Excerpt from
Divorce Recovery – Piecing Together Your Broken Dreams

THE HOUSE OF HORRORS

Have you ever walked into the  house of horrors at a carnival? It’s a room full of mirrors,  each one different, reflecting a grotesque image  of you and always changing. One time you see a  tall, skinny you. The next time it’s a short,  fat you. Then you’re fat at the top and skinny at the bottom.

 It’s a room of confusion. You stumble and  grope your way through from one ugly reflection  to the next, always wishing you could just find  the exit and get out of there: there are some  funny things about it, but for the most part it’s  an uncomfortable and unnerving experience.

This walk into the house of horrors is comparable  to your relationship with your former spouse.  The relationship changes as rapidly as walking  from one mirror to the next in that room full  of mirrors. And some of the views are just as  grotesque and shattering.

Sometimes you can talk to your  former spouse. On another occasion there is no talk, just  quarreling. The atmosphere is unpredictable. A person you  once viewed as precious becomes a raging,  unreasonable maniac. It doesn’t make sense. That person  is always changing. Sometimes these changes preceded  the divorce; sometimes they follow. It makes you  wonder,”What’s up?”

PLOP PLOP FIZZ FIZZ

 Postmortems don’t last  forever. In the divorcing process, you can’t keep sitting at the  postmortem. You have to get on with the funeral and the burial. Moving  on to the post burial stage requires  making changes. Changes in life can be difficult, even painful, but holding on to a painful past isn’t any better. When the past is painful, there  is nothing to lose (and everything to gain) in going through the difficulty  of change in order to have a better future. The changes can only result in  growth and a pain-free existence.

Chuck was eager to talk about the changes in his life during the last two  years.

 “  When my wife said she wanted a divorce, I was furious, and I thought she  was crazy. I had never done anything to her. I was an okay husband. I wasn’t  the perfect Tom Selleck or a soap opera romancer, but I was okay, like  everybody else. If she wanted anything else, she must be off her gourd.  I thought she  was tearing up a home for nothing.

It didn’t make sense. How dare  she find fault with me! No complaint could be so serious as to call for  divorce.  I could not believe my ears. Nothing I said made any difference. Her mind  was made up. She had always listened to me before, and I couldn’t  figure out anything to say that would make her listen again. I would talk  softly  --- it didn’t matter. Then I would yell --- it still didn’t  matter. Nothing I said mattered any more. It was so frustrating. I just  knew she  had gone crazy. That was the only explanation. Everything was crazy to  me now.

“  Despite all my pleading, she went through with it. I quit my job. It wasn’t  going to last much longer anyway, and I just couldn’t face the people  at wok every day. I didn’t see any purpose in working anymore.“ I would sit in her driveway and wait for her to come home. She never was  really ugly to me, just politely cool. For months I just drifted. Many nights  I slept in the van either in front of her house or somewhere near by. Occasionally  I would work, a day here, a day there, sometimes a week. All the time I was  thinking ‘If only we could get back together…’ or ‘What  if I worked regularly again,’ or ‘If only I had remembered this  or that, like her birthday’ or ‘If only I hadn’t  gone to the drag races every Saturday.’

“ About five months after  the divorce, one Friday when she came home from work I was sitting in her  driveway having these thoughts and wanting to talk  to  her. When she drove up, she stopped and talked to me and even listened  to me. I listened to what she said this time. She probably had said the  same thing before, but this time I listened.“  She patiently told me, ‘Chuck, you’re going to have to change,  not for my sake, but for your sake.

Whether we get back together  or not, you still have to change. You can’t keep going through life  not taking charge. You are the captain of your ship as the saying goes,  but you don’t  act like it.

Your ship drifts at sea as though  without a captain. I don’t  want to talk to you anymore until I can see some change in you.  You tell me you WILL change, but I don’t see it. You me to tell you  what to do, that won’t work. The change needs to come from within  you, not from me.’

 “ She said more, and I listened. I thought about all she told me for days  to come. I have done a lot of soul-searching, and still am. I truly  am listening for answers, answers that give me some direction to my life, some  direction  to my ship.”