Secrets in a marriage are never good. No matter how innocent you think they are, your spouse does not feel the same.

I remember while going through my divorce, I was dragged out to dinner with my sister and her husband (at this point I pretty much wanted to crawl in a hole and die, so I had to be dragged everywhere).  As we sat at the table, I across from my sister and her husband, who sat next to her, I witnessed something so foreign to me. My brother-in-law opened his phone (yep, it was a flip phone that he kept until like a year ago) read a text, laughed, responded to the text and then held it over for my sister to read. She read it, they exchanged a few words and that was the end. As I sat dumbfounded, my expression must have shown my bewilderment, my sister asked what was wrong, was I okay?  I asked her if her husband did that a lot. Of course, she was lost and confused. I asked her did he often show her texts on his phone? Now she was totally confused as to why would I ask such a question.

Sometimes it takes a lifetime to learn a lesson, other times it is instant.  But when we experience a truly “AH HA” moment, wow, what a feeling!

Here is a little story about a woman who one day found herself at 45 years old trying to figure out what her life was all about. She had been someone’s daughter, and then a wife at 18 years old; shortly after, she became a mother. Never knowing who she was or what she wanted, she woke up every day doing the best she could by her children and her husband despite what was going on around her. She did all she could to survive. Then the day came when her children were grown and had their own families, and her husband had his own activities, and decided that she was no longer needed or wanted.

Moving on. What does that mean? Well, in his case it meant me packing his clothes up and leaving them in the garage for him to pick up. He decided he didn’t want to be married, so he didn’t need to be coming and going in my daily world. So it was my turn. Now me. Now I move on, now I…what, exactly? Where do I go? What do I do?

How does one decide the time is right to move on, to date, to open up again with the ever-looming possibility of getting hurt again?

I thought I was ready right away. My ex was already engaged, so I should move on, be in a  relationship and get married again. Right? Wrong.  

Looking back, I would have to say my ex moved on before he was my ex. That statement is twofold. I believe that to end our marriage, to walk out on our family, he would have moved on prior to leaving. And he definitely moved on prior to our divorce being final. There were extracurricular relationships during our marriage, but I had convinced myself that he wasn’t going anywhere, that we could work through and beyond it. However, once he moved out and said he wanted a divorce, it was very evident that he was moving on even farther than he had already moved on.

Divorce affects every person differently. And every person has their own description of divorce. That description can also change. If you have never gone through a divorce, then suddenly you find yourself in the midst of one, everything changes. We know how divorce affects us, and others can tell us how it affects them. And still others, for instance our children, might not be able to put it into words. All portrayals are right; there are no wrongs. There are as many descriptions as there are people. Here is one perspective, from a young twenty something now married with two beautiful daughters.

Growing up in a strict, Midwestern family, the word “divorce” was a dirty word in our house. “No one in our family has ever been divorced,” my grandma would tell me proudly. And from what I could gather, this was true; outwardly, we were all happy, nuclear families, with moms and dads intact.

I was told, and even heard in sermons, that we should pray for our enemies. There is even a song about it: “Pray for You” by Jaron and the Long Road to Love. Need a laugh, be sure and listen to the song! And I will admit some of those lyrics are definitely thoughts that have crossed my mind a time or two.

How can we bring ourselves to pray for someone who has hurt us so deeply? Does that person really deserve our prayers?

If you have been through a divorce or are going through one now, you have had to or will have to do some sort of division of assets. This is one of the hardest things I encountered (up to that point, anyway.Sharing my children is way harder).

Deciding who gets what, houses, cars, dishes, pictures, decor, furniture, tools, everything we had accumulated in 24 years now had to be divided. He did not play nice, either. Anything he thought I wanted, he wanted, all the way down to my jewelry and some things I inherited when my parents passed away. It was ugly.

We lose a lot when divorce happens. We lose our family as we knew it; we lose things; we lose life as we thought it would be. So many things are different than they were, and than we thought they would be. One of the biggest things people tend not to think about is we lose our friend, many times our best friend.

I got married at the ripe old age of 19. I was still a kid, and so was he, just one and half years older than I. We did a lot of growing up as we built our marriage. We learned how to be adults, spouses, and parents together.  Being so young and moving away from family and all that we knew to be home made us closer because we had to rely on each other.

Just another date on a calendar? After a divorce, what do you do with the date of what was?  I had a very hard time with this at first. I have kind of forgotten about it now (I said kind of!)  I read another blogger’s blog on the subject, which of course brought the thoughts back to me and my situation.  

I was married for 24 years, so the date meant something for 24 years. It is the date we were married, we pledged our love, we made promises to each other and our families. Now what?

When we think of abuse and abusive relationships, we most often think of physical abuse.  Most of us never think of verbal abuse. Some of us don’t even know it exists, or what it is. It is more prevalent than I care to admit, and much harder to acknowledge or admit. But often times, words leave bigger scars than physical blows. We all need to be aware that the words that leave our mouths can damage others. Something we may think is no big deal can really destroy a person. A simple statement on our part may, in fact, alter someone’s life. I know in my own marriage hearing things like “are you going to eat that”  or “you need to go the gym more” or “she is prettier than you” or “I could go home with any woman here, why would I want to go home with you” did so much damage to my heart and my self-worth.  But that doesn’t even compare to what others experience. My friend Karen is just one example. Here is her story.

I am sure most of us have heard the saying “sticks and stone may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”  What a lie!  I would take the physical abuse I took from the man who said he loved me over the mental and verbal abuse he dealt out every single day. Why? Bruises heal, but the hateful, hurtful words still linger with me today.