Kimberley’s husband destroyed her.
She was suffering from a number of health difficulties. She had anxiety and depression. She was living in a tiny one-bedroom apartment and struggling to get by on her reduced income after an expensive divorce.
Her friends had distanced themselves from her, because the years of abuse had changed her. She used to be high spirited and positive. Now she hated how negative she’d become.
But the marriage had dealt her one blow after another. None of her friends could understand what it was like.
She used to believe that life was good, that everything would turn out right in the end, and that being a good person would protect her from bad things. She could no longer believe any of that.
“Why did I do this to myself, James?” she asked me.
“Why did I pick this man out of all the men in the world to marry?”
Is It All Your Fault?
Kimberley’s story is painfully common.
Too many women beat themselves up for getting into a relationship with the wrong man.
They struggle with forgiving themselves for that choice.
Their belief that they deserve, in some way, how they were treated keeps them from healing.
Their feelings of guilt can be unintentionally amplified by well-meaning but unhelpful support.
One of Kimberley’s close friends asked her why she couldn’t be more like her ex. He’d gone on with his life and was doing quite well. If Kimberley was doing poorly after the divorce, then surely that was because of her own poor choices.
I asked Kimberley how she thought that same friend might have responded if Kimberley had, say, gotten cancer.
Would this friend have been supportive? Or would she have blamed Kimberley for not doing enough to heal faster?
Emotional healing takes time. It can take years to work through. Emotional distress can affect every area of our lives, from our finances to our physical health.
What Kimberley needed wasn’t tough love. She needed self-compassion.
Seeing Yourself Through Eyes of Compassion
My goal was to shift Kimberley from blaming herself to understanding herself.
Blaming yourself can’t change the past. But understanding yourself can change your future.
I wanted Kimberley to see herself with different eyes.
Not as someone who made bad choices, but as someone who made the best choices she could given what she knew at the time.
Many women choose relationships that become abusive or toxic because they don’t feel that way at first.
They feel good. They feel promising. They feel right.
When Kimberley’s ex-husband asked her to marry him, Kimberley was over the moon. She felt chosen and special. This is what she’d dreamed of since she was a little girl. Of course she was going to say yes. She couldn’t wait to get started being a wife and mother.
Nothing about her ex’s behavior rang warning bells. If they had, she would have made a different choice.
Lose the Shame, Keep the Lessons
Things that seem obvious now rarely seem obvious at the time.
A boyfriend mentions that little white lies protect people’s feelings, and you assume he’s speaking theoretically. You don’t realize he’s as good as admitting he lies to you.
Later, when you discover all the ways he lied to you in your relationship, you can beat yourself up for not paying more attention. Or you can have self-compassion. It’s obvious now, but it wasn’t then.
From this day forward, you are wiser. You know to pay attention to those signs.
It’s unfair that you had to go through so much pain in order to learn this lesson, but you get to keep the lesson. It will protect you in future relationships.
I encouraged Kimberley to make a list of all the lessons she’d learned from her experience with her ex-husband.
How is she wiser?
What will she do differently as a result?
Does she think she will choose healthier relationships in future, all thanks to this painful process of learning from past experiences?
It’s Never Just About Him
One of the biggest lessons our past relationships teach us is that we don’t pick our partners by accident.
We pick partners who fit our view of the world.
If we believe that we are the subordinate person in the relationship, if we believe we should be grateful for what we get, if we believe that we’re always making mistakes and deserve punishment, then we will end up with a partner who reinforces those views.
Our job is not just to pick a better partner the next time around.
Our job is understand that programming and heal it.
It wasn’t bad luck that caused Kimberley to end up with a toxic ex. It was the culmination of her entire life experience until then.
What did she believe about love, about partnership, and about herself that led her to stay in that marriage?
Where did she learn those beliefs? Will they still serve her going forward?
Even though Kimberley was standing in the wreckage of her old life, this was a beginning. She could build something new.
The past is gone. It’s done.
What do you want now?
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