Divorce Identity and Loneliness
Almost six months ago, I basically upended my entire social structure when my husband and I decided to separate. Then, four months after that, it completely changed again when I resigned from a company I helped build and loved. I guess, “Go big or go home.”
First, I moved out of the home I shared with my husband and our two children and into a rental house. Ouch. That was tough. Like the most excruciating emotional pain you can imagine, knowing you’re feeling it because of your own actions. And inactions.
The heartbreak of moving out of a family home is something I wish for no one. We had been married over 15 years. Fifteen years of waking up together. Going to bed together. The constant of the kids’ voices and footsteps and movement. Day in, day out. Then…the sudden aloneness…the quietness…the stillness. The yearning for a squeeze from your kids before they go to bed. Being desperate to connect only to be let down by the mostly futile, quick, surface-level FaceTime chats.
I knew things would change socially too. We had built a life together. In our neighborhood, our community, with friends, and our children’s friends' families, we were always a couple, getting asked to do couple things. My ex is extremely extroverted and always up for a good time – the really funny and social kind of guy. I’m much more quiet, bordering on shy, and really only break out of my shell with the right combination of energy, people, and sleep.
So I wasn’t surprised when, pretty soon after we split, he got invited on a family trip to Florida with a few of our friends…and I didn’t. My feelings weren’t hurt. But I was sad. Sad because the reality was that I had spent the previous eight years building a business instead of true friendships. So when the time came for a multi-family beach trip, my phone didn’t ring.
I get it. I know my choices to prioritize my career often forced me to say “no” to social activities and not be as present in our friend group. That probably made me the overworked and overstressed wife who could be fun. Who used to be fun; but that side rarely showed up anymore.
As I began to prioritize the business, I slowly lost pieces of me. Some bad, some good. I lost the piece of me that was able to make time for friends and social activities. The piece that could imbibe and hang out late, only to get up the next day to do it all over again. I used to laugh. A lot. I used to have fun and could be silly with my kids. We would run around the kitchen island and dance and sing. Somewhere along the way…that all stopped.
As the stakes got higher with the business, so did my uptightness. I started drinking less (not a bad a thing), going to bed earlier (not a bad thing), waking up too early (became a bad thing), and filling voids from my marriage with work (definitely a bad thing). 60 to 80-hour work weeks became the norm, and I wore it like a badge. As a result, I lost my silly; I lost my lightheartedness.
Before kids, when it was just us, there was room for real, adult fun. We loved hard, laughed a lot, and partied with friends. But after kids, well, things changed. Crying, hungry babies came first, and slowly a crack in our relationship formed. After several years of not really addressing it, the fissure became the Grand Canyon.
We tried therapy…for a few sessions. I was over it after the therapist said that my biggest issues in the marriage were not my problem and something that only Josh could decide to address. I saw this as giving permission to my husband to continue behavior that deeply hurt me. We never found another therapist, and after that, I grieved the loss of our marriage during our marriage. So when we finally did split, it wasn’t the loss of my husband’s companionship that consumed me, but the loss of being with my children 100% of my days.
That killed me. The guilt is like none other. How badly did I screw them up? As two middle-schoolers, would they recover? Or crash during those rocky, early-teen years that are wrought with more complex emotions than their still-developing brains could process?
I remember texting a girlfriend one night, “Why did I choose to be away from my babies?!” (with sobbing emojis I’m sure). And her response was truly beautiful, “Aww Christine, you aren’t choosing not to see your children. You need to frame the choice differently: you are choosing happiness and freedom from a marriage that didn’t serve you and teaching your children that it's okay to walk away from a bad relationship.”
So as the weeks went by, slowly, and very painfully at first, I rode the ebbs and flows. Some more intense than others. But, they began to steady out, and we all just kind of fell into a rhythm. Fortunately, my ex and I get along really well and are very supportive of each other. We even went on spring break together in March.
But four months after separating, just as I was starting to get my footing in this “new normal,” I decided to resign from my business. After eight incredible years building what I affectionately referred to as my third baby, the company no longer needed co-CEO’s and, after much deliberation, I decided it was time for me to step into my second overture.
At first, I was on cloud nine. I was thrilled to have downtime – to wake up in the morning and slowly drink my coffee. Leisurely make the kids’ lunches and drop them off at school. All without showering and getting myself ready for the office. I even walked my dogs during the day! I was finally getting the much-needed downtime I had been craving for years.
And then…reality kicked in. Holy shit. The company had been my life. The people had been my community. And now there was this massive, gaping void. Within a matter of four months, my entire life construct had vaporized. Where I once knew stability, where I once structured my weeks on kids’ schedules, countless meetings, hours reviewing financials, hiring plans, marketing…I now drift, a bit tetherless.
I find myself at this juncture. I’m not a wife. I’m not a co-CEO. I don’t get invited to vacations. And I don’t get invited to work meetings. I know this is one of those moments I’ll look back on and think, “Damn, the pain was worth it.” But the pain is real. I’m sad. I cried tonight. I went downstairs and clung to my 12-year-old daughter for comfort, who indulged me for a minute, and then returned to whatever it was she was doing.
If I were to rank 2023 so far, I’d give it a 10 on the 0-10 pain scale. But also, a 10 on the growth scale. And on the happy, let’s-do-this-again scale? A solid zero.
