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.