Episode 3 - The Divorce Awakens

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We separated on 5/5. My wife filed for D on 6/8. It’s 7/19. I’m still not fine with it. I’m still not ‘detached’. Should I be by now? If you read my journals you will see that even a couple of days ago, I am trying to reach out to my wife with some emotional message asking to have a ‘talk’ about our relationship. For all I know, my wife may look at my as the scum of the earth and these messages from me of ‘please let’s just talk this out like rational people’, may just seem laughable. I’m certainly not getting any response at all, other than ‘your kids want to say hi to you’. My feelings are very conflicted, and that’s the main reason I’m having trouble moving forward with this divorce situation.

I still have hopes for reconciliation, I keep thinking one day she will want to talk about things, or I’ll say or do the right thing to open up some better communication between us. If I didn’t want to work things out with my wife, or if I truly had no hope for reconciliation, it would be easier for me to deal with everything - I could just mechanically go through the legal procedures and my coparenting duties and none of it would phase me. Instead, since I have hopes for reconciliation - the legal communications and meetings fill me with dread and anxiety - because they are a sign that the divorce is moving forward, even though I am resistant to it. And dealing with my coparenting duties and communications around the kids becomes a heartbreaking ordeal - because I care about those kids, and I want us to be a family again.

If there were only a way to turn off these feelings so that I no longer care if we reconcile or not, life would be much easier for me to deal with - I would be better able to face the every day pressures of career and life on top of all of the legal stuff regarding the divorce. Right now, I feel conflicted and confused and tormented about everything. I meditate, I talk to people, but I can’t find peace.

This is the only thing I have found that helped, it is a new technique that I found online somewhere to deal with grief. It seemed to work pretty well for me yesterday. You need to break everything down into smaller and smaller increments, whatever allows you to get through the day in a healthy and responsible manner. Instead of thinking - what do I need to get done this week? or what do I need to get done today? Think - I’m going to do XXX for the next hour. Then I’m going to do XXX for the next half hour, then I’m going to do XXX for the following hour. Until you get to the end of the day, hopefully you will look back on a day filled with responsible and healthy activities that will help you to be a better person, with minimal time spent feeling sorry for yourself, obsessing about your divorce situation - or worse, doing something that is harmful to yourself and your situation. Try to be very conscious about living in the present moment, filtering out thoughts about the past or the future.