Women over the years have often told me how ashamed they feel at having been abandoned by their husband. It’s a powerful feeling that colors everything they do. I even heard from one abandoned wife who did her grocery shopping in the middle of the night at a 24-hour store so that she wouldn’t have to run into anyone she knew. It was that bad. So here, we’re going to unpack what causes that sense of shame in some women and what to do about it.
What is shame in the first place? It’s a fundamental feeling that you have done something wrong or that there is something wrong with you and others can see it. We all have shortcomings that we’d rather the world not know about but when your husband walks away from the marriage, it may feel like your secret flaws are broadcasted to the whole world.
This feeling of shame may come from three sources:
First, from your ex. Before your husband walked out the door, he made sure to reveal to you everything he said he had found distasteful, lacking, messy, controlling or downright wrong about you and those stabbing words got lodged in your chest. Whether true or not, by attempting to humiliate you, he could assign the cause of his decision to leave to be based squarely on your flaws.
He knows you well enough to know that you would be reeling from all that and it would act as a diversionary tactic so that you wouldn’t be able to clearly see his role in his decision.
Second, from yourself. You may have very strongly held views about the sanctity of marriage and your role in keeping it strong. When you pronounced your marriage vows, you meant it so that if the marriage falls apart, for whatever reason, you feel that you have failed in one of life’s biggest promises: “till death do us part.” In this case, the shame of the marriage ending is assigned by you to you.
You look back and see things you could have done differently. Of course . . . you’re human. No one is expected to be the perfect wife (he wasn’t the perfect husband), but now you’re filled with regret, blaming yourself for the marriage breakdown.
Or you may feel he made a fool of you. Looking back, you berate yourself, “Why didn’t I see that about him in the past? Why did I make allowances for all his bad behavior? Why was I so pathetically self-sacrificing? Did everyone else see it but me?”
Third, from your community. Your couple was part of a larger community of friends and family. One of the most painful aspects of your husband leaving is that you probably were rejected from some of those groups. For example, you may have been a member of his family for decades but now, you’re persona non grata.
Your ex had the opportunity to spin his story about you to his family and friends and you’re helpless to set the record straight. Although you know that blood is thicker than water, his family was your family too and particularly if they have been cold towards you or cut you off, it feels like you’ve been judged and found lacking.
What to do about it?
The solution to your feeling of shame lies in just two words - self compassion. If you’re a person who expects yourself to be perfect all the time, you’re going to take the end of your marriage much harder than someone who accepts that she doesn’t have to be perfect to love herself. Could you extend to yourself the kind of compassion you would to a dear friend who is suffering, as Dr. Kristin Neff suggests, and give yourself kindness and a hug?
Nobody’s life runs smoothly and we all have times of struggle to one degree or another. Try to view the end of your marriage as another twist and turn in your life story - not as a personal failure. It’s okay to stop beating yourself up! It doesn’t mean that you’re being unrealistic, just that you’re taking care of yourself, which is a good thing.
I once heard the saying that when you think other people are talking about you, they’re not. The break up of your marriage might have been the topic of conversation for a while but it gets to be old news very quickly. And your assumption that you’re viewed as the one to blame is just that - an assumption. You really have no idea what people are thinking about the end of your marriage so you might as well not let those limiting thoughts stand in the way of you feeling good about yourself.
This is an opportunity for you to work on your self-defeating thoughts and banish them! You don’t need them anymore! You can make a choice to jettison the shame and come back to yourself as someone you treat with tenderness and love.
