Choosing Truth Over Familiarity

Today marks the two-year anniversary of the moment I knew it was time to call time of death on my marriage. It was less than one week after a post I wrote was published on xonecole, and days after returning from vacation in California. 

While in California, we were both super pleased that the post was selected and shared. However, he was surprisingly more excited than me and more than ever before. This was curious to me. 

I was featured in nationally circulated VenusZine, received a wide spread in the Austin American-Statesman’s Glossy section. I was hired to be featured in a video for the City of New Orleans. All of this happened a decade ago, in 2009. The results of those features were less than well received at home, to the point I retreated from public life in an extreme manner to restore connection.

But the response to this article seemed extreme. While disconnected on what should have been—and appeared on social media to be—a beautiful vacation, he was hyper-focused on the hits received by this article. 

“The post is up to X likes now! There’s been X reshares! Look at that engagement!”

For years, I was strongly urged to pull away from social media; that it was a distraction from me making a more impactful contribution to the household income and the world. And here I was witnessing the oddest obsession for something I did online, for the first time in being together for 16 years and married for 10. It was very confusing. 

And then it hit me. This post, titled “We Skipped a Big Wedding to Buy Our Dream Home”, publicly validated our marriage and him, as a partner. I elevated a decade of my social media posts to a widely distributed media channel with a readership of discerning women. This was the difference.

The less highlighted theme of the article was the lack of celebration in our partnership. I was informed early on by my now ex, “I don’t do birthdays and I don’t celebrate holidays.” If I wanted to be celebrated, I would have to orchestrate the occasion myself. And I did, even with the destination wedding, the elopement.

After the vacation, we returned home to our norm, disconnection. But this time it was more extreme. And I was forced to wake up from the dream I concocted long ago. It became clear we were no longer in alignment. I realized we were pretty on social media, because it’s the only way we were allowed to be online. When things weren’t pretty, as the cheerleader of him and of our partnership, I went silent. When they were presentable, I was genuinely thrilled and held onto the frame with both hands, willing to share it for my own memory and for the world to know we were still alive (and well?). 

With what I witnessed following the article being published, I got a sudden hit that our “bond” was an arrangement tolerated for show; to appear pretty on the outside despite the distance that was our reality at home. It all of a sudden read as fake to me, and I couldn’t return to my denial once I snapped out of the spell. I don’t do fake.

But but, her social media posts…

A decade ago, after receiving media attention I didn’t request, I pulled way back unless I was promoting my partner or positivity in our marriage. I prepared and distributed an annual newsletter. Most of my social media posts included endless mentions of “we” in the stark absence of “I”. For love, I abandoned myself. This was clear when I cleaned my social posts after deciding we were done. So much “we”.  

For a moment, the image I projected, in true belief of the story, almost prevented me from leaving. What would other people think? Would they believe anything I said? Would I lose any members of my community for leaving him? The idea of receiving the judgment I projected onto others over the years in response to witnessed “failed” marriages and relationships almost paralyzed me. 

Divorce is a humbling experience. It’s also an incredibly enlightening experience. 

“The lies we tell others are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves.”

In the pursuit of truth…

So much denial and fear of the unknown was revealed in the process of divorcing my husband. I was able to more clearly see myself and my contribution to the smoke and mirrors that was my marriage in the last eight years. I was able to see my ex outside the storyline I created for him. I was shocked into reality. 

I describe divorce as the experience of a death. I’ve never lost someone close to me. In the experience of divorce, I felt the death of: who I knew myself to be, how I deeply desired my partner to show up, the image of my husband, the death of my youth (18-35), the future I planned, and the story I manufactured with my default of denial and fear. It was all dying and all at once. It was extremely painful. 

Truth, when you’ve been raised and programmed from a very young age to make chaos look like perfection, is extremely painful and terrifying and feels unnatural. I’m two-years into the free world, and I experienced my first marriage-related panic attack in a year and a half two days ago. Denial and repression run deep. But I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. 

On the flipside, the contrast of who needed to stay in my life and who needed to go could not have been more clear. I could almost cut a line down the center of my address book. After mentioning I was done, I received calls (not including texts) from 4-7 people each day until my divorce was finalized five months later. 

My current relationships reflect the closest thing I’ve experienced to truth and love. They are supportive and healing. They are a reflection of the person I’ve become. They are full of gratitude, reciprocity and compassion on both ends. If I continued to hold onto my marriage with a death grip, I would not have had the opportunity to grow in love with people who want to be with me. I have lost nothing since my divorce but 15 lbs. It has been all gain.

I’ve been able to see how capable I am of thriving solo. A friend shared, “Women of a certain age don’t leave their longtime partners for another man. We leave because we know we can do better all by ourselves.”

Let freedom ring…

Any day of my life, I choose truth over familiarity. Any.Day.Of.My.Life. Because I now know that it stings for a moment, but it releases patterns never to return again. The pain makes it real. It makes the lesson stick. It cracks open consciousness so that it’s easier to surrender to truth and release the reigns of denial along with anyone who models anything that in any way resembles toxic codependent bonds from your past. 

Truth is an incredible gift. Divorce is a gift. It’s freedom.