What Did You Do That You Didn’t Think You Could Do?
The Friday Challenge is to reflect on all the things you didn’t think you could do but did. Call a lawyer. Fix a lawn mower. Live single and like it. What are yours?
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One of the many forces that keeps you stuck with a cheater is the thought that:
“I could never.”
Horace is terrible and everything, but I could never parent four children on my own. To have a D-Day is to face a wall of real and imagined obstacles. Single parenting, single life, small engine repair, accounting, moving, logistics.
It’s all too much. Many spend way too much time in paralysis fearing scary outcomes.
And it IS scary. (Don’t look down.)
But you often you CAN do the things you didn’t think you could.
Everything is on the table when you’re trying to leave a freak. Everything is possible when you’re trying to rebuild a life.
So, CN, what did you do? Rage plumbing? A long-distance move? Getting back into the workforce? Calling a lawyer after a lifetime of being brainwashed that divorce is a sin? A new tattoo?
What never did you overcome?
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Boxing!
When I divorced I was 32, but I had been a couch potato for 10 years at the time. I was so furious that I needed to hit someone, so I turned to boxing. Best thing I ever did. Previously I would have told you that there was nothing in this world that could convince me that this was necessary, much less a good thing. I can’t do it anymore because of an injury, but I miss it terribly.
However, the one thing that I thought I’d never in a million years be able to pull off was NC with FW. Yes, the minute he broke up with me I said “We only talk logistics from now on”; yes, I contacted a lawyer and signed divorce papers, and while all of this was happening I was sure I would falter at some point. Once I almost threw my phone into the sea. But I wanted him to apologise and wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction until he did. Not contacting him is the most difficult thing I have ever done.
Not very meh of me, but it satisfies me greatly that I repaid him with radio silence.
My big “never could I ever” in order were:
1) opened an account at a little bank he didn’t know about and started having a small amount of my paycheck directed there
2) applied for a major credit card of my own
3) bought a used phone and set up a separate cell line so I could make calls undetected
4) met with a certified divorce financial analyst
5) met with three attorneys. I wanted to try to find a good one who I felt I could afford and they needed to understand all the military pension and benefit aspects
6) made copies (and hid!) all the important papers – deed to the house, financial account info, our child’s birth certificate and health records
7) took a loan from my then FIL to hire the PI. I felt it was a big risk to tell him but I always trusted him and he came through for me in big ways.
When I give chumps advice now, I always impress the need to call more than one attorney and have multiple consults. It’s easy to talk to one attorney and then back down, but when you talk to more than one, your head space starts to shift from emotional to tactical. You get comfortable with the D word. I think it increases the odds you will actually get away from the FW.
Whoa! First, congratulations on all those things. But holy cow! You took a loan from your FIL for a PI!!! That is the ultimate strength and risk, wow. Good for you for taking that risk and it paid off. I can’t even imagine how scary that was.
I had always been independent, was well-educated, had traveled all over the world solo. Learning to not care about him, or any of his many betrayal objects seemed impossible at first. So many years! So many betrayal objects in so many places! But, I did. I detached. I disengaged. I walked away. I finally saw he was not worth one more second of my time. And today, I will go to the marathon expo and pick up my packet for yet another incredible race. In my 70s. I will be running for all us mighty chumps, and most importantly, for me. My life has value and meaning. His life, whatever he may be doing with it, has no meaning to me. And I know others can do it, too.
I finally forced myself to overcome all of my fears and after 37 years of lies and serial cheating I finally left for good.
I didn’t think “I could never…” but I did think “It’s going to be so hard” and “I don’t know if I can…” and “I don’t know if I can afford to leave.” My fear had both psychological and practical dimensions.
The psychological fear was the most difficult to overcome, because unlike a practical problem, it was more diffuse and less amenable to clear planning. I had by then spent my whole adult life with my then-husband–40 years of life together–and not only had we been married and had a child, we had also gone to graduate school, on the job market, and been hired by the university where we worked into a joint appointment and worked in the same academic department together for twenty-five years.
Where it was possible to approach leaving him with practical tasks, I did those: saw a lawyer, started looking at a place to rent, made lists of my resources, financial and personal/emotional/character. The largest hurdle was seeing a lawyer, but once I’d seen one I moved from thinking I might have to divorce him to knowing I was actually divorcing him. Giving up the hopium with all my related behaviors, like pick-me dancing and placating, and then gathering the courage and doing what I could do, took me eighteen months.
My major “practical” fears were 1) I would not be able to afford to live on my own, especially as I was in my mid-60s, approaching retirement, and I had been expecting retirement with both our incomes, and 2) I would never learn how to manage the tech, which was one of the two things he managed and that I was not interested to learning (the other was our day to day finances, although I had once done that, too, until he objected and wanted to take that over). The tech stuff turned out to be the least of my worries. I’ve learned what i needed to, and what I haven’t, my son, who is in tech, has been more than happy to help me with.
Thanks to my mother telling me when I was young that every woman needed her own income, I had always worked, even when our child was born (I lucked out in my hope of being able to plan the birth of our child during the summer when I wasn’t teaching), so I had my own retirement account. I also had set aside some money from an inheritance from my father (it had never been in a joint account and was not therefore in my state marital property), although I had spent half of that inheritance on improvements to our house. With my share of our marital home, I figured I would have enough to live on, and I do. I may not be able to afford to travel as I had hoped I would be able to, but that is more than made up for by the peace and freedom and autonomy I’ve gained.
The list of things that I didn’t think that I could do until I tried and found that I could was almost endless.
The most important thing was that, after she left, I really doubted that the future that I could build for the kids and myself would be up to much. It turned out that the future that I built without Ex-Mrs LFTT was so much better than the then present and past that had included her. It was at that point that I realised that she had been holding back and sabotaging the kids and I for years; whether this was deliberate or inadvertent I will never know, but the fact is that we really are better off without her.
She is not missed, not even slightly.
LFTT
I birthed twin babies with a protective DV code at the hospital.
I fought (and am still fighting) for majority custody of my 4 kids.
I asked for help from family and friends to be with me at every child drop off to protect me from him and keep me NC. It’s been 4.5 yrs.
I continue growing and being successful in my career and he continues to fight me for more.
I keep my head up, protect myself and have only spoken to him when he specifically went pro se so he could cross examine me 4 years after dday while he’s using litigation to continue to abuse me.