Divorce: How Not To Get Divorced

If you've never been through the horror of a divorce, you cannot know the depths of confusion one must travel through while navigating along such a turbulent path. Often, it is not until you have actually come through to the other side, that you begin to comprehend just how lost you were while traveling. In the moment, our mind does wonders at justifying behaviors, and even thoughts. Our perception so clouded with doubt, despair, the fear of the unknown, and grief, we lose the ability to step out of ourselves and look in. So burdened with anxiety, it is nearly impossible to look up, let alone look in. Our eyes barely able to keep focus what stands 2ft before us, survival is our goal.

If you never want to feel these dark depths, then either don't ever get married, or learn a few emotional tricks before you do.

Marriage is supposed to be about love. Love is supposed to be about kindness, patience, selflessness, partnership, cooperation, and courage. Marriage is about "we" not "I"...........but that is not to say being a "we" replaces being an "I". One must never lose ones own self to anyone or anything.

The problem is, people enter marriage not knowing who they are as an "I". They have yet to discover who they truly are. Not knowing where they begin, what their boundaries are, what they will and will not tolerate, people enter marriages assuming everything is going to work out. More than half of marriages end in divorce, so what's up???

I admit that when I got married at 23, I had no idea who I was. I loved my husband with the knowledge I had had about love. In my mind love meant doing and doing and doing and doing, and never receiving. Codependency was my model for marriage, and so yes, eventually my marriage, like so many others ended in divorce.

The ket to not getting divorced, is found in learning to fall in love with ourselves first.

When we fall in love with the "self" first, we begin to understand that we are enough. There is no longer a need to prove our worth to anyone, and what others think of us is no longer a priority. When this emotional shift occurs in us, the hold our ego had on us, begins to fade.

When ego begins to loosen, it is then much easier for us to slip into a "we" mentality. We no longer need to struggle for power, whine for attention, or pout about not getting our way. We do for our spouse because we want to and not because we are trying to manipulate a response out of them.

So if you don't want to get divorced, first unite with your own "self". Intellectually realize your souls worth. Know in your gut, you are enough, and then enjoy the splendors of what it is to love from your soul.

When The Ones We Love-Hurt Us

Cycles...The world is full of cycles.

If when you were three years old, you interpreted your relationship with your mother or father as one in which you found yourself "feeling" unseen, chances are that feeling stayed with you. And as you grew, if that "hunch" or "feeling" was not diminished, chances are you found your brain seeking situations outside of you to validate that "hunch" or "feeling". Maybe it was the way mommy looked at your baby brother, and didn't look at you. Maybe it was when daddy took your older sister to the dentist and left you behind at home. Maybe it was the time you fell off your bike and no one noticed.

Cycles...If your mind got stuck on a painful thought, it is highly likely that inside of you you recycled that thought over and over.

As you ran through the cycles in your mind, emotions were being stirred up. These emotions then aligned themselves with the thoughts you were feeling.

Thoughts always couple emotions...

The problem is we don't always see things clearly when things are actually happening in real time.

Perception is crucial.

Let's say you were left to stay home one afternoon when your father took your sister to the dentist...At the time, you may have interpreted this act as one that was being done against you. In your mind, because of your interpretation of the situation, you then attached a negative emotion to it.

But was it valid?

What if your sister and father were going out to pick out a birthday gift for you? What if your sister was having trouble at school and the situation was serious? What if your father was picking out a new baseball glove for you? Would this change your perception? And wouldn't it have changed your emotional attachment to it?

The ego tends to make all that is, about itself. This is debilitating to us as individuals, to us as families and to us as a society as a whole.

But when we are small, and we are just learning about our world and our place in it, it is impossible to separate ourselves from the grips of our ego.

Our best shot would have been found in having been born to parents without ego's; parents who had done their spiritual work, and who understood that it is possible to be in the world and not of the world. Mothers whose interests were not found in punishing her hard working husband for working late, or in fathers who appreciated how hard his wife worked. Parents who understood that love was ego-less...That love was about lifting their partners up, and not tearing them down.

But the truth is our parents were flawed, wounded, and found themselves thinking they were in love, when in fact they were "in-control" mode. Many of our fathers married our mothers, because they wanted mothers themselves, and many of our mothers married our fathers because they wanted father.

Whatever it was that our parents didn't get in childhood, our parents married one another, hoping they could control whatever that "emotional fix" was out of the other.

Whether it was validation, appreciation, visibility or worthiness, most of our parents married from places of wounded-ness rather than from wholeness..

And so the cycle continues..

Until one day, one special day, our minds awake, find a blog like this one, or a book, or a person, who in some way helps reveal the cycle to us..

And when that day arrives, our new life begins.

Thank You For Your Posts

I am writing this entry to say "thank you". Many of you have been commenting to my blog, and for some odd reason, I have not been getting notified when you have. So from my heart, I am sorry.

I started writing with one intent; to help, to inspire, and to give hope to those struggling with emotional binds that tie them.

Emotional ties, are like nooses around the necks of our own spirits. They are ties no one else can see, yet we are strangling from. It is a lonely, frustrating existence, to be emotionally wounded, and to have no where to turn. I know, because for decades that wounded soul was I.

In response to the most prevalent sentiments shared in your comments, I offer you these words of advice. To my friend "anonymous" who is compelled to help her friend who is a complete enabler and who is destroying the rest of her family with her inability to take responsibility for her role as "parent", and thus is reinforcing her own children's inability to be self responsible, I commend you on your intuition as well as clarity. You are right. Your friend is causing deep wounds, as well as crippling her children. It is unfortunate. It is unacceptable, but it is nonetheless reality.

Our places in this world, in my opinion is rooted in learning. In learning, we grow. And this gained knowledge is not a gift we are too keep all to ourselves. Wisdom is meant to be shared.

I believe you are far wiser than your friend. And I believe your friend knows this to be true. You my darling still have work to do.

Caring, praying, inspiring, and pulling for others is not the same as enabling them. When we feel so intensely about helping others, to the point where our focus shifts, and we no longer worry more about our happiness...we have crossed the line.

You my dear are meant to be happy...that is your birthright...and if you are losing your ability to enjoy life because of your worry for others, you are diminishing your capacity to truly help...

Make the best of yourself. Take all the energy you have been directing towards helping others who are not interested in helping themselves, and pour it into you...Become magnificent....Own your happiness...Own your beauty...Own your compassion and take your lessons out into the world with the knowing that you can only inspire the truly hungry...

You will find your way...and others who might benefit from your intuition and gift of discernment will naturally find you...

Attract the hungry, rather than trying to feed the overfed...

And when you do, you join me on my vision...You help change the world one mind at a time...

Thanks for writing...

Lisa