As you contemplate divorce or as your spouse tells you your marriage is over, you find yourself wondering who is this person you married. Who is this person you thought you knew? Divorce coach, Lee Brochstein it’s a feeling that could stay with you for years to come. Here’s Lee:
The first time your children are gone for a weekend, it is awful. You wait and pace for the exchange with your new ex, this now stranger in your life. Knots are in your stomach and the sweat pools on your forehead and under your arms. You feel like you want to throw up.
You look out the window one hundred times for the car to pull up into the driveway, but it is like a watched pot that never boils, so you step away from the window, only to bolt back to it every time you hear a car passing by. Should you go out and greet this man that is no longer your husband? Will he walk the children to the door? What will you say?
You finally hear the crunch of tires on the cement and go to the front door and unlock it. Your hands are shaking and your legs are not steady. The knot in your stomach is getting larger by the second and you feel lightheaded. How can you feel such nerves facing a man that you were married to for years?
You make it through that first exchange without a scratch and know that the next time will be easier. This person who you now share kids with is a virtual stranger. You have done the most intimate things with him, yet you don’t recognize him as someone you know. You wonder how you manage to share these beautiful creatures together, but you do.
You will have many moments with this stranger over the years following your divorce. You will get nervous and anxious. You will stand next to this person you once loved while your children graduate from high school and college. You will break bread at weddings, and you will marvel at the fact that you do not recognize this person as anything more than your children’s father.
If you are lucky, you will come to a place where the stranger will turn into a friend, maybe even a good friend, but before then he is someone you do not know anymore. You will hear snippets of conversation from your kids about him and catch glimpses into a life that you do not belong in anymore and remember when you did belong there. You will nod and smile at your children as if you understand what they are saying, when it really sounds like white noise.
You will grow and change. You will find your own footing in your new life, and through that realize that this stranger has no place in your life either and might even feel the same way about you. You share children. You will always share children. Everything else that you have shared will fade away until it is a faint and dim memory of a life that felt like it was lived by someone else.
You will heal, you will move on, you will evolve and so will he. You will accept this stranger as someone you know at parent/teacher conferences and life events, but he will remain a stranger, despite the fact that you have children. This is how divorce feels and it does not mean it is bad, it just is what it is.
The Divorce Coach Says
As I read this I was reminded of a provision in my separation agreement:
The parties hereafter shall live separate and apart from one another, each to be free from the marital control and authority of one another. Neither party shall have access to the person or residence or property of the other in excess of that of a stranger, and the parties shall henceforth, be strangers at law to one another.
When I read this at the time, I was stuck by the use of the word “stranger” and I remember contemplating then, just how odd it was that our relationship had come to this.
Does your ex or STBX feel like a stranger to you?
Lee Brochstein is a certified professional divorce coach, blogger, a well-known author and a nationally known expert from her appearances on television and radio talk shows. She enjoys alliteration, Mad Men, Big Bang, mixed breeds, vanilla lattes, red wine and her kids when they aren’t killing each other.
Photo credit: © 2012 Jupiter Images Corporation
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Wow…Lee hit it right on the head. I remember right before he moved out, my STBX told me “you know, I love you more than anyone in the world, but in order to protect myself, I have to build a wall where you’re concerned, but before I do, know that I love you”. I thought he was kidding…he wasn’t.
And now, 7 years later, the wall is still there and I’ve come to accept that it probably always will be. We see each other at events, we hug, we smile…but he is a stranger to me.
Starr – do you feel that wall made it easier for you to emotionally separate from your husband or did it increase the pain?
I divorced in ’95 and have seen my ex very little since then since he moved out of state. I find that we both think we know things about each other based on who we were when we separated like – he told my kids “oh she hasn’t quit smoking, she’s just hiding it from you.” Except I did quit smoking quite a while ago. And I’m sure I have kind of frozen him in time as who he was back then.
Saw him at my daughter’s wedding last year, hugged him hello in an effort to do everything I could to make the evening go smoothly. But I remember thinking to myself – he doesn’t even FEEL familiar anymore. Who IS this guy? It’s true though, we really are different people now. Also – I started to feel that he was a stranger to me a bit even before the divorce – around the time I knew we were getting a divorce. I went into therapy for a while during that time and my therapist said it was because I had already divorced him emotionally. Made sense to me.
I think sometimes that feeling of him being a stranger is helpful in separating emotionally and yet it is still a score of grief because of the loss of that relationship.
For at least 2 years now my STBX has been a stranger to me and to our children. But, let me keep the children out of this. He now admits that he purposely isolated himself from me. He keeps saying that I wasn’t interesting anymore and that I didn’t bring anything to the table. I guess that I became “uninteresting” when we both decided, much to his prompting though, that I should stay at home after he realized that starting a business that had offices in 2 other states would keep him away from home a lot. Hey, I get that watching Nickelodeon and Disney Channel all day with a 18 month old wasn’t making me the most interesting woman in the room, but I thought that he would at least respect the fact that I was a damn good mother to our son. Then when we had our second son I can only think that that sealed my fate because I had more cartoons and playdates on my daily schedule. I do now realize that it really didn’t matter much to him that I was bending over backwards to try to integrate myself into all the things that he liked and all the things that made him happy, from the business to watching ESPN all the time with him when I really wanted to watch a family movie or do something together with our children. That right there began to show to me that he was a stranger more than the “family man” he claimed to be while he courted me and when he was trying to impress my family and his business associates and employees (we own a foster care agency, so he’s into all things family) Now all he wants is his freedom and he had no problem saying it. He said that he just wanted to be alone. At first it was really strange to me because we have children. Then I realized that what he really wanted to say but couldn’t was that he wanted to not have to be in our house trying to make other people happy. It was truly one of the most selfish things I could ever think of.
Hi MirKMM – it really sounds like your values were not aligned with your STBX and I think that often times this really comes out once you have children. It’s odd to me though that your STBX didn’t realize what being a father would involve given his business. You have a journey ahead of you – untangling and rearranging and I wish you strength and courage and peace.
It has only been two months and already she feels like a stranger. She already has a new man and they are already sharing many experiences together. I don’t know who she is anymore, I’m not even certain I’ve known her for a long time because she hid how she felt for so long and lied about it.
I have already changed even and for the better. We are bound by the children so we will still see each other, but never really know each other and it is very sad to me.
She will forever be the woman from my past, the happy one whom I shared so many good memories with and nothing more.
You’re grieving and while that’s sad, it is a very important process to work through. I’m glad you’re able to see the good from your marriage. Try identifying everything that you miss – it’s not just the person but also being married and what that means to you.
This is part of what I work on with clients in my Accepting Your Marriage AND Your Divorce coaching package and we work on creating a divorce ritual that honors all that you’ve lost. You can read more about it: http://mydivorcepal.com/divorce-coaching-packages/
Thanks and I will definitely take a look.