A Celebration of Women on International Women's Day
I’ve noticed that the women who participate in Runaway Husbands activities are smart, deep, warm, special. Maybe it goes with the paradigm - abandoned wives tend to be empaths - caring and self-sacrificing . . .
Today, on International Women’s Day, this is what I’ve learned from 14 years in the ladies room.
I’ve been musing about the thousands of women I’ve met since I first published my book, Runaway Husbands, on February 1, 2010. The book is about Wife Abandonment Syndrome - when a husband leaves out-of-the-blue from what his wife believed to be a secure marriage. The woman left behind is devastated, traumatized. I’ve had the privilege of helping women recover.
The women in the Runaway Husbands community are in a club they never wanted to be a member of - one where the members have experienced a wife’s worst nightmare. I offer support in the form of therapy groups, workshops and retreats so I’ve met with groups of women on a weekly basis. Sometimes, like during a Sedona Retreat, we spend days and nights together, working on recovery but also, having fun, eating, laughing, talking and connecting.
Through all this, I’ve really gotten to know the women in our world and so often have been dazzled by them. In the early years, I started to notice that the women who participate in my activities are smart, deep, warm, special. Maybe it goes with the runaway husbands paradigm - abandoned wives tend to be empaths - caring and self-sacrificing. Whenever I start a new group, I’m tickled to see how quickly the group gels. Right from the get-go, women are offering support, suggestions and help to the others, even if they’re suffering themselves. Being together is quickly comfortable and women open up, sharing their tears, fears and laughter.
Women are programmed to connect with others going through the same thing. We get pleasure out of talking. I once read that pleasure center of the brain lights up when women talk but when men talk? Crickets. Just being together is healing for women. We learn from each other and feel soothed. Women tend to want to help.
This quote from the blog, TheUnleasedHeart.com, talks about the healing power of a community of women. “It takes a village to heal, too. We start within ourselves, yes, but we can’t do it alone either. We need support, guidance, and a heart with ears. We need to be able to feel heard without judgment, criticism and analyzing.” I’ve often felt that the effectiveness of the workshops and retreats that I run is 50% what I say and 50% what the women get from being together with the others.
So, today on International Women’s Day, I’m sending love to all the women in the world! You just keep being you!
Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.
It’s Time to Dial Down Your Ex’s Power Over You
My wish for you is that you turn down his power to upset you so that rather than getting wounded or outraged, you can say, “There he goes again - I know his tricks and ways!” My wish is that you will be able to remember that the thing he did to hurt you today, won’t hurt so much in three days . . .
We were having such an interesting discussion tonight in our meeting of my online Hearts & Minds Divorce Recovery Group and I wanted to share it with you. We were talking about how much power our ex-husbands have to hurt us, even long after he leaves. For example, I remember sitting with my daughter in a cafe several months after my ex ran away when I glimpsed him coming in the door. I got so upset; it was almost unbearable. Just seeing him from across a room had that much power to totally screw me up? Why?
We were discussing this in the group when a new thought struck me. You were traumatized in the initial early days when it was revealed, in whatever way it happened to you, that the marriage was over. You were shocked. You had a huge adjustment to make in the blink of an eye - to integrate the fact that the man you loved and trusted for all those years had betrayed you.
Plus, in the early days, he might have said horrible things to you, blaming you and putting you down. The depth of the hurt comes from the fact that he shifted from the person you trusted with all your heart to an angry stranger.
At that time, he had all the power. Unbeknownst to you, in most cases, he was having an affair and had been planning his departure for some time. He may even have been shifting funds and organizing your finances to benefit him.
He also had all the power in that he made the decision to leave and there was nothing you could do about it. All the pleading in the world wouldn’t budge him. By the time you heard about it, it was a fait accompli.
But now, some time later, maybe even years later, it still feels like he has the same power to hurt you although he could never hurt you like he did in the initial revelation. Now you know not to trust him and that he can manipulate you - you know he no longer has your best interest at heart.
Often the meanness he demonstrated in the early days when he was breaking the relationship is not so much in evidence as time goes on. Particularly, after the divorce is finalized, his actual power to hurt you may be much diminished. Yet, the fear remains. Is it time to let that go?
Could you be open to the possibility that you can dial down his power, even a tiny bit, so that anything he does now is not going to upset you so much? Would you allow yourself to make a buffer so that anything he does no longer hurts to the same extent? After all, what’s the worst thing that could happen?
I think that, over time, you’re still reacting to him with the same fear you felt in the early days when you didn’t know what to expect. Now you know the measure of the man and even if he’s frustrating, difficult or even mean, it won’t come as a surprise. The shock value is over.
My wish for you is that you turn down his power to upset you so that rather than getting wounded or outraged, you can say, “There he goes again - I know his tricks and ways!” My wish is that you will be able to remember that the thing he did to hurt you today, won’t hurt so much in three days. You will be able to recover quicker until the point that it only upsets you marginally and then, only for 20 minutes until you shake it off.
His power to hurt you to the extent that he did in the beginning, is gone. You’ll never again be shocked and have to adjust to the new vision of your beloved husband - you now know that you can’t trust him.
So again, could you be open to the possibility that you can dial down his power, even a tiny bit, so that anything he does now doesn’t upset you so much? Would you allow yourself to do that? When?
Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.
He Got Away With It! Knowing When to Let Go
Justice is a luxury that most abandoned wives don’t get to enjoy. But rather than letting it consume you, you need to recognize when it's time to accept that you won't get closure from him and give up trying . . .
Here’s something that I often hear from wives who have been left: “How is this fair? He gets to go off and live a great life with his girlfriend and I’m left picking up the pieces. I’m alone with all the responsibility for the house and kids and I have to fight him for any bit of help I need.”
“HOW IS THAT FAIR!?!”
In a desperate attempt for the runaway husband to have to suffer consequences for the emotional damage he’s done to his ex and kids, some wives proclaim that wife abandonment should constitute a crime - an actual legal crime - that can be prosecuted in a court of law.
Wives want justice! When someone harms another, we expect that justice will be served and the offending party will have to pay. That just makes sense!
So when women tell me that they want justice and that’s all they can think about day and night, I tell them this story, that I heard somewhere years ago, in order to encourage them to let go.
The story goes like this. A guy, we’ll call him Mike, was driving his rental car out of his friend’s driveway in L.A. when out of the blue, a Mercedes comes speeding down the street and t-bones him right on the driver’s side, causing his car to spin around twice during which time, he thought he was going to die. His car eventually came to a stop and there was a moment of silence after which he heard the other vehicle go skidding down the road away from the accident.
Twenty minutes later, after the police had assessed what happened, an officer stuck a form in Mike’s face and told him to sign it. He was completely shook up and asked what it was and the cop said, “It’s just to verify that you weren’t hurt” so he signed.
Mike went to the E.R. just to make sure he hadn’t sustained internal injuries and was surprised to learn that the other driver had already been there before him. The doctor, who had also treated the other driver, said that after hitting Mike’s car, the Mercedes guy sped around a corner and hit a tree. The E.R. doctor confirmed that the other driver was drunk and was taken to jail.
A couple weeks later, when he was back home in New York, Mike heard from the rental car company saying that he had been found at fault and had to pay $12,000 to the other driver to repair his Mercedes. Confident that it was a little mix up, Mike contacted the L.A. police to correct the error. Turns out that the officer on the scene that night had gotten mixed up in his identification of the two cars and, on the form that Mike signed that night, had mistakenly written that it was he who had hit the Mercedes.
Mike then spent the next year trying to get justice. The L.A. police wouldn’t even listen to him and he couldn’t find a lawyer to take the case. He became obsessed; it was all he could think and talk about. He didn’t care about the money - he just wanted the truth. He’d exhausted his friends and finally, his girlfriend said she couldn’t take it anymore and was breaking up with him.
It took that for Mike to wake up and realize that his futile attempt to get justice was ruining his life. He gave up the case and paid the guy $12,000.
By pure coincidence, I just watched a stand-up routine on Netflix called “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” by the comedian Mike Birbiglia in which he hilariously recounted this story, which had happened to him. Somehow somewhere, I had heard about it and have used it many times to illustrate a point.
Why do I tell women this story? Because too often, abandoned wives get stuck trying to get emotional justice which never comes. They want their ex to acknowledge what he did. They want their former in-laws to know the truth of what happened. They want to clear their name in the community because people make judgments or their ex circulates a false narrative about the break-up. They desperately want the true story to be told about what he did because he so often unjustly blames her.
My message here is not about whether you should fight for financial justice in the divorce agreement. That's a separate topic and I always believe you need to protect yourself financially. Here I'm talking about the fact that striving to get your ex to acknowledge, apologize, show remorse or set the record straight with the kids takes a lot of emotional energy and keeps women obsessing. I tell the Mike story because sometimes, you just need to pay the metaphorical $12,000 and move on in the service of mental health and emotional peace.
Justice is a luxury that most abandoned wives don’t get to enjoy. But rather than letting it consume you, you need to recognize when it's time to accept that you won't get closure from him and give up trying.
So, in the end, does it feel like your ex committed a crime and got away with it? Maybe. But, that’s not your problem any more. You’ve paid the emotional price - now let it go.
Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.
How Not to Have a Victim Mentality Although You’ve Been Victimized
Once you have mastered the Stoic approach, rather than bemoaning things that happen to you that you may label as bad or unfortunate, you’ll learn to welcome them as an opportunity to hone your ability to create value from adversity . . .
The other day, at my divorce recovery retreat called A Course on Happiness, the women attending learned to activate their superpowers. Everyone at the online retreat had been left by their husband from what they believed to have been a secure committed marriage till the day he left out-of-the-blue, morphing dramatically into an angry stranger.
The first workshop I presented at the retreat is called The Obstacle is the Way, based on a book by Ryan Holiday. The workshop describes the philosophy of Stoicism which, in a nutshell, teaches that if you can view any setback as an opportunity to grow and develop skills, you’ll strengthen your character, making you better able to handle anything life sends your way.
Once you have mastered the Stoic approach, rather than bemoaning things that happen to you that you may label as bad or unfortunate (i.e. your husband leaving), you’ll learn to welcome them as a chance to hone your ability to create value from adversity (e.g., training your thinking to look for things you can feel gratitude about). A simple cliche to describe Stoic thought is turning lemons into lemonade.
Women who are struggling to rebuild their lives after Wife Abandonment have a lot of emotional work to do in order to regain a sense of peace and meaning in life.
They have to figure out how to stop their mind from whirring obsessively about their ex.
They have to learn to stop regretting and blaming themselves.
They have to banish the sense of shame that many feel for being single.
They have to grieve all they have lost.
They have to train their thinking in order to envision a new and different future.
Time heals to some extent but it’s what you do with the time that makes the difference. That’s where the work comes in.
After your husband leaves and when you are over the initial trauma, you essentially have two choices.
You can wrap yourself in the cloak of victimhood, explaining to everyone who comes near how unjust it is and how unfair he was, attempting to elicit sympathy, or
You can work through the perfectly normal grief (this might take time) but eventually develop a defiant attitude that says, “I’m not going to let his leaving ruin the rest of my life.”
The Stoic approach would guide you, perhaps, to practice doing things when you’re really down that you really don’t feel like doing, although you know they’re good for you, like going for a walk or cooking yourself a healthy meal. Getting yourself to do those things takes emotional work but the more you do them, the easier they become and the better you start to feel. And along the way, you develop the skill of good self-care.
In Runaway Husbands, I offer this piece of advice: “Don’t press ‘send’ when you’re still in your pajamas!” By that I mean, although you may want to send a begging, pleading email to your ex in the middle of the night, it might not look like the best idea in the cold light of day. If you can practice the skill of self-control and wait a day, you’ll probably be glad you didn’t humiliate yourself by “pressing send”.
The fact that your husband left forces you to struggle to do the thing that’s in your best interest even though it’s hard. This will strengthen your character and you will grow from it. The more you practice self-control, for example, the easier it will become and you can add it to your list of superpowers!
So, what skills do you need to apply to achieve the items on the list above?
To stop obsessing, you can use your determination to stop yourself from ruminating and instead, distract yourself. When you see that you're on that mental hamster wheel, turn on a documentary about Italy or listen to some beautiful music to help your mind rest.
To stop regretting or blaming yourself, you can read the work of Dr. Kristen Neff and learn to practice self-compassion.
To banish shame, exercise the courage to join a single women’s MeetUp group and go together with your new single friends to activities.
To grieve, permit yourself to feel the pain without fearing that it will overtake you.
To envision a new future, encourage yourself to explore new things, no matter how small, that you can incorporate into your life.
You can change your perspective to look at this huge setback as an opportunity for you to challenge yourself, turning it into multiple lessons on living. It's all about appreciating your life, no matter what form it’s in at the moment and in the end, you'll be proud of how mighty you’ve become!
So, when you encounter anything hard in life, try to look at it differently. View it as an opportunity for you to reach down and bring up your best stuff so you can face down the situation with courage, patience, self-love, determination or resilience. There will be no lack of opportunities in life for you to rise to the challenge and put your Stoic skills in practice.
Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.
Powering Up and Powering Out When Your Husband Leaves
So, Tinker Bell, how do you get your pixie dust back now that your ex has scattered it to the winds? How do you get back your power, now that you no longer have that socially sanctioned, well-defined role of wife?
When I was a little girl, my mother took me to see the movie Peter Pan. At a certain point in the film, Tinker Bell, that sassy, feisty, hot-tempered fairy, starts to lose her pixie dust and becomes weaker and weaker, her sparkle fading, almost to the point of extinguishing. The kids in the audience looked on anxiously but then, wonderfully, we were given the power to bring Tinker Bell back to life. We had to clap. We all started wildly clapping and soon, Tinker Bell was bright and sparkly again. Relief! We had saved her!
As soon as my husband left, like Tinker Bell, I started to lose my power. I became weaker and weaker, dropping 30 pounds and eventually being diagnosed with anemia. I remember lying on the sofa, hardly moving, struck down by life. Food was unappealing. Everything was an effort. My light was dwindling.
Fortunately, I had the love and support of my friends and family who were clapping wildly and through their encouragement and my own determination, I started, over a period of months and years, to re-ignite my life force. It was a lot of work but eventually, I got my sparkle back.
I’ve been thinking about how, when your husband leaves out-of-the-blue, he takes your power with him. At that moment, he has all the power and you have none. You may wish with every fiber in your body that this would not be happening, but you’re completely helpless to affect his decision and change the course of events.
Women often ask me why their husband needs to literally run away, providing her with the scantest of explanations and the briefest of discussions about his life-changing decision. Why doesn’t he invite her into the living room and say, “We need to talk”? Why doesn’t he then spend the time she might initially need to talk it all through, helping her achieve that most precious of gifts: understanding. Instead, why does he typically disappear, blocking her from any further in-depth explanations that might help her get a grasp on the catastrophe that’s happening in her life?
You’ll be surprised by my answer to those questions. He needs to leave your life running because, to him, you’re so powerful. You’re the one who can make him feel bad and he can’t take it. He can’t take seeing your pain; he can’t stomach hearing you cry; he can’t tolerate your questions - why, why, why? If he stuck around much longer, he might have to register the effect his actions have had on you, so he has to leave as quickly as possible because you have that power, although you don’t know it. Although short-lived, in the beginning you had the power to make him feel bad about himself.
Back when you were a wife, you had an authenticated role - you were the acknowledged wife in your couple and in the eyes of the world. That role bestowed on you the dignity that comes with a secure knowledge of your unique place. It was a primary piece of your identity. But remember what Eleanor Roosevelt said: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Resist the outdated stereotype that says that married women are somehow more valuable than single ones. We’re well past that!
So, Tinker Bell, how do you get your pixie dust back now that your ex has scattered it to the winds? How do you get back your power, now that you no longer have that socially sanctioned, well-defined role of wife?
You have to do what all female superheroes do - get in touch with your own wise woman power to determine the next chapter in your life and only you can do that. You need to start respecting yourself! If you’re looking down on yourself for not being a wife, you’ll end up spending too much time lying curled up on the sofa. You may need to try on a different role - that of a sassy, feisty single woman who loves herself just as she is and doesn’t need a man, or anyone else, to define her. That role may not fit comfortably in the beginning, but you’ll grow into it if you let yourself.
We’re all clapping for you and looking forward to you getting your sparkle back. Don’t let anyone take that away from you!
Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.
Hi! I’m Vikki and I'll be your guide in your recovery process from Wife Abandonment Syndrome. I’m a therapist but also an abandoned wife like yourself and I know what it feels like. I want to help you not only bounce back, but to discover a new you in the process.
