Marriage and Divorce
Insights for Recovery
Part I: You Are not Alone.
Two years ago, I got divorced. When my wife and I began separating, she was packing her stuff while I crashed at a friend’s house; and in a moment of profound painful sadness, I called her and sobbed. Words came out from the deepest pit of sorrow: “I am so sorry babe, all I wanted was to make you happy.” I shall never forget the feeling nor the words, all of which was engraved in my consciousness because, at the time, feelings and words appeared to hold so much truth to them. My marriage and divorce had nothing to do with love or lack of it; it turns out that love and passion and doing the right thing are fantastic expressions that get people in a great deal of trouble. I was living the greatest challenge of my life, and subsequently, I was experiencing one of Modern Man’s greatest lessons learned.
The interesting thing about statistics is that numbers don’t lie. I’ve later learned that the heart doesn’t lie either: it wants what it wants. Till today I wonder which particular instrument holds more truth in our lives: the mind in all its logical calculations or the heart with its intuitive processes.
When I began pursuing divorce, I realized that 3 out of my closest 6 friends were either divorced or initiating a divorce — that is a staggering 50% divorce rate amongst my peers that hold similar stories and temperments. I later came across an article revealing statistics by a local government agency about the “alarming divorce rate amongst 20-something-year-olds”. On the other side of the planet, a U.S. based statistic demonstrated that official divorce rates are hovering above 50%.
When becoming a statistic yourself, be it as a byproduct of a social phenomenon or a genetic-induced disease, the stats soothingly serve a message of solidarity: that you are not alone in your fall.
While the statistics were doing their honest thing, I began to search for the root cause of me becoming an extra in the theater of mathematics: I became the 4th out of the 6 friends that are now divorced. Why is that? Why are there so many of us? On an alternative playing field, it is reported that an eighth of women will, at some point, endure the hardship of invasive breast cancer. It is also a fact that those women will not just dust off their cancer experience as a simple statistical anomaly and move on.
Something changes when you get to fall in such a way; something happens when you are deeply disappointed, and your heart breaks. Everyone who experienced trauma as such cries, but after the sobbing eventually comes the questioning: you enter a blame-game rabbit hole that quietly transforms the way you experience life.
Why has this happened? How can I deal with this pain and guilt and possibly even shame? What rooted illness could have plagued my mind and my soul? How could I have been this blind? Is there a pattern that will be repeated? How on earth did I put myself in this position in the first place? How can I rid myself of this guilt? What are the lessons learned?
Part II: Radical Truth
Many men and women have their own stories to share, and reading this personal account may very well resonate within this community of divorcees and the brokenhearted. For the other half that remains married, happily or otherwise, they might find courage in the philosophies that I have encountered in my experience with marriage and divorce. I mention courage specifically because it takes courage to face dis-ease. It takes courage to admit that you have meant well with all intent and purpose but failed. It takes courage to face the devil that plagues you as you attempt to correct your mistakes and go on with your life.
There are obvious lessons here floating around on any relationship blog, including ones on this platform — very helpful entries indeed. There are stories about the need for clear communication and to remain true to oneself for remaining in the present moment. While every bit of conversation helps, I found nothing better than the virtuous healing power of radical truth.
In a bid for redemption, I decided to finally tell my story through the authentic lens that resembles who I truly am. Inauthenticity, as it turns out, is the reason why you find yourself in such a blunder to begin with.
You see, when I invited the storm in and allowed everything to blow up, I had to turn to something meaningful that could explain my behavior to myself. The overwhelming feeling of loss and guilt and sheer confusion is a burden that is at times too heavy to carry, but things do blow over eventually.
This is not a passive event that disguises itself in the packaged advice from your peers or parents that “time heals all wounds” — this is inauthentic advice. At least in my experience, the process of healing ought to be an active, personal process that requires you to toil and spill your insides right in front of your eyes so you can see who’ve you become.
In my case, I turned to philosophy, psychology, spirituality, and music. I received and continue to receive life coaching through a practice called Human Design. I did not necessarily rally up the troops of my loyal friends. Instead, I discovered comrades such as Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Ernst Becker, Michael Singer, Erich Fromm, Eckhart Tolle, and of course, the numerous writers here on this very platform, where I found salvation in the idea of a “rebirth.”
Part III: Rebirth
My divorce came at the age of 33, and as I was about to turn 34, I remember hearing about the symbolic “Jesus Year” — the year when the man of all men gave up his life at the age of 33 and was resurrected at 34, only to transcend to the heavens. Getting a divorce is by no measure as dramatic as The Resurrection, but when you are barely hanging on a cliff with a swarm of depression beneath you — it is exactly the kind of story that might give you the comfort you seek.
When I got married I thought I knew it all — That was probably the fundamental mistake I made; my Original Sin, so to speak. The events that followed my marriage and subsequent hardship were a good exercise in humility because, as it turns out, I knew nothing and continue to know nothing. This is probably where everything began to fall into its new order, giving birth to a re-arranged world of chaos.
A part of me died when I got married for the wrong reasons, and a further part died when I got divorced. There is a birth and death and rebirth that is hard to miss once you start investigating your own actions in such extreme narratives. Not to sound overly dramatic, but for those of you who have lost someone or something in their lives, you should probably agree that it feels like a slow, excruciating cycle filled with self-negotiation, self-blame, and self-condolence. The whole thing drove me up the wall, and sometimes I wanted to disappear and never come back.
And In so many ways, that is what I did. The part of me that died, for the most part, was hubris, self-righteous narcissism, fake virtue, an overinflated ego, and a barrage of disappointing lies that is only exposed when you hit rock bottom — that is, when the abyss begins to smile back at you.
At this stage, when I finally began to engage in an honest conversation with myself, I began to understand the meaning behind the proverb “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” What initially was a cool adage that I nihilistically dropped in quasi-intellectual conversations turned out to be a piece of wisdom that could have saved me a great deal of regret.
It later appeared that my decision to get married was a deceptive act of appearing virtuous: by the time I turned 30, and everyone around me was either engaged or getting married, I told myself it is time to settle down and grow up and find a good woman. I told myself that this is what my upbringing has taught me; this is what my parents expect out of me. I told myself that a life without suffering is not an honorable life — and what better way to suffer than giving up who you want to be in favor of who you ought to be? I told myself all kinds of nonsense related to good and evil. I pushed on with the adopted ideology that by turning 30, there must be a seismic change to my way of life — as if all of our individual lives are tied to a clicker that goes off unanimously at a point in time, beckoning us to ignore our ongoing wars with ourselves and “start clean.”
Things would indeed be easier with such a restart button.
Part IV: The Righteous Devil
In the years leading up to my marriage, my levels of hedonistic activities and mindless consumption increased: I bought an apartment I couldn’t afford, I ramped up my travel around the world and subsequent beseech of foreign pussy. I was lying to myself, crafting the art of deception conducive to the double life I was embracing. I ramped up my efforts to accumulate financial wealth through means that were beyond my inherent talents. I resented the city I lived in because I didn’t feel like I was making enough to sustain my self-monetization project with riches all around me. I had a few close calls with the law. I lost a lot of money in botched financial deals in search of a quick buck. I wanted it all, and when you want it all, regardless of the details, you will eventually fall into the wrong hands.
Throughout my twenties, I experimented with so many drugs that could literally kill a horse. By the time I was 25 and fully autonomous, I was entirely engaged in what I could only describe as “cocaine tourism”: any city with a healthy supply of clean Snow I visited. I slept around, never with married women — alas, the opportunity never presented itself. Surely had the chance been afforded, I would have taken it without thinking twice — all in the name of spontaneity. I always considered myself to have an abundance of darkness within me, and sleeping with a married woman would have definitely made the inner demon happy: the devil within would have probably hailed the experience to be wilder because of the perceived level of taboo involved.
All of the wretched deeds I engaged in were virtuous in my mind; because I was a good person who is merely trying to squeeze every bit of life before admitting oneself to the golden cage of righteous matrimony. Looking back, I can now empathize with the sluts and womanizers and the scourge of the earth: they are in it for a last taste before they quit cold turkey.
In bracing for a life of virtuous marriage, I became the embodiment of Nietzsche’s “Last Man” in “Thus Spoke Zarathustra“: I was the man that heard “God is dead” and thus decided to consume the entire world in panic; one sin after another. I developed side effects common to the Modern Man: an insatiable appetite for recreational drugs, seduction, porn, alcohol, judgment, overthinking, control, ambivalence, and consumerism; all while washing it over with civilized acts of business trips and board meetings, fine dining, obsessive fitness (yoga included), and the trendy culture of intellectual elitism. It was all a load of BS, come to think of it, and we are all complicit in it. If not, why are the stats tipping in favor of divorce, infidelity, illness, and troubles of the soul? If we live in the age of enlightenment, why are so many of us still dwelling in darkness?
That period was marked by the beginning of self-deception, disguising itself as conventional wisdom. It turns out we are all engaging in various degrees of lying: no one is clean of it. The actions and mistakes we undertake under the pretense of “virtue” are the road that leads us to our own personal hell, plain and simple.
On marriage, Joseph Campbell writes: “when seeking your partner, if your intuition is a virtuous one, you will find him or her, if not, you’ll keep finding the wrong person.” This statement post-divorce took a while to crystalize, just like that “road to hell” adage. It is hard to scratch the surface and attempt to go deeper into the core of your being, even if the truth might set you free — but who the hell wants to bother with all that when the party seems to hold up just fine?
Part V: At Home, Lose the Mask
In my experience with divorce, I later discovered two sides to every person: The true-self and the ego-self. We wear an invisible cloak that allows us to survive in this world: this is what Ernst Becker called “the borrowed power” — it is nothing but a mask that enshrines our persona and compels us to act in a way that isn’t congruent with our authentic selves: The jobs we take, the things we buy, the people we marry, the friends we carry, all are part of a script written by everyone else except us.
We develop a certain mastery in conducting our affairs behind the mask we wear: we appear polite, courteous, virtuous, empathetic, generous, and honest. All when deep down inside, we are just a collage of images that we scrum together as we go along; we are alienated, separated from ourselves. We act as “good” husbands and “loyal” friends and “productive” employees. All we want is to be free, but we are somehow made to feel guilty about this innate desire. In putting on the show that we call our lives, we sometimes forget just how important it is, to be honest with ourselves and, above all, to listen to what our gut is pleading with us to do.
And while this whole show is necessary to survive in this life, I learned that one must not bring that mask into his bed at night. When you make the bed you sleep in, next to your wife, your conscience must be clear of lies and deception, especially with yourself. The person you choose to spend the rest of your life with must be granted the dignity to see you naked, through and through — if this is not the case, then this is not loving, and you are just a kid playing charade — you might as well not bother with it all.
There is a certain voice in our heads that Michael Singer describes as an annoying “roommate” that livs inside of us, putting us down and pouring poison into our ears. That inner voice could perhaps be our gut telling us about something that could potentially protect us from stumbling in life. It turns out that all we need to do is befriend that inner roommate by slowing down and listening, perhaps even praying or meditating. There seems to be no other viable solution because you can never fully get rid of that roommate; it is not as simple as kicking him out of your mind.
I now safely assume that many of those marriages and divorces (mine included), ill-fated friendships, screwed up business affairs, and to some extent, physical illnesses are brought about by the sheer arrogance that keeps us from listening to that inner voice. If we remain deaf, we shall never heed the warning away from the fire that will burn us — that is the voice of God we are all trying to find. It is as though our borrowed power to survive isn’t so powerful after all — otherwise, we would not be in such a difficult bind. We would not be all wrapped up in the worrying culture that is consuming us should we choose to deny the shred of honesty that sparks when we look at ourselves in a surreal sober moment and dare to ask: “Who The Fuck Am I?”
Part VI: I Know Me in Terms of You
“I know me only in terms of you,” writes Alan Watts; in other words, I only know myself as a groom in terms of the smiling guests that line up to congratulate me on my wedding day; or in terms of that angelic bride that is standing before me in her gorgeous wedding dress as we proceed with our first dance.
I now realize that we do, get to know ourselves in terms of whoever is standing in front of us: I know that I am a failing husband when I am facing my crying wife, who clearly feels insecure, uneasy, unsafe. I know myself as a man with a hidden sadness when a call from his loving mother on his first wedding anniversary reveals that even she could feel her son struggling in his marriage, despite his best efforts to conceal such a curse. I remember that phone call made my wife cry as we lied in our hotel bed in the French Alps “celebrating” one year of marriage. Deep down, she knew we were doomed.
Unhappiness tends to radiate its energy out despite our best intentions to contain it. You can feel it on people through their eyes, their body language, their tone. In most cases, sadness can be easily picked up by those with liberated hearts. I know me in terms of you: you will know yourself as that unsatisfied married man when standing in front of a single free woman in a bar where you needn’t be, nor belong.
Regardless of the rationalization that you put out during moments of personal failure, there lies the radical truth that highlights the role you single-handedly played in your own shortcoming— because no centered man should make a good woman cry. When you invite the wolf in for a little taste, when you paint your flag red and flaunt it onto the world to see, that is the moment when you can consider yourself and your marriage as fucked.
Part VII: Regret and Forgiveness
Regret is a funny thing. It is a wretched, funny thing. It presents itself on a breezy summer day or a rainy winter morning when the leaves start to hiss and fall. Regret sometimes knocks at your door and introduces itself as Nostalgia — it so happens that even emotions wear masks and pretend they are something they are not. A nostalgic friend recently professed of memories: “It’s hard to let go. Because letting go means you have killed a part of yourself. And we are so obsessed with ourselves.” This is the bane of divorce; this is the Achilles Heel of all those who have loved and lost; for all who made mistakes. This is the cost of experiencing a rebirth as such — for to be born again; one must kill a part of himself. Memories and resentments, all must be banished to start afresh. It is an arduous affair, especially when your rebirth causes you to grow in such a way that makes you realize how big of a shithead you’ve been all along.
As I began to heal, I found solace in the unvarnished fact that “I didn’t know any better” — I really didn’t. I took that road that led me to hell, but I had all the best intentions at heart. All throughout my adult life, I never had a mentor and never realized how important it was to have that guiding energy in a young man’s life. By the time I found myself a coach, I was already flirting with the experience of divorce. On healing, he taught me that the road to self-forgiveness comes three-fold:
First, you must recognize the radical truth of the things you have done. It would be best if you confronted the root cause of your behavior. Blaming your shitty decisions on parenting or society or religion is not considered radical; in fact, it is a short-lived way out — it is just a bandage on a deep wound. Alternatively, a good example of radical truth is that you, in fact, betrayed yourself and shall continue to do so unless you reform.
Second, there must be a certain element of blind faith that you really didn’t know any better. In most cases, you really didn’t know anything at all. Sure, you hold a powerful position in one of the world’s top banks, or that you are the prestigious doctor that saves lives on the reg. Sure, you have it all figured out because you drive a G-Wagon or have 150k+ followers on the ‘Gram. All of that did not prevent you from breaking your own heart and that of your beloved because, all in all, you didn’t know any better.
Finally, You must forgive your own self. That was hard to swallow provided the clear problem in its syntax: “the dog was eaten by the dog that was eaten,” so to speak. It is hard to digest a piece of advice that is self-negating as such. When it comes to guilt and forgiveness, I learned that it is all self-negating, but one must live with the reality that life itself is contradictory. One must proceed with self-forgiveness regardless of its counterintuitiveness. Take classic religion, for example: how are we meant to forgive ourselves when we’ve been raised to feel guilt towards our fathers' sins? Are we guilty for sinning or sinning for feeling guilty? Either way, no one is coming to save you. You must save yourself.
Forgive yourself and carry on.
