7 years ago today, my love changed irrevocably. I had been kind of barely hanging on in my marriage, which had just passed the 14th anniversary by 5 days. We had steadily grown distant and I felt that nothing I did made any difference, so an obvious result was that my love was drained away and I was merely surviving. Initially, it was hard to accept that we had come to this place in our lives, but if I am being brutally honest with myself, I didn’t do myself any favours by not standing up for myself.
The first year was the toughest, and I was driven to a place where – despite the all encompassing love I have for my children – I could not bear the hurtful things that were said to me and I was lost for a long time. I found the hardest things to say or to come to terms with at this early stage were EX-wife or to admit that being separated was for the best. On the other hand, I hated being sent away from my children and only seeing them 50% of the time. I was pissed off and resentful.
After 2 years and 2 months, our divorce (of which I was the only one willing to pay for!) became official and I slowly and surely got used to the schedule we had in place and I began to see myself as “happily divorced”. Even though I was beginning to feel more content and free with life, both emotionally and psychologically, I worried about the effects that this new lifestyle was having on the kids.
As time wore on, and the schedule was kept to pretty strictly if not religiously, it was easy to lose sight of the possible psychological effects this was all having on the kids because everything had become ‘routine’ and to a large extent boring and uninspiring for them. Yes, we occasionally went on day trips but as their Mum had moved on to another man pretty quickly, it was not hard for me to question my ability to raise them adequately as a single Dad. As I have stated in many previous writings, it has always been easy for me to question myself and my abilities, but when it comes to raising 2 teenagers when you see yourself as a failure that is a tough assignment and a difficult obstacle to overcome.
Things started to feel a lot easier around the 4.5 year mark when my daughter (16yo at the time), told me when we were chatting in the car one day that it was so much better for her and her brother that we had separated as she could now see that her Mum and I were both happier and that it was best for all of us that it had happened, even though it was hard to go through at the time.
Ever since that wisdom was spoken by my teenage daughter, I have tried to carry a positive attitude into every situation. Given my history of self-sabotaging many instances of happiness I was experiencing at certain times in my life, I have earnt to embrace my new life and can now honestly say that I truly AM happily divorced and believe that I am doing the best I can as a single Dad and the love my children show me every day that I am with them tells me that I am right.
It is very hard to break lifelong habits, especially ones where you see yourself in a lesser light compared to others, but after these 7 years I have drawn strength, inspiration and courage from all that I have gone through and the passage of time has certainly healed me of the mental self-harm I was placing on myself. Time has also helped me to become much more able to stand up for myself as well as to realise that even if I had stood up for myself when I was married it probably wouldn’t have made a difference so I no longer beat myself up over that. That was the one hindrance that took the longest time to get to grips with and which is still fomenting in my mind each day, but I am assured within myself that one day I will truly understand, trust, have faith in an love myself for who I am and look back on these past 7 years as a wonderful life lesson and which gave me inner strength that I never imagined I had.
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