Nobody chooses divorce because it will be “a good experience” but without a doubt you can learn from your divorce. And that applies to everyone.
In this last segment with my current guest, Bill he reflects on what he feels is his most significant accomplishment since getting divorced. Here’s Bill:
I think it’s probably different between men and women, because men spend a lot of time accomplishing physical and financial things before they get divorced. I would say probably for me, the most significant accomplishment has been emotional and mental.
I think that I’ve grown a lot emotionally. I’ve recaptured the relationship with my siblings. When I was at my lowest possible point, my sister and brother—I have two brothers and a sister, we weren’t estranged and we certainly weren’t angry at each, but we had just grown apart through the years, and I was in need of emotional support and it was just like, “Whatever you need. We’ve always been here, we love you. We were just waiting for you.”
That was a pretty amazing accomplishment, honestly. That’s something that opened my eyes almost in a way that someone could be born again.
Reconnecting took not only sharing what I was going through, but I think it was just presenting and being vulnerable. I was the oldest and I was always the business person and very successful and they thought that I was just perfect and had the perfect marriage and family. Then, all of a sudden I’m at the lowest point, I’m just like, “Guys, you have no idea, you’ve got it all over me. Don’t let me fool you into thinking I’ve got it all together.” So, I think just being vulnerable and emotional and just allowing them to help me. I think that just opened up a tremendous door for the relationship.
I think my work relationships improved too. I think my staff saw me as somebody who was a little more vulnerable and a little bit more emotionally connected. I’m very familiar with the EQ concept (Emotional Quotient) as opposed to IQ and I have a very high traditional intelligence, but I’ve always been really limited or unwilling to develop the EQ side of my psyche or my personality. I think that’s something that I always try to work on, but I’m challenged there and so I think my divorce helped me there too.
That’s something that’s another physiological phenomenon for me is that—and it’s really interesting. I’m extremely inquisitive in a sense about the whole mind power. Before I went through what I went through from an emotional trauma perspective, I could never really hear the words of songs. The music drowned out the words for me.
I never really got the fact that people could listen to the words and be like, “Isn’t that beautiful?” And I’d be like, “Yeah, that’s beautiful music but I don’t pay attention to the words.” Then, as soon as I started going through everything, I started hearing the words and I’m thinking to myself, “I wonder if the trauma mentally has developed that part of my brain in a sense where it was never developed before?”
It’s really interesting, something that I never really heard or understood. I’m challenging myself not to slide back and not just to be Mr. IQ anymore, but to be a lot more emotionally intelligent and think in those terms.
I really started picking up on and listening to a lot of pop songs, a lot of the stuff that the kids are listening to and it provided for me a lot of company, because I spent a lot of time alone and all of a sudden there were all of these heartbreak songs, whether they be country, whether they be Maroon 5, all of these young people who were having heartbreak and heartache. I don’t think it was entirely the “misery loves company” but it was just that I could understand that it was assimilating with the heartbreak and opening up the emotional intelligence.
Young people have tremendous emotional intelligence. They just bleed emotion and so that comes out in their words and in their music and I was feeling that and in a larger sense, still do. I still listen to a lot of the younger music. It strokes that part of my brain that hadn’t been stroked in a long and it helps. It keeps me grounded.
It has helped me and it will continue to help me. I’m not a fool. I’m not pollyannas to think that I’m not still challenged there, because I think that I’m tremendously left-brained. But I keep challenging myself to think in those terms and to keep developing my right brain.
The Divorce Coach Says:
I don’t think emotional growth is limited to men going through divorce. For many of us, divorce is about dropping the facade, the pretense of a happy marriage, the image of the seemingly perfect couple. That always means opening up, accepting that we can’t do it all, that we’re not perfect and that we are vulnerable.
For the person who initiates the divorce, this realization or understanding is often part of the decision-making process and that again puts them in a different emotional place from their partner. For the non-initiator, the fact that they may have had little say in the divorce decision and possibly little time to prepare for the changes becoming public knowledge, means they’re significantly less emotionally prepared and it may take them much longer to travel the path to emotional growth.
Growing emotionally facilitates being able to connect with people on an emotional level rather than functional and that’s a skill that you can use in all your relationships: with your ex, your children, your extended family, your friends and your work colleagues. I believe the positives from this far outweigh the work you’ll have to put in to get there. And you’re never too old for this growth.
Whether you are the initiator or the non-initiator, there’s always learning in divorce. The question is, are you open to it?
P.S. Got a favorite breakup song? Why did this song resonate with you/
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