It’s Time to Dial Down Your Ex’s Power Over You

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?

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Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.

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Are You Looking for Closure?

Today is the first day of the Sedona Retreat 2019. Eleven women from every corner of the U.S. as well as central Canada have gathered here in breathtaking Sedona to work on healing and moving on from wife abandonment. We had our first workshop today and one topic that came up often was the wish for closure. Several women talked about the tremendous frustration they feel due to the fact that their husbands just vanished without any proper conversation or explanation. It left them hanging - longing for closure.

What is closure? After a long term relationship, closure means a husband showing respect and sensitivity to the fact that the wife did not want the marriage to end and is deeply grieved by his decision. He would do that by providing time and effort to help his wife integrate what has happened - to talk it through, try to help her understand his change of feelings, care about how she is going to adjust to her new reality.

But many men who decide to leave either have stopped caring or are deeply uncomfortable with their wife's distress and choose to distance themselves from it as quickly as humanly possible, leaving the wife without any expressions of heartfelt concern.

That leaves the wife needing to find a way to give up the wish for a sense of closure that she will never experience. It's a decision she must make, for her own mental health, to accept that she will not receive that expression of concern. She has to decide to let it go and move on nevertheless. Hoping and longing take a lot of energy. To truly care for herself, she needs to accept that for some things in life, closure is an unavailable luxury.

Along the line of letting go, I wanted to share with you a poem by Safire Rose that I like a lot.

She Let Go

She let go.
She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.
She let go of the fear.
She let go of the judgments.
She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head.
She let go of the committee of indecision within her.
She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons.
Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.
She didn’t ask anyone for advice.
She didn’t read a book on how to let go.
She didn’t search the scriptures.
She just let go.
She let go of all of the memories that held her back.
She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward.
She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.
She didn’t promise to let go.
She didn’t journal about it.
She didn’t write the projected date in her Day-Timer.
She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper.
She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope.
She just let go.
She didn’t analyze whether she should let go.
She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter.
She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment.
She didn’t call the prayer line.
She didn’t utter one word.
She just let go.
No one was around when it happened.
There was no applause or congratulations.
No one thanked her or praised her.
No one noticed a thing.
Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.
There was no effort.
There was no struggle.
It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad.
It was what it was, and it is just that.
In the space of letting go, she let it all be.
A small smile came over her face.
A light breeze blew through her.
And the sun and the moon shone forevermore…

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Let me know your thoughts about closure below. Are you still holding out hope? Did you get the closure you want? Tell us more!

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Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.

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