Do you toss and turn in your bed each night, struggling to find the answer to the question "Should I get a divorce or separate?" Regardless of your relationship status, one of these days this question will visit you when you least expect it.
What if your spouse says that he hates being near you. Maybe he feels like he doesn't have anywhere to go that's away from you. He' s angry at everything. Abusive words have become a new norm of communication. He's staying out all night just to avoid you. What do you do then?
I'll show you through a powerful and new process for you to get crystal clear about what you want and what's really behind the fear of asking for a divorce.
1. Do this first!
If you're going through any one of this situation in your marriage, then I know how frustrated and torn you feel. It's a painful position where you are right now. You are questioning what you want to do. And this might even get you more stuck in this toxic position. What you need to focus on instead is what you NEED TO DO.
2. The hidden fear behind divorce
If you allow the fear of ending up alone to drive your divorce decisions, then those decisions will not be the right decision. As I have wealth of experience integrating one of the most scientifically validated approaches called Gottman therapy, I can tell you that it's hard to work with a couple where one partner has already checked out. I would even say it's impossible.
Don't invest into a relationship based on how much you like or love another person, but invest based on how much the other person invests in you.
3.This is why you feel paralyzed
What sometimes encourages one partner to try to save a marriage not worth saving is their fantasy of what their marriage could have been. They recall the past or the moments where they felt like their partner loved them.
And they keep fighting for that past forgetting that today is now. It's NOW. And you can't return the past. It's time to let it go by facing what you have now, no matter how painful it is. Once you do that, answers fall into their places. You'll learn why you're attracting toxic relationships.
4. Finding yourself in the divorce process
It's quite strange that we do this to ourselves during a breakup of a toxic relationship -- we keep investing into it, even when the other person is not invested in it at all. It shouldn't be this way. It's like when a person does not want to be with us -- it serves as a TURN ON. But it should be a TURN-OFF.
Don't invest into a relationship based on how much you like or love another person, but invest based on how much the other person invests in you or the relationship. Otherwise, you'll find yourself broken and with no self-esteem. You'll keep looking for external validation. The secret to finally getting the love you deserve is to feel complete within yourself.
5. This is what you don't know
Here's where it gets real. You keep self-inflicting this pain onto yourselves because it's driven by the fear of being alone and unworthiness. You don't want to admit this fear because it would force you to face the truth. The truth is that the only person who can fill this void is you.
Divorce isn't such a tragedy. A tragedy's staying in an unhappy marriage, teaching your children the wrong things about love. Nobody ever died of divorce.Jennifer Weiner
The fear of ending up alone or not being good enough is somewhere in you -- rooted in the past. Unless you face it, you will keep scratching the surface. And when we do that, we end up coming up with the Band-Aid type explanations of it such as "it feels like we haven't even tried to save our marriage." when in reality what we are saying is "Am I really not worth fighting for?"
You're not the relationship.
6. Know where you start and the relationship ends
I'm working with many women who are going through separations or break ups, or are healing from one. What I hear is that after many years of marriage they no longer know who they are because all they had been doing is giving themselves entirely to those relationships. Their relationship has become their identity.
When the relationship is about to end, it's like losing yourself. This is why you keep fighting for something you can't or shouldn't be fighting for. Because in all honestly you're fighting to save yourself -- your identity and not so much the relationship. It is simply because you both are enmeshed. You fail to decipher where YOU start and the relationship ends.
7. Emotional vs. rational battle
It comes down self-esteem or self-worth. When you lose yourself and who you're in a relationship, you also lose your self-respect. Because when a person doesn't want to be around you and hates you, the rational and self-respecting thing would be to let them go. Is it painful? Yes.
But what's more painful is seeking love somewhere else, when love is not something you look for. Love is the place you come from.
It's in you!
And maybe this breaking point in your life is an opportunity for you to get to know yourself, possibly for the first time in your life.
It's about dating yourself.
It's pivotal to do individual therapy at this point of your life, so you come out of this stronger and more empowered than you have even been. But more importantly without any conclusions or pains that would be detrimental to your future relationships. Because the last thing you want is to make your future just a replica of your past. Build the foundation for a healthy relationship.
Let me know if you have any questions for me to address in my next blog!
Date Yourself,
Karolina Pasko
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