Using Self-Compassion to Overcome the Shame of Being Abandoned
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.
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.
Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.
Where are my Cakes and Casseroles? How Being Widowed Is Different From Being Abandoned
Why don’t we have a divorce funeral? A rite of passage to acknowledge the end of the marriage rather than what we currently do, which is to slink away in hurt and shame?
I was talking to a client whose husband left after 40 years of an enchanted marriage and she made a comment that I’ve heard many times before. She said that things would be so much easier if he’d just died. We got into a discussion about the difference between being left and being a widow (I’ve been both!) and I thought you’d be interested.
Grief
In both abandonment and widowhood, you suffer crushing grief and a profound sense of loss, but in the case of abandonment, she said, it’s a “dirty grief” - socially not the same thing. Nobody tells a widow, “You’re better off without him” or “I never thought he was right for you.” Widows are permitted space to grieve deeply and for a prolonged period of time, but little room is made for women who’ve been abandoned to experience grief.
That grief is confusing. You’re mourning your loved husband who no longer exists but, at the same time, hurt and angry with the man who is sending you lawyer’s letters. The grief is tainted - not pure. It keeps you in an emotional spin - grieving and then hurt and angry in alternate moments and that makes it hard to resolve the loss.
Memories
Widows tend to remember the happy times they spent together with their husbands. They can bask in the bittersweet glow of special loving moments and when they talk about their departed loves, they highlight the positive. Abandoned wives, however, are stuck remembering the recent traumatic events that triggered the loss. We all repeat in our minds the outrage and shock that lead to the end of the marriage, particularly the moment when it all fell apart. We steer away from remembering the happy times - how can you revel in the happy times when you are stuck seeing him as the liar or coward who hurt you so badly?
Financial stability
Often widows are in a good financial position after their husband dies, especially if he had life insurance, RRSPs or a pension that reverts to them. There’s no question that they will keep the house, cottage and car as well as any savings. Abandoned wives, however, are typically in a weaker financial position than they were before, having to fight for anything that they can get from their ex, while paying astronomical lawyers fees to boot. They often have to split the value of the house and move to a more modest home. They may have to go back to work if they were retired or had been a stay-at-home mom.
Family and friends
One of the topics we often talk about in my Hearts & Minds divorce recovery groups is the painful loss of family and friends. When a husband dies, the whole community rallies around the widow, bringing cakes and casseroles. She’s invited to any family events and remains a part of her late husband’s family. When he leaves her, however, she is often booted out of the family, even if she’d been integrated with them for decades. Her mother-in-law stops calling and even welcomes her ex’s new girlfriend for Thanksgiving dinner. Friends make judgments and take sides and it’s not unusual to lose a certain number in the process.
Privacy
When your husband dies, he takes your secrets with him to the grave. When your husband leaves, nothing is sacred. He’s building a case about why he had to leave to justify his actions and provides evidence to the world of your weaknesses or even secrets that only he knows. You lose control of your version of your story as he proclaims, loud and clear, his version of events.
Children
When your husband dies, you and the kids go through it together. You‘re typically all mourning their dad in harmony. You support each other through special events, like holidays and birthdays, missing him and reminiscing about good times from the past. When your husband leaves, however, your kids are thrown into a profoundly complicated position. They love their dad but may turn against him when they see him in a different light and know the hurt he’s caused you. If they’re young, they may go back and forth to his house with his girlfriend, knowing full well how much that hurts you. You avoid talking about him during special events - they don’t want to hear your pain. You worry about what the loss of the dad they knew will do to them.
Your Future
Finally, another big difference is that, when he dies, your pure feelings about your husband are not tarnished by rejection and betrayal. You smile thinking of him and get to keep the relationship you had with him forever. When a husband dies, it is not his choice. But when he leaves, he purposely did so without any regard for the repercussions. When he dies, you never see him again. But when he leaves, you watch him build a life with someone else.
Divorce Funeral
My client then suggested, why don’t we have a divorce funeral? A rite of passage to acknowledge the end of the marriage rather than what we currently do, which is to slink away in hurt and shame? I would certainly not suggest a bitter diatribe party against the ex but rather, a mindful moment to punctuate this turning point in our lives. We could get together with our friends and family and perhaps recount the story of the marriage, highlighting the growth changes we went through during that stage of our lives.
Light a Candle for Yourself
In my work as a marriage counsellor, there are times when a couple comes to the session wanting to talk about the fact that they’ve decided to separate. I always light a candle during those sessions, to honor the sanctity of their marriage and acknowledge that it meant something important. I ask them to sit with that for a few minutes before jumping into the chaos of separating their lives. That’s because, when you’ve walked a good part of your life with someone and the path comes to an end, either by death or divorce, in spite of all the differences, being married means something that you take with you in your heart.
Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.
What To Do When You've Lost Your "Go-To" Person
Apart from all the hurt, outrage, sense of betrayal, bewilderment and sadness that comes with Wife Abandonment, perhaps the most difficult feeling of all is the loss of that “go-to” person with whom you share all the little details of your life . . .
In last night’s Hearts & Minds group, we were talking about the feeling of being alone. Apart from all the hurt, outrage, sense of betrayal, bewilderment and sadness that comes with Wife Abandonment, perhaps the most difficult feeling of all is the loss of that “go-to” person with whom you share all the little details of your life.
Whether your relationship with your husband was glorious or mundane, he probably was the person who knew what was going on in your life better than anyone else. He was there when things happened to you and you naturally turned to him to talk it through. There’s a comfort in being able to tell your ongoing narrative to someone who has a stake in your happiness. The loss of that hits hard.
There are so many examples of when you might feel it. You take a walk and are delighted to run into your old college roommate, Sue, who just moved into the neighborhood. Typically, you’d come home and say to your husband, “Guess who I met on my walk?” but now, you have no one with whom to share it.
One high point in my life was when I was a guest on the Today Show. It was a big thing for me and I was high when I walked off the set after my interview. I so very much wanted to call my husband and say, “I did it!” and share the moment, but he’d already left. Of course, I could call a friend or my kids, but you know - it’s not the same.
So last night, at the group, we worked on what to do when you feel that need to talk to someone. Some said that, yes, they have friends or family they could call, but after a while, they worry about compassion fatigue. Our suffering goes on for months at the least and only very noble friends or family can take the ongoing working through that you need to do.
Of course, time does heal, but in the meantime, we came up with some suggestions that are within your power to do to try to help yourself. We talked about doing art as a way of expressing what you are feeling. You don’t need to be an artist to get a drawing pad and markers and just put down your feelings in line and color. It may feel awkward at first but you will get more comfortable if you keep at it.
Another woman suggested going for a run or doing exercise as a way of expressing yourself and getting your feelings out. And, of course, we love the idea of connecting with nature in some way.
Another suggestion, which has been proved to be very therapeutic, is to keep a journal and write it all down. When you got back from your walk, you can write down that you met Sue from college and she moved into the neighborhood. When I returned to my room after the Today Show, I could have written all the feelings about what it was like.
It’s a letter to yourself and although it doesn’t make all the hurt go away, it trains you to do something positive when you’re feeling the pain. You can become your own “go-to” person - someone who is always on your side, cheering you on!
These simple suggestions may be hard to put into place but every small step you take for your own healing makes a big difference, even if you feel it at the moment. I wish I could suggest the perfect thing that will do the trick and move you along. If I could, I would! But after a decade of helping women recover from abandonment, I know that it’s a complex process that needs the time that it needs, but I also know that making even small efforts are very important.
Share your thoughts below about what you do when you wish you had a “go-to” person in your life.
Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.
Runaway Husbands
He responded, “It’s over.” That moment marked my descent into the nightmare that I’ve come to call Wife Abandonment Syndrome which is when a man leaves out-of-the-blue from what his wife believed to be a happy stable marriage . . .
The fall of 2006 should have been the happiest time of my life. I had published my first book, My Sister, My Self, about sister relationships and had set out alone on a whirlwind book tour that took me 3,000 miles crisscrossing America. The trip was great but hard - 23 days in the car driving from bookstore to bookstore, eating practically all my meals at the wheel.
By the time I got to my last stop, San Diego, I was so looking forward to coming home to Montreal. I took the red eye back and fell into my darling husband's arms in relief when he picked me up at 8am at the airport. I was so happy to see him! He dropped me off at home and headed to work.
I spent the day getting organized but noticed a long dark hair in the bathtub when I took a shower. I didn’t think anything of it. I also was puzzled later that various dishes in the kitchen were in the wrong place. We’d lived there for years and we always kept the colander under the sink and the spatulas in the pot on the counter but now I had to search for them. Also a bit weird - but, no matter.
When my husband returned that night, I threaded my arm through his and said, “I bought fish” to which he responded, “It’s over.” I thought, weird, but said, “Okay, if you don’t want fish, we can have chicken.” And he said, “It’s over and I’m leaving you. Right now.” And he did. He moved right in with his girlfriend of six years who had been staying in my house while I was away.
That moment marked my descent into the nightmare that I’ve come to call Wife Abandonment Syndrome. Wife Abandonment Syndrome is when a man leaves out-of-the-blue from what his wife believed to be a happy stable marriage. There is typically another woman in the picture. One of the hallmarks is that the husband then turns angrily on the wife, blaming her and dismantling everything she knew as their loving joint history together. He seems to have no regard for his traumatized wife, even if he had been a loving and attentive husband days earlier, as mine had been.
After my husband left, I started researching this phenomenon and was amazed when I realized that it’s pretty common and that the features of how the men leave are almost identical from case to case. I started a study and interviewed women all over the world to whom this had happened. Based on the findings of the study, I wrote the book, Runaway Husbands, and launched the website, runawayhusbands.com. Very quickly we developed an international community of women supporting women through this terrible trauma.
This is not a typical divorce in which the wife may have seen it coming. In Wife Abandonment Syndrome, there are often no signs that the husband is unhappy or thinking of leaving, as was my case. When men leave in this way, their wives feel like they’re crazy and completely alone. When they stumble across our website, Googling in the middle of the night, they’re shocked to learn that it’s a “thing” and deeply comforted to be able to share what they are going through with others.
Recovery is a long and painful process. Initially, the wife is obsessed with understanding her husband’s motivation - how he could morph overnight from a loving husband into a cold and angry stranger? Once she’s been helped to see what was behind his actions, she will become freer to turn her focus from mourning her past to glimpsing her future.
I’m a psychotherapist so my goal in helping women in this situation is to guide them to a point where they can see this crisis as a springboard for change. The first year after wife abandonment is very rough, but with enough support, the wife left behind can start to see possibilities for her life as a single woman and hopefully, be able to flower into embracing her new life.
Over the years, I’ve developed therapeutic resources to provide help both online and face-to-face. The power of being part of a healing community cannot be underestimated - when women get together, they offer each other both strategies and support. We have a Facebook group, newsletter, online meditation group and what we call Healing Circles - where women can meet others locally in their towns to provide support. These exist in cities all over the world.
I’m able to work personally with women through online therapy groups where we can see and hear each other, just as if we were in the same room. We meet together in yearly retreats in Montreal and Sedona, Arizona and for those that need more support, private Skype therapy sessions are available. Our community is powerful, with active participants in Australia and New Zealand, India, Hong Kong, Nigeria and Ghana, Britain, Europe, Canada and the US.
I know how powerfully women suffer and grieve following Wife Abandonment Syndrome. I’ve been there. But I also know that this trauma can also be used for what is called post traumatic growth, in which women are forced to strengthen themselves so they can manage their thoughts and emotions and develop a profound new understanding of their lives. Although they can’t see it when they’re in the midst of it, they’re not always going to feel this badly.
Let me know your response to this post in the comments below. Did it touch you?
Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.
Wedding Band Blues: What To Do with Your Wedding Ring When the Marriage is Over
What is the meaning of a wedding ring? As a universal symbol, those few ounces of fine metal and precious stone are supercharged with significance. You received it at a pivotal moment, the heart of your relationship, when you were filled with love, excitement and anticipation. And every day after that, every moment if you wore your ring constantly, it signalled your position as a wife and as someone who is loved . . .
What is the meaning of a wedding ring? As a universal symbol, those few ounces of fine metal and precious stone are supercharged with significance. You received it at a pivotal moment, the heart of your relationship, when you were filled with love, excitement and anticipation. And every day after that, every moment if you wore your ring constantly, it signalled your position as a wife and as someone who is loved. Your ring proclaimed a primary fact of your identity – you’re married.
For some women, a wedding band has a sacred significance. It represents the promise spoken at the marriage ceremony – to love, honor, respect, protect - forever. It represents a covenant. The ring absorbs that meaning and continuously radiates it.
For others, the ring’s loveliness expresses the beauty of the love that surrounds it. The fact that it is a pleasure to the eye fills your heart with joy. The ring itself is great to own. You’re proud of it. It makes you happy.
Yet to still others, its primary significance is the message it transmits to the world. You’ve accomplished one of life’s valued milestones – you are part of something bigger – a family. When you meet someone new, they glance at your left hand and instantly know that you’re married. Your ring says it – you’re not alone.
With everything women go through at the end of a marriage, particularly if the separation was not their choice, the decision about what to do about the ring is often a struggle. I wanted to know more about how different women dealt with it so I sent a survey out to the Runaway Husbands community and boy, did I get a response! It’s an important issue and women wanted to tell their story.
The four hundred women who responded to the survey had been left anywhere from less than six months to more than five years, with the majority having been left between two and five years ago. Ninety two percent had removed their wedding ring but not all of the slim slice of eight percent who were still wearing theirs were from marriages that ended recently – some were five years out or more, as well.
Most women remove their ring when it becomes clear that the marriage is over regardless of their legal status but some women choose to continue wearing their ring until the actual legal divorce has been completed. Here’s an example taken from responses to the survey:
I consider myself married until I'm divorced (I'm a practicing Catholic). At the same time, I will likely remove my ring (I've never taken it off in forty-two years, so it doesn't come off readily!) once I'm legally separated.
And here is an example of someone who feels the sacred commitment that wearing the ring represents:
I wear my rings because I am married in the eyes of God and the law. I wanted the rings to be a public and personal symbol of the covenant between my husband and me. I don’t know at what point I will take them off.
And another with an extra twist:
I wore it until the divorce was finalized. I wore it to prove a point in that I believe in marriage, didn’t want the divorce and I knew it probably made him and his whore angry.
Most women removed the ring and stuck it away in a jewelry box because the end of the marriage drained it of meaning. Within the Runaway Husbands community, husbands often burn their bridges as they leave the marriage, telling their wives that they never really loved them and that the marriage was a sham. The decision to remove the ring signifies an acceptance that the relationship is really over.
I removed it because it symbolized something beautiful and unbreakable. It meant I was loved, protected, honored, respected, and cared for. My husband did not have any of those feelings for me and by wearing it, I felt like I would be disrespecting the ring’s meaning.
We had "forever and always" engraved on our rings and I wore that ring for 36 years believing in what it said. My husband decided, alone, in what seemed like a moment, that it was not going to be forever. That ring no longer represents a love and respect that lasts forever and always so I took it off. It is back in the box it came in.
And some women took action, using the ring to make a point:
- After I realized he was gone for good, I threw it in the trash.
- I removed it and threw it at my ex-husband for breaking our wedding vows.
- I threw it into a canal not far from my home. It actually felt good to do this.
Some women solved the dilemma of how to keep the beautiful ring they loved when it hurt to look at it by transforming it into something else, in a sense, talking ownership of it. Several women talked about having the ring redesigned:
I reset my engagement ring diamonds and 10th anniversary band diamonds into a fabulous ring that I still wear. Why should all those diamonds sit in the safety deposit box? I’m worth a fabulous ring.
I had the gold melted down and turned it into a ring with a cross and my diamond was put in the middle. I added amethyst stones around the diamond and inside the ring, I had the jeweller engrave the saying “With God, all things are possible” to remind myself that I am not alone, that God is walking right beside me. I wear the ring on my wedding finger so my next biggest hurdle is moving it to the other hand.
Quite a number of women talked about saving the ring for their daughters later on or giving it to a son who was expecting a baby so he could give it to his girlfriend.
I removed my ring because I wanted to cut off my tie to a husband that basically left me with no emotional or financial help or remorse. Who wants to wear a symbol tied to someone that basically is selfish and only thought of himself? I ended up giving my ring (beautiful band of diamonds) to my precious daughter-in-law. My ring looks wonderful on her! Out of sight, out of mind!
Several women talked about the stigma of being single or divorced and how they felt ashamed to not be wearing a ring:
The ring meant a lot to me. I removed it right away but hid my empty left hand from the public as much as possible. It embarrassed me to be unwanted.
I wore it for a while mostly because of the stigma of not having it on (I was pregnant when he left). Then I took it off because it felt like a lie.
I removed it immediately. Why would I want to wear a symbol of a relationship that no longer existed? It was hard, and for a long time I felt like everyone was looking at my naked finger and judging me as someone who was divorced or never married, i.e., a failure.
Finally, a lot of women talked about selling or pawning the ring and putting the money to some good use:
- I sold it to buy Christmas gifts for my children.
- I sold it and used the money to take a girls' trip to Europe!
- After a few years, I gave it to the Bridge, a resale shop for battered women.
- I had to pawn it to retain an attorney.
- I sold them for cash and used it to renovate my bathroom.
- I sold it and put the money towards a down payment on a new house.
- I sold the ring for food and housing for the family when a month was really bad.
- Sold it this summer and bought a ticket for Hamilton. Worth every penny!
The last word goes to a woman with a message we all need to heed:
- I sold it and with the money, a friend who is a goldsmith made me a new ring. With this ring, I made a vow: always love and be true to myself.
Tell us your wedding ring story below!
Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.
Alright anxiety - enough! Be gone! I’m in charge now!
We all know that awful feeling - anxiety. It’s amazing how powerful it can be and how lousy it can make you feel. It can be so intense that you may think you’re having a heart attack or even, losing your mind! As a therapist, I’m always impressed at how powerful the mind is! Read on . . .
We all know that awful feeling - anxiety. It’s amazing how powerful it can be and how lousy it can make you feel. It can be so intense that you may think you’re having a heart attack or even, losing your mind! As a therapist, I’m always impressed at how powerful the mind is!
It feels like we have very little control over anxiety which has tricked you into thinking that it’s the boss and totally in charge. It may make you feel hesitant to go out and do things, worried about meeting acquaintances in the street, sick to your stomach imagining your future. You need to know, however, that you actually have a lot more power over anxiety than you think.
Anxiety can’t exist without some kind of physical sensation associated with it. If the thought crosses your mind, “What if I can’t afford to keep the house?” and your body doesn’t react with queasiness or tightness or a pit in your stomach, then that is only a thought and won’t make you miserable.
When anxiety descends on you, it’s so physical that even people around you can see it. Your forehead furrows, your mouth gets tense and someone might ask, “What’s wrong?” It’s the physical aspect of anxiety that creates havoc. If you can get to a state of relaxation, anxiety doesn’t have a chance.
The good news is that you don’t have to continue to let anxiety be the boss. You can learn to retrain your thoughts which will lead to your body becoming more relaxed and less under the thumb of anxiety. The fix is in a two-way change:
Become aware of the thinking processes that ramp up that awful feeling and start practicing short-circuiting that thought pattern.
Work on your physical body to become a Olympic relaxer so that you can have techniques at your fingertips to calm the body as needed.
To start, you have to become aware of your thinking processes. Many thoughts are worries about things that will never happen. Become a detective and search out those limiting thoughts and remind yourself, “That’s a worry, not a fact.” Train yourself to recognize the thoughts that serve no purpose other than to disturb you. That’s just anxiety bossing you around. Work on consciously reducing the power of those limiting thoughts.
Secondly, you have to incorporate relaxation into your daily life, in whatever form you can - and I don’t mean sitting in front of the TV watching The Bachelorette! I mean conscious, purposeful relaxation - walking, stretching, breathing exercises, listening to a relaxation tape, t’ai chi, yoga, biking, swimming, dancing - anything that tends to the body and uses the right side of the brain. You have to make it a priority to devote those minutes a day to your emotional health.
If anxiety is a big player in your life, try to find a CBT therapist who specializes in treating anxiety - not every therapist does - and work on it so you can get free and get your life back. Keep reducing your worry thoughts and incorporating conscious relaxation into your life. I know it will help.
What tricks do you use when you realize anxiety is starting to boss you around? What new things could you incorporate into your life? Let me know in the comments below.
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.
