by Suzanne E. Harrill
Do you ever think about divorce as a
panacea for your problems? If you want to end your
relationship because you have fallen out of love or passion,
found someone new who looks better, do not like the patterns
that showed up once the honeymoon was over, do not like some
of your partner’s traits, married too young or because you
were pregnant, or just plain feel you made the wrong choice,
then you might want to reconsider. Why? You might be missing
opportunities to learn about yourself and grow in awareness.
Even though it is very popular to end a relationship when you
are unhappy, I believe many people leave their relationships
too soon and do not take advantage of the lessons that could
be learned from their partner and the relationship.
By "cleaning house" in your own
consciousness you can actually improve what you experience in
your outer world of relationships, even if your partner
"falls from grace" and you don’t like him/her any
more. Rather than divorce, why not learn ways to transform the
relationship you are already in; that is assuming it is not
abusive to the point of negating your spirit and destroying
you. After considering transforming your relationship, then if
you decide to leave, you will do it with awareness and from a
place of completion, not avoidance. The theme here is to not
fool yourself by leaving behind the perfect milieu in which to
learn about yourself, to heal, and to grow in awareness.
Do you believe divorce is an escape from an
unpleasant situation; or do you believe divorce to be a
successful completion with a partner and that the two of you
have gone as far as you can in learning lessons together? The
way you answer this question is very important and can even
change your interpretation of what you are experiencing in
your current relationship. Many people want a divorce to get
away from their partner, believing that their problems will
disappear. If you talk to people who have chosen divorce and
remarried, you will find it does not solve all their problems.
Many times people repeat the patterns by
attracting a new partner with similar personality traits to
the last partner. You also have to look for the flip side of
the coin, as it deals with the patterns too. For example,
person A may have divorced a dominant, controlling partner the
first time. Vowing to get away from patterns of feeling
powerless, a victim, and dominated, s/he chooses the second
partner with opposite traits. Over time person A becomes the
dominant one, as the second partner turns out to be a
"you-tell-me-what-to-do" person. Issues of power,
control, assertiveness, etc. are still on person A’s agenda
to work through. You still have to live with yourself and you
can only attract people and situations in which you have
something in common, things that resonate with your life
lessons.
There is another way to go about this. Why
not transform your relationship by first enlightening
yourself. Use the current relationship with its issues,
irritations, resistances, and challenges to learn more about
yourself. You can experience the growth from these negative
feeling experiences. Let us look at Anna’s life to explain
further.
Anna is a woman who feels dominated by her
partner’s strong expectations of her care-giving role. She
feels in bondage to this role that she is outgrowing, but
continues to please her partner to avoid conflict. She is
fearful of anger because she grew up in a household with an
angry, abusive father. It is difficult for Anna to risk
rejection or receive criticism from her husband for not
complying. This woman is very unhappy and depressed much of
the time and complains whenever she is with her friends.
Divorce enters her mind often and her friends have sympathy
for her situation and encourage her to leave him. Use your
imagination. What do you see in this woman that needs
attention and awareness? What are the chances Anna will
correct her problems by leaving this man at this time if she
does not work on her own issues? She may even make her life
worse if she leaves, especially if she has young children and
is not able to financially support herself.
If Anna came to me for counseling and
really wanted help, I would encourage her to look at herself
and slow down her fantasy that a divorce would be a panacea
for all her problems. Since she is unaware that many of her
problems started in the dysfunctional family in which she was
raised, she would need to learn some basic principles about
how one is conditioned in childhood and the effects of the
family system. She would benefit from building her self-esteem
and improving her communication skills, as well.
There would be a lot to learn about
relationships and how one’s parents influence one’s choice
of a marriage partner. Anna would be encouraged to look at her
patterns of thinking, learn to update her guiding beliefs, and
see what some of her issues are with regard to power and
authority, anger, being a victim, not feeling loved. It would
be important for her to see how she chose certain patterns of
behavior, such as being a people pleaser, to assure her
survival and to receive love. Over time she would learn about
projection and that it is much easier for her to project her
issues, like anger, onto her partner and let him act it out
for both of them. If she "owned" her own anger, she
could then get a better understanding of her depression and
her compliant personality and she would begin to see areas of
inner conflict that she might be ready to explore more deeply.
Anna would be encouraged to journal write
to help her process her feelings and some of the unaware
choices made in the past. As she educates herself, processes
her pain, and heals herself, she will be able to look at why
she is in this current marriage and what she is learning from
being with this person and in this relationship. She may
realize by looking at the evolution of her family system that
her marriage is better than the one her grandparents and
parents had. For instance, there is no physical abuse in her
marriage and many parts of the relationship and family life
are meeting her basic needs—security needs for sure. Anna
might be able to see that in this relationship she does have
the opportunity to grow in awareness, to build her
self-esteem, and to learn assertiveness and communication
skills. As she works on herself, she will be different around
her partner which will change the dance between them, offering
the path of transformation to both of them.
As this woman no longer thinks of herself
as a victim, she will be able to say, "No," to her
partner and not perceive his reactive anger or criticism as
rejection. She will know her partner is upset for his own
reasons, maybe feelings of insecurity, powerless, and loss of
control, and that she is not responsible for his reactions,
only her own. If her partner's anger or criticism gives her a
problem, Anna will be aware enough now to see this as a
resistance within herself about the changing pattern between
them. She will know to take this piece of the drama that
relates to her issues and go within to heal further her old
pattern of wanting to fall back into her people-pleasing
behavioral pattern.
Eventually Anna will be aware enough to
figure out whether or not her partner is going to do some
inner healing work too, or at least change enough so that the
relationship does not stop her growth and actualizing process.
At this point, it is appropriate to problem-solve and figure
out whether she can still learn and grow by staying in this
relationship or whether it is appropriate to draw it to a
completion. She will have a very different vantage point now
in deciding whether or not to stay in the relationship than
when she started the journey of self-discovery and inner
healing. If she chooses a divorce now, it will be with
awareness and as the result of a completion process.
Freedom from problems in a relationship is
not achieved by getting away from a partner prematurely, but
from learning the life lessons that are presented to you while
in the relationship. If you have been contemplating divorce,
why not consider instead staying and confronting your fears,
uncovering your guiding beliefs, and healing your past until
such time as you complete with your partner. Then you will
truly have the power of choice. You can either move out of the
relationship, confident that you will not repeat the
destructive patterns you experienced when you were unaware, or
you can stay in the relationship transforming it as it unfolds
to new and different horizons. Staying can then be a creative
process as the relationship supports each person to heal their
past, to self-actualize, and to grow into an enlightened,
conscious partnership.
If you feel badly that you left a
relationship prematurely in the past to get away from
confronting your problems and fears, know that you did only
what you could do at the time with your level of awareness. It
serves no purpose to beat yourself up with negative self-talk.
Forgive yourself instead for being unaware. At this point you
might want to make an agreement with yourself to face your
fears and problems in the present, as they will surely show up
again. Issues and patterns of thinking and behaving avoided in
the past repeat themselves in the future, but with different
people. If the divorce was premature, you may even find your
ex-partner will continue to dance with you on some of the
unhealed issues. This is especially true if you have children
together.
In summary, we have looked at the choice
between divorcing and staying in a relationship for
self-awareness and either completion or transforming the
relationship. Consider the value of staying in a relationship
that you feel no longer works or disappoints you. Once you
build awareness and heal a lot of your own issues, you can
better evaluate the choice. A completion with your partner
servers you better in the long run, rather than avoiding or
running from your issues.
From the unpublished manuscript, Becoming
the Person You Always Wanted to Marry.
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