No Room For Hate
August 23, 2009 by Cathy Meyer
Filed under Coping, Deciding to leave, Evolution, Reflections
Submitted by: Maya
I have a male friend whose divorce appears to be inevitable. He’s been married for about 25 years. They just took their last of three sons off to his freshman year in college, some two-day drive away. As he and she were driving home in the warm Virginia sunshine, she told him that it was now time for him to pack his things and get out.
He’s mindblown. It is not unexpected but the timing was hard for him. They were going back to their empty nest and I think that he had anticipated a little bit of settling in time before approaching her about a separation.
He wants explanations for her abrupt decision. I, having been the one blindsided in my own divorce, knew exactly what he was feeling but I also know that he has not been happy in his marriage for at least ten years. I also know what his wife was feeling as his love drifted away. I feel that I am in a bird’s eye position to know a bit of how they are feeling.
His wife does not know me and she is threatened by our communications. He and I have known one another since primary school and have re-established our excellent brother/sister thing. I understand how she feels about me but at the same time I wish that she and I had communicated back when things were good with them ~ before she began to feel the walls crumble.
In every communication that he and I share, he has always been decent and respectful in defining his wife. I imagine her version is that he has been lambasting and bashing her in words. All I can do is to remind him, as I try to remind myself every day ~ to keep the head up, keep the mind looking ahead and to proceed with caution, and always with dignity.
He states rightly that people often assume that one party (generally the male) skips away to a brighter horizon with a young woman, eager to free himself from the ties that bound him to his slaveish life and unhappy wife. He wants to say that he hurts too. And that seeing his long-term partner with a tear stain on her face makes him want to gather her up in his arms and say that it’s okay, that they’ll get through this somehow and that he really wants to still be in her life.
I hear him. I believe him. I believe that when we separate, most of us were once two hopeful and tender people with dreams to share. I believe that we are still those same dreamers but with different dreams. I believe that we have to honour that young person in whom we once found solace. To not forget the truth of the past and to forgive the each other for having taken a different path.
I am still struggling to move completely out of the shadows of a very nasty divorce. I held tight to what I have just stated but he let that part go. Maybe what he did was right, but it wasn’t right for me.
I don’t have all of the answers but what I do have is a clear heart and a clear conscience. I have a thought that this is what I will look back on as I grow older, and that I will know I did it the best that I could. I know that my ex will never be able to face that same past with the openness and honesty that I can. I think that’s sad.
I’m the perpetually broken record. Act with reason. Act with integrity. Act with the love that you own. Act with respect. PROact, do not React. I often think that I am in the minority when I hear the rage that emanates from broken people but I keep believing that if we can pull ourselves back on track, if we can lug those bleeding hearts back into place, if we can locate our presence of mind, we can heal our worlds and guide our children without malice.
That’s what I tell my friend. That’s what I wish I could tell his wife. They are simply a good man and a good woman whose marriage has disintegrated. There is no need nor is there room ~ for hate.
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A beautiful post Maya and a wonderful reminder. I don’t know how you do it but your writing is so soothing and uplifting – it helps me breathe and ground myself amidst the severe ups and downs of divorce. The hate drains us, yet fuels us with more hate as we spiral downwards. There is always room for kindness and grace…even if it’s just in our thoughts and visions for the future.
Hate–I am full of it. Where do I go with it, what do I do with it? The person I loved most in the world, apart from my children, has rejected me in the coldest possible way. No room for discussion, no chance of therapy, just “I want a divorce.” We’ve been together for more than 24 years, married for more than 21 years.
He left three months ago. What do I do with this hate? We’re still married, and I’m afraid the divorce will drag on for 3 – 4 months, maybe longer.
I found out when he left that he had cheated on me for years, but I found out by accident, and he won’t provide any more details. It’s driving me crazy that he cheated and deceived me for so long. Who were these women? Where was he? I know where I was–home taking care of our children and keeping the home fires burning.
There’s a “stepmother” for my children to deal with already. How can this be? We’re not even divorced. He met her days after he moved out. It seems way too soon for the children to deal with a new mother figure. I appealed to his better nature to save his few nights per month with the children to work on his relationship with the children alone, but he refused. I don’t care what he does during the other 27-28 nights/month. It makes me crazy that he is making a mockery of our marriage, and of marriage in general, in front of our children. This behavior will change their attitude toward relationships and marriage, without a doubt. It makes me full of hate.
I’ve lost all respect for this man, and I don’t trust his judgement one bit. I wish I never had to speak to him or see him, ever again. Is it possible to co-parent children without ever speaking or meeting? I hope so! I hate him for trashing our marriage.
Sonia, this is what I learned about anger and hate…when you allow it into your life you are giving someone else power over who you live your life.
Think about it. He has rejected you, he has cheated on you and now you are allowing him to hurt you futher by holding onto anger and hatred.
You don’t have any control over the fact that he has left. You don’t have any control over the fact that he cheated. Knowing why he left or why he cheated or who those women are will not lessen the pain you are feeling.
When my ex left I thought if I could understand, get all the details of why he was doing what he was doing I would feel better. That knowing would some how lessen the pain and anger. I was wrong.
What I learned was the anger was making me sick. It was keeping me from living my life because I was so focused his life. And, while I was focused on his life he wasn’t giving me a second thought. He was off living and I was home drowning in my own obsessions.
Until you stop obsessing about what he has done and start rebuilding your life you are going to be miserable. Being miserable is your choice because he is gone. He isn’t there making you miserable…you are doing that on your own.
As for the new woman in his life and your children’s lives there is nothing you can do. It probably is way too soon to introduce another woman to your children but, it is what it is and you and your children have to deal with it.
Your children and going to be influenced by your reaction to this woman. If you are upset they will be upset. Your emotional frame of mind will play a huge role in how well your children weather this storm.
What are you going to do? Allow a man who is no longer there and evidently cares little for his children’s emotional health to continue to reach in and cause more harm?
As long as you hate you are giving someone who has already done you harm permission to do further harm.
Thank you Cathy. Maybe I will get there one day. For the time being, I’m finding it impossible to deal with the ugly fact that he will not be punished for what he’s done. No negative repercussions, no social stigma except from my mother and siblings, no settlement penalties from my no-fault divorce state.
Whose brilliant idea was no-fault? It makes no sense. The person who decides to abandon a loving spouse and smash up a family with children should be humiliated in court and made to pay for what he has done. It should matter to the law and to society that he has committed adultery and is continuing to do it now, even in the presence of his children. Where are the consequences for his bad behavior? From what I can tell, there are NONE in my state!
I’m a person who is conscience-driven and strives to fulfill all my responsibilites…I would never speed, I would never cheat on my taxes, I would never lie or steal, I would never pay my bills late, and I would never look at a man other than my own husband. It’s just not in me to act in violation of my moral principles. It galls me that the husband I lived with for decades is capable of such callous destructiveness, and is apparently going to get away scot-free from any responsibility for the pain and destruction he has caused.
The best I can do right now in front of the children is to show no emotion at all. For now, I communicate with my husband by email or text only. I don’t want to take his calls, and I certainly don’t want to see him in person, ever, or meet the woman who apparently has no problem hooking up with a man who cheated on his wife for years.
Do some people live by no ethical code whatsoever? I despair!
Yes, some people live by no ethical code. Their only concern is their own level of comfort and getting what they want regardless of who gets hurt.
There is nothing you nor I can do about those people. The only control we have is over how we live our lives. And I’m not about to allow someone like that to reach in and cause me to harbor anger.
There are consequences to people’s behaviors. Your husband will pay one day. You may not be there to see him pay but he will pay.
Think about this, he is now with a woman who will sleep with a married man. He used to be with a woman he knew he could trust. The only thing he knows with any certainty about the woman he is with now is that she is a cheater.
You can bet when the bloom is off his new romance and life gets back to normal for the two of them that, that is going to weigh on his mind.
Think about her. She is with a man who cheated on his wife. How would you like to be her? LOL!! She can’t trust him as far as she can throw him and she knows it. Do you think those two will ever have a trusting relationship. No way!
They will both pay because they are now stuck with each other and be honest with yourself…how happy could you be in a marriage that was built on infidelity and the destruction of a family?
And, if you really want to make him pay, act like you could care less what he is doing or who he is doing it with. Have some pride. Take his calls and be HAPPY Sonia. Tell him you have to go that you have plans and then laugh and say, “see you around.”
When my ex left I thought I would die. I didn’t know there was that kind of pain. I was not about to let him see how much pain I was in though. I was not about to let someone who threw me away think that I cared one bit about him or what he was doing.
If you start acting like you don’t care, that you are happy and doing well without him he would lay awake at night wondering what they hell was going on with you.
Right now you are the one who is confused and confounded by his actions. You need to put your big girl panties on and start confusing and confounding the hell out of him. Show him that as far as you are concerned he is history and you are going to live your life and get the most you can out of it.
“big girl panties” LOL! You made me laugh, Cathy, and I haven’t laughed in months.
I will try to toughen up and act “over it.” The voice of experience (yours and others) all say that’s the best way to be.
To be honest, I think it would be much easier for me if I didn’t have to send my children over to his house every other weekend. I am full of apprehension about turning them over to a person whose “only concern is [his] own level of comfort and getting what [he] want[s] regardless of who gets hurt.”
Right now it’s hard to stop myself from imagining what kind of lasting emotional damage might be happening to my children outside of my care, in the house of a person who has made some serious lapses in judgement and doesn’t really seem to be living in reality right now.