but now what? What’s in your control? What can you change? How can you move forward? How can you rebuild a new life for yourself?
By letting go of one set of questions and focusing on more positive ones, you’ll help focus your mind on empowering questions that will lead to growth, learning and moving on.
Don’t like my answer? Want to know where God is and if God’s listening to you? Click here to pick up my book, Is God Listening?
*Photo credit unsplash
by Vishnu | Oct 23, 2016 | Divorce, Love and Relationships
“We are drawn to people whose issues fit perfectly with our own in a way that guarantees a reenactment of the old, familiar struggle we grew up with.” Terrence Real, The New Rules of Marriage.
As someone who was married for nearly a decade, I went through the ups and downs of marriage.
The downs were really down and took me through these 5 terrible behaviors that people commonly engage in during a marriage.
I felt terrible when I read about these behaviors in the book, The New Rules of Marriage.
What the heck was I thinking?
How could I have committed all 5 of these harmful behaviors when I was married? I started getting angry with myself all over again for having been so lost, blind and hostile.
I would never treat anyone else I know like this, so why my ex?
The New Rules of Marriage hit me in the gut and awakened thoughts of unpleasant behaviors from my past. I didn’t realize they were common and showed up in all troubled relationships.
If you’re still married, I’m bringing this up to remind you that these are unhealthy behaviors that you don’t have to engage in.
If you’re divorced, you’ll remember these behaviors as a wake-up call for your next relationship.
I’ve tried to get over the shame and to stop beating myself up for these negative behaviors. I’m reminding myself that I did the best I could and now self-awareness will help going forward.
5 harmful behaviors to avoid in your marriage.
1. Needing to be right.
If you’re married, you know this one all too well. You want to be right and you refuse to see it another way, for both the small and big things. You may be factually right but being right isn’t the point. You could win the battle but make your spouse feel lousy about themselves and therefore lose the war.
Solution: “The only sensible answer to the question ‘Who’s right and who’s wrong?’ is ‘Who cares?’” Real tells us in his book. We can be right or we can be married – which matters to you more? “I want you to do this: Understand that the need to be right eats away at intimacy, no matter what the provocation. You can make a commitment to stop self-righteous indignation, no matter what the provocation.”
2. Controlling your partner.
We try to get our partners to do what we want them to do. Some do this by force and others by manipulation, but both essentially try to get their partners to behave in a certain way. Real tells us that we naturally feel attraction to people who have a way of pricking our deepest wounds and childhood pains. He tells us that we marry our unfished business. Even the best relationships bring up every hurt and anger you carry inside.
Solution: You don’t have to avoid the raw parts of yourself in a relationship. You can handle and heal the raw parts of yourself, but not in the way you imagined. Your instinct might be to change your partner and get them to behave. “Our understable, naïve and utterly dysfunctional dream is that our partners will give to us whatever we most missed in our childhoods, that we most yearn for now as adults.” Control is an illusion. You can heal and change only yourself, not your partner.
3. Criticism and negativity – giving your partner a piece of your mind.
“Hey, let me tell you in precise, lurid detail just exactly how miserable you made me by your shortcomings. I need to vent!” is the idea that Real describes with what he calls “unbridled self-expression”. It’s telling your partner in brutal honesty what you think of them. If you somehow don’t put it all out there, you feel like you’re suppressing and hiding your true feelings.
Solution: Real says that, “you will not die if you don’t express yourself whenever a thought pops into your mind. Furthermore, venting is not an inalienable right. You can vent or you can move toward a solution.” Find a more thoughtful and careful way to express what you want to say. Try constructive, not critical, self-expression. Realize that telling your partner how horrible you think his/her behavior is or what a horrible person he/she is will not help you get closer or solve any problems.
4. Retaliation.
Who doesn’t love to get even or push your partner’s buttons after you’ve been injured? It’s the idea of thinking of yourself as the victim and hitting your partner harder emotionally than he/she pushed you. Often retaliation comes across as verbal abuse: “humiliating, ridiculing, telling your partner what he should or should not do – these are all aspects of verbal abuse, and they have no place whatsoever in a healthy relationship.”
Solution: Either of you should call a “time out where the arguing comes to an immediate stop. You disrupt the interaction and one of you leave[s] it so there is no further harm done. Check in within twenty minutes or a couple hours or even half a day and see if you each need more time or if you can have a conversation in a more civil manner. “Make a commitment to take retaliation – physical and verbal, direct and indirect – off the table. If you’re mad, say so, but don’t act it out,” advises Real.
5. Withdrawal.
You can withdraw from a conversation or even completely from the marriage. Withdrawal is a passive-aggressive form of retaliation. You withdraw from certain or all aspects of the relationship – intellectual, emotional, physical, sexual and spiritual. You withdraw to avoid conflict, when you’ve given up or when you find it pointless to engage any further in the relationship.
Solution: This is the most blatant strategy that results in your not getting what you want because you’ve stopped trying. You can’t get what you want from a relationship by withdrawing from it. Instead of a unilateral, provocative drawing away, you can opt for responsible distance taking. Provide an explanation for why you don’t want to engage in the conversation now and promise to return to it later, providing a specific time to address the concerns.
You need your space while still remaining accountable and responsible in the relationship. You don’t want to sever ties with your partner. You want to find a way to work it out, have your needs met and be fulfilled.
There are new rules of marriage in the modern age. To deal with all of the marriage-breakers above, pick up The New Rules of Marriage, by Terrence Real, for tips and strategies for articulating your needs and wants, listening well, standing up for yourself and knowing how to seek outside help. You can pick up the book on Amazon here.
by Taizha Diaz | Oct 9, 2016 | Divorce, Love and Relationships
It’s been close to 3 years since I separated and later on, divorced from my husband.
We were only officially married for 1 year and half but unofficially together for 7 years. He was my best friend. I looked up to him and secretly felt I could not keep up to his ability to be successful.
Three years ago, l lost sight of everything meaningful in my life, and spiraled into self- sabotage and rebellion. When we broke up, I took it upon myself to change as a person, because I thought that was partly the reason my marriage had deteriorated. What I came to realize is it was the marriage with myself that I never allowed to heal properly. Before we can love someone wholeheartedly, we need to love and accept ourselves first.
- Year one taught me survival through various avenues of meditations, traveling, one-on-one coaching, researching topics of interest (self-help), and continuous self-introspective writing.
- Year two opened the doors towards discovering who I am, my true self and layers of my mind that contributed to my years of “unconscious” living (along with the help of therapy.)
- Year three helped me accept that I am already in the place I need to be and learning to accept myself as I am as well as being more compassionate with myself. It is also more of a “free” year, where I am living day by day and just being with myself not doing anything in particular as previous years – I am actively watching myself “just being me.” (As weird as that sounds!)
I am very clear about the mistakes I made back then.
Marriage is when two imperfect souls can accept each other just as they are and grow as persons and as a unit simultaneously. Marriage is compromise, love, empathy, understanding, strength, vulnerability and maturity amongst the obstacles and difficulties thrown at us by the universe.
Divorce is just another new beginning to look at yourself and reflect on what went wrong.
It’s an opportunity to learn about yourself and to appreciate your previous partner as another teacher in your life (once you move past the anger phase, because you do experience it – and it’s totally normal!)
I learned more about me, then I did after any other difficult time period of my life.
It was hard for me in the first few months, as I am a sensitive individual. Time went so slow, my loved ones spent hours calling me, inviting me over for dinner, and sharing countless words of wisdom. I felt I was experiencing an outer body experience.
Surprisingly, work became more interesting because I drowned myself to avoid feeling pain. I often woke up earlier and fell asleep earlier than usual. I started experiencing anxiety attacks and I started praying frequently again. This only reaffirmed my desire to create change for myself. I am eternally grateful for the spiritual coach who guided me during this time and opened up doorways for my self-improvement (my healing).
Here are my tips to work on healing from your heartache while improving yourself and loving yourself:
1. Don’t lock yourself up indoors.
When we feel down, we feel lifeless, we are walking zombies and we do not want to get out of bed. My godfather told me, “When you feel sad: get up, grab your purse, open the door, and hear it slam. Then, come straight over to our house. No matter how many times. Get up and get out.” You have no idea, how much I have listened to this. Once you are out, you won’t suddenly feel thrilled but after 2hours of engaging with others, laughing or in-depth conversations of moral support, you will feel better.
2. Set intentions and be compassionate with yourself.
If you have no other options, because we tend to close up, then set an intention to be compassionate with yourself. For example, I have very few intimate friends, so I did often stay at home, in bed with the lights off. But, I knew I couldn’t stay there forever. I set a realistic intention to give myself a minimum of 3 days at home. Day 3 came and I would get up to go out or do an activity such as writing, visiting loved ones, going for a walk or seeing a movie.
3. Allow yourself to feel.
Do not avoid it. If you need to talk to someone (you trust) for hours to get things off your chest, do so. We are creatures of service; another person will listen to you and help you feel relaxed. If you don’t have someone, I recommend writing down every thought going through your mind. If you suddenly feel the need to cry or laugh, don’t hold it back. Feel it, watch it, and release it – whatever feeling it is, will go away on its own. Don’t avoid thinking or feeling by working overtime or going out every chance you get as an escape. In the long run, this will bring more harm because pain gets buried and will resurface when a new relationship or situation comes around.
4. Get help from a professional outsider: a coach or therapist.
I met a wonderful life coach through a mutual friend. She guided me in every session, hearing me out, giving exercises, written homework assignments and insight. Sometimes we need another’s eye and expertise to comprehend what we are going through and provide you tools to move forward. There were so many topics and tools I would have never thought of without her. She opened my mind to study myself and be understanding that this new life experience would allow me to reach my goals of healing, true love and self-acceptance.
5. Take a seminar or a class.
When you find yourself as a student again engaging in adding skills to yourself professionally and/or as a hobby – you are left with an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment, giddiness and success. It will make you feel so much better and you will begin to notice you forget about your sadness because you are doing something loving such as an exercise dance class, meet up group, meditation or yoga seminar.
6. Don’t do rebound relationships.
I have done these in the past, though I didn’t do it after my divorce from my last partner. I have found that you are still in a tender phase and you need to work on those feelings of hurt, discomfort and loss. Sometimes, we think we are ready and what we really need is to meet new people and be friends first. If the right partner comes along, you will know it. Don’t rush, take your time.
7. Don’t stay in contact with your ex/exes.
My last ex found it annoying I stayed friends with previous exes. He use to say, “Exes can’t be friends.” I use to debate this all the time. I found it brought me more harm than good, even affecting my marriage. Growing up as an only child with little or no family, we tend to make our friends our family. I couldn’t let go of certain relationships because I was scared to be alone. In past relationships, I had keep my exes as friends but by doing so I only kept it as “yellow” light just in case the flame would revive. In order to move on, we need to keep a distance. Otherwise, we are prolonging pain or in some cases, engaging in relationships with no ties – where there is always one person that gets attached and gets hurt. No matter how much we love or loved that person, we need to let go and accept the one relationship worth keeping is the one with ourselves.
8. Do pray or meditate.
Religion and spirituality continue to be the most contributing part of this healing and self-transformation equation. If you belong to a particular religion, prayer is universal – give it to God. If you are not part of any religion, being spiritual is another tool. Spirituality isn’t all about a religion. It is also about belief in yourself, your inner center, the universe and the stars. I went to free meditation seminars on Sundays during year one and even pulled up some good mediattions and mantras from YouTube. Meditation frees you to – give it to the universe. For me, giving myself to God and the universe through prayer and meditation allowed me to feel peace again, especially in those sad or anxious moments during and after my divorce.
Taizha Diaz, also known as Spiritual Dahlia, writes on her blog here. You can also keep up her work on Facebook.
by Vishnu | Jul 31, 2016 | Divorce, Love and Relationships
I haven’t spoken to my ex in 5 years.
I haven’t texted her in 4 years.
We haven’t emailed each other for a couple of years.
Do I want to contact her? Occasionally, yes, but mostly, no!
There’s nothing else for us to talk about.
Everything we’ve ever wanted to say to each other we said over the course of our rocky marriage. We said it during the divorce and we said it in our parting conversation.
I wouldn’t consider her my enemy, either. Quite the opposite. I consider her a friend – a soul-friend, even – whom I don’t communicate with.
I’m grateful to her in immeasurable ways! She helped me become the person I am today. She inspired me to become a new man. She was part of a life-shattering experience (our divorce) that broke my life wide open. She helped me grow up emotionally. She encouraged my writing. Polished my soul.
I’m grateful beyond words and I send her blessings, but I don’t feel that we have anything more to talk about.
Speaking now serves no purpose. Although it’s been 5 years, the feelings could still be raw, the emotions still fragile, the conversation still strained.
Or worse, I could still have feelings for her and fall head-over-toe for her again with one word.
I’m not willing to take the risk. I’ve closed my heart and my life to this past relationship.
So, should you stay friends with your ex?
If you share a child together, you don’t really have to choose. By default, you’ll have to communicate with your ex. And in a co-parenting situation, you’re much better off being cordial and friendly than enemies.
But still, should you be friends with your ex?
Well, the bottom line is this (and I’ve written more about this topic in 10 Sacred Laws of Healing a Broken Heart. If you’ve just come out of a relationship, you’ll likely want to get back together with your ex and will find any excuse, even under the guise of friendship, to do so.
If you’re trying to heal and get over your ex, no relationship is the best relationship. There is nothing you gain by staying in touch. You’ll simply keep the flames alive.
You’re better off emotionally and mentally parting ways. It’s difficult to move on after a long-term relationship or marriage, but moving on starts with not communicating and with letting go. This means not maintaining a friendship – or any relationship – with your ex.
You should stay friends with your ex only when you have no feelings for each other, when your relationship has completely ended and when both of you have moved on with your lives.
If you can’t put aside the emotional, psychological, mental and sentimental feelings for your former lover, don’t stay friends with him or her.
Staying friends with your ex only complicates your life, extends the pain and misery and prevents you from moving on.
Caveat: In some atypical cases in which you and your partner get along, yes, you can do the friendship thing. However, if you’re coming out of an intense and challenging relationship, which describes many relationships that end, I’d advise against it.
Choose friendship when the feelings are gone. Until then, choose sanity and part ways.
Interested in healing your heart? Pick up my book, 10 Sacred Laws of Healing a Broken Heart, on Amazon today.
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