03｜A Diary Of Depression

Divorces

I felt so guilty for leaving my husband. My husband blamed me, I blamed myself. It took me a year to acknowledge the fact that there were 2 people in our marriage and both should have the responsibility for its end. It was so selfish of me to think that the divorce was 100% my fault.

Anyway, the guilt was so heavy I started thinking what happened? How did it happen? What went wrong?

We have been together for 10 years. We got married after 6 years of living, studying, and working together. We didn’t rush into marriage. We knew each other well enough (or so I thought). We wanted a family, we wanted children. Our parents approved our choices.

There was no infidelity. He didn’t beat me. We didn’t have money problems. 

But our communication came to a dead end. I felt invisible, unheard, unimportant, and very unhappy. I couldn’t understand and hear my husband as well. 

At some point we stopped talking, fights became more and more frequent. I started complaining a lot, my husband started blaming me for everything. I kept taking the blame until I couldn’t anymore. 

All three of us were miserable. 

Things were getting worse and worse. And it seemed only logical that it would be better for all to end this marriage than go on like this until something tragic happens. 

And I knew too well what could happen because it happened to my mom.

I made my choice to separate for a year and then make a decision whether to divorce or not. It felt like a very bad choice but at the same time like the best in that situation. 

It was confusing and frustrating. 

配图/Helen

I wanted to understand what happened,what I could have done differently, what my husband could have done differently.

I talked to a therapist, read articles and books, attended workshops, and joined study circles on topics like parenting, relationships, family, roles of a mother and a father within a family. 

My Montessori experience taught me about the importance of the environment and role models we had as children and how they affect our whole lives. 

We don’t just build our houses (🔗Houses) out of the blue, we watch and observe other houses (Experience, in reality), we learn from books and/or other educational materials (Knowledge, in theory, in mind), and eventually, we create our own house within the range of our knowledge and experience. 

We create a life that we already have in our mind. Whether we are conscious of that or not.

So first, I started to think - what houses (=families, marriages) did I see? Based on what examples did I create my family?

My parents – physical and emotional violence from my dad and his family towards my mom, lack of support and communication, unhappiness, divorce. 

My mom’s parents – divorce, unhappy grandmother, grandfather lost his father very early. My mom’s 4 siblings out of 5 – divorced and/or had very troubled marriages.

My dad’s parents – stayed together, very strong grandmother, didn’t see them communicating, mostly grandma yelling at grandpa. 

My uncle (on my father’s side) never married – grandma thought no one was good enough to marry him. My aunt (on my father’s side) divorced several times. My brother – divorced. 

Wow, it seems like there is a divorce pandemic in my family. 

配图/Internet

Let’s go bigger and see what was going on in the community. 

How about my childhood friends and their parents? Some divorced, a few stayed together but were very unhappy, one or two seemed okay, the rest I don’t remember. 

Wait a minute, have I seen as a child a happy, strong, and supportive family where parents had problems but respectfully communicated them and, in the end, supported and cared for each other? Um... I don’t think so. 

Could it be that everyone (or at least most) has those cracks in their houses, no one (or at least very few) knows how to repair them and we all just start copying defective houses of people around us since the very childhood because that’s all we see?

I observed a lot of young children in my class. 

It’s amazing how attentive they are to the tiniest of details, and how they copy the world and those details with such precision when creating something of their own. 

They do so without being able to discriminate whether what they copy is good (useful, healthy) or bad (useless, harmful), they rely on adults for this. 

So, what happens if adults don’t say anything? Probably something like this:

“Hey what are you doing?“

“I am building a house.”

“What’s that thing in your floor?”

“Oh, it’s a hole.“

“Why do you need a hole in your floor?”

“I don’t know, every house has a hole in a floor.”

......

Now let’s come back and see what is happening on a larger level – the world. There seems to be a divorce pandemic going on, and it’s not only in my family, my neighborhood, or my country. 

It seems that it is spreading all over the world and it affects everyone.

Divorce Statistics By Country

配图/wikipedia.org

I was thinking about me and my son. I got hurt. He got hurt. 

If there is something more heartbreaking than having your parents or yourself divorced it is seeing your child suffering through your divorce. It already happened twice at different stages of my life. I can’t even bear the thought of seeing my son going through divorce as an adult.

How can I break this pattern and help him build a house without that terrible hole?

To Be Continued...

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