Dear Swistle,
This is not a baby name question but it is a Life Advice that I think you in your Auntie Swistle shoes might have some ideas on (I’m only a little older than Rob), as well as your readers.
SO. Technically I am not getting divorced because I was not married. However, I was in a relationship for a decade, cohabitating for most of that, baby names were chosen, parenting techniques planned, I was proposed to, a wedding was planned and booked and announced…. and now, leaving out some details and personal specifics, safe to say, that wedding is cancelled. So while no marriage certificate was signed, this definitely does not feel like your average 20-something-year-old-break up. “Love of my life”, “future seems bleak now”, etcetera etcetera.
As far as I’m aware you haven’t written about guiding your kids through big breakups, but you got divorced in your twenties, right Swistle? And you’re very much a planner + list-maker like me. I know you were quite happy to get away from your ex-husband, while I am very very broken and wish things were different, but I assume you still had a certain level of “AAH MY PLANS, MY FUTURE, EVERYTHING IS RUINED”, right?
How did you cope with that? The loss of the image you had for your future, and the “falling behind” on the schedule you thought you were on, after suddenly being further away from having kids than you ever expected to be, suddenly being “back at square one”, namely: single?
If you (and Auntie Readers) have the time I would appreciate any level of concrete suggestions on how to cope, practically and emotionally (as well vaguer notions of telling me I’m gonna be okay).
Lots of love,
Heartbroken Reader
Oh dear, yes, this seems like a moment for the aunties to gather around. Imagine us starting by fussing you into a nest consisting of comfy recliner, throw blanket, cup of something hot, plate of something sweet. Then all of us settle into comfy chairs around you with our own cups and plates.
Yes, I got a divorce in my early twenties, and you’re absolutely right: even though I was GLAD to get out of the marriage in that case, it was still a gigantic ordeal with enormous life-rethinking/replanning aspects. The word “derailed” comes to mind. Like I’d popped out of reality and was now floating in the void. And then with SO MUCH TO DO and SO MUCH TO FIGURE OUT: paperwork! new place to live! packing! Telling People! dealing with other people’s reactions!
I don’t know if this is good advice OR if it will work for you and your temperament, but I did a lot of “waiting for it to be over.” Like, as much as possible, not thinking about it, not ruminating on it, not asking myself WHAT I was going to do NOW, not trying to make any plans beyond the immediate needs for housing and work and groceries—but instead resting my confidence in the idea that there WOULD be a time when this WOULD be in my past and I WOULD NOT feel so awful all the time, and there WOULD be a time when everyone else would adjust too. And so I would wait to be automatically transported to that time by time itself, rather than putting in huge amounts of effort to magic my way there.
In the meantime, I focused on the practical things that needed to happen: the paperwork, the bank accounts. I tried to make My Plans for the Future on a much, much smaller scale: what did I need to do today? this week? Let the longer-term deal with itself for awhile. I know for other people it might be totally different: they might find it most helpful to get out a notebook and start thinking big-picture about what they wanted in their new life so they could start steering a course. But I found that too overwhelming, too unknown. I needed to coast for awhile, tread water.
When I had a more personally devastating break-up (first love, high school, two years), where I felt as if I could die from the pain and might wish to, I remember it helped me to think about all the people I knew who had gone through something similar or worse (friends’ mothers and mother’s friends who had gone through betrayal and divorce, for example), and who were now, years later, able to talk about it casually, even with a little eye-roll, or even as something LUCKY AND GOOD that led to better things. It didn’t seem possible that that could happen in my case, but it did seem statistically possible that the suffering might someday fade to some degree.
While I waited to see if the suffering would ever end, I read horror/thriller novels: I found those were one of the few things that could distract me enough to give me a little peace from my cycling/painful thoughts. I also did weepy, angry, sweaty dance workouts to very loud music (Flashdance soundtrack, if you must know), to try to physically process all the stress and adrenaline.
Now, here, from a distance of decades, I keep the memory of that experience filed away to help me with future terrible feelings: because the terrible feelings DID pass, and in fact they passed so completely that at this point I feel RELIEF that the relationship ended. I feel like I was SPARED. I don’t know if that will happen in your case, where it’s an adult relationship and not a high school one, and a much longer relationship as well—but looking around at other people who have gone through the endings of lengthy adult relationships, my feeling is that there is SIGNIFICANT HOPE for it. I find it so unhelpful when people confidently assure me/others of things they can’t possibly know (“You’ll get through this!” “Everything will be okay!”), but I think it is statistically likely that you will emerge from this, and that you may have scars but you WILL be okay.
I am hoping others can tell anecdotes about heartbreaks that seemed at the time like they would never stop hurting but DID stop hurting; about lives that seemed like they were derailed but then got onto a different, maybe even better tracks; about break-ups that seemed terrible at the time but turned out for the best, or even just turned out for the new normal. But also, I am hoping others can share their own coping methods for getting through those times: different techniques work for different temperaments, and it would be nice to assemble a grab-bag of ideas. Some of us eat doughnuts, some of us learn to bake doughnuts from scratch, some of us work our way up to running a half-marathon; some of us create a vision board, some of us buy a new notebook, some of us read Stephen King novels; etc.
