What I have gained from my failed marriage.
We were a couple for ten years and lived together for five. She came into our lives by surprise and was unplanned for, while we were celebrating our five-year anniversary, uneventfully and very much in love. Her birth took us totally aback. Myself by this immeasurable love that I had never before imagined. Him by fear. Fear of not being in control, fear of not finding his place in our new trio, fear of not being able to love her. This was followed by long days, weeks, months and years of trying to restore the balance which was shaken up by this tsunami. His repeated absences forced me to work twice as hard so that she did not lack for anything, and that most importantly when she was a few weeks old she did not internalize our weaknesses. The absence became distance, and the trio, a duo; the love axis has now moved from me to my little one. The grudges were superimposed on one other, on each other. The love was transformed to the survival of the family cocoon. And there was always this vain quest to fill the increasingly numerous gaps. We gradually lived this modern tale of urban youth overwhelmed by our individualism in this test of compromise which requires the arrival of a child.
And then the shadow of his ever so charming colleague interfered in our lives. Surreptitiously at first, then intermittently, more and more aware, to the rhythm of our arguments. Such easy escapism. My faith in us has since begun to erode. I could ignore the difficulties as the trust was blinding me. The lie was obviously always, in part, a farce. But it repeatedly did its slow and destructive work. I barely recognized our relationship and my man. I was losing hope. Disillusionment has gradually filled my heart, breaking the components of my dreams of a big family, one by one. I had to open my eyes to the downturn, to whip my hope of a second child, of a united and loyal couple. Despite everything, in this breakdown, my attempts at reconciliation with my child’s father took root. With his first real sentences to her, she had managed to move him and to plant the seed of the tenderness that he was withholding.
Unfortunately from my side, yet another lie was the reason for my endurance. I announced that I wanted to leave. With sadness and without discussion, he had played the card of future shared custody. My heart, however, familiar with the feeling of suffocation and dizziness these past years, had just discovered a new level of pain. I had never missed one day since her birth and after having suffered so much because of this relationship, I had to then abandon the pleasure of being there for all the sunrises and sunsets with my daughter and no longer having the right to this half.
Months passed and I stayed. Reluctantly. I had decided to forget about myself. And to play the role of wife and mother. In the silence of my heart, which was gradually insensitive to my husband, the grieving process of my relationship took place. Not being able to accept the pain of joint custody, I had to forget about myself and proceed. To save this budding family life at the detriment of my pain and my ideals.
Being focused on my defective family life these past five years, I had put aside my professional and shaky life. I was failing miserably on all counts. The energy spent, on the one hand, was polluting my wish to flourish at work. I was fighting an inner battle, I was empty, and all my ambitions were dead. I was going to work backwards and on auto pilot.
Having accepted to put aside my love life, to let go, to abandon my family ideals, to let go of my personal and professional ambitions on mute for so long, and to take my attention away from my relationship problems allowed me to rediscover myself. I had put myself aside for so long. What did I really want since then? I needed to find what I wanted. Everything seemed gloomy, my work was no exception. I was responsible for it. My state of sadness, of resentment, and bitterness made me into a subdued, sad, little confidence person. More and more difficult to love and to support. It was time to reevaluate my needs and my desires.
I have decided to change my faith, to give myself a new professional start and training with a 180-degree view. New field, new social environment and new encounters. Two months in an environment where I could again be myself. No longer mother, spouse, and the caliméro but a stress-free version of myself. I had rediscovered what I was before being a couple, funny, sociable, optimistic and positive. To believe that the people that surround us play different parts of our personality. That our external energy has an influence on what we are and inversely. That it is enough to leave by other kinds of encounters, experiences, feelings and to create positive is to attract positive. Arriving at this saturation point, accepting my chaos and the lessons to learn allowed me to enter into an unhoped-for metamorphosis.
I begin everything only to rediscover myself, but I have the firm intention of working towards a better version of myself that I have never been…
“When a system is unable to solve its vital problems, it disintegrates or is able to sustain a meta-system to solve its problems: it metamorphosizes”
“The general virtues / inherent creators of humanity. In the same way that they exist in each adult human being with stem cells endowed with multi talents (totipotent) with their own embryonic cells, but inactive, all the same they exist as a human being, in human society with regenerative virtues, with a dormant or inhibited creative state.”
Edgar Morin, Eloge de la métamorphose.
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