I want to make sure to preface this post. I got a lot of questions from the last post about being told I was bitter and people who'd made me feel bad for not being over things. People said, "Was that me?" There were a few very close people to me during the entire downfall and there were times that we would talk about how long I'm going to be upset about this because they were afraid I was crossing over into Bittertown. Aside from them, though, the comments I got that I am referring to came from online support groups and well-meaning acquaintances.
So - your best friends, your kids, your siblings - suddenly they find themselves in the middle of a divorce. In my opinion, there are two ways to have a divorce: the one where both partners saw it coming, discussed it, tried to work things out and parted ways respectfully and amicably; and then all the rest. I recently polled a single women group on Facebook about why they got divorced. Out of 175 women who responded, 7 said their divorce ended respectfully and mutually. The rest answered that it was because they were abusive (verbally, mentally or physically), their spouse cheated, either over time or had an affair and left them for another person or their spouse left suddenly and didn't really know why.
In my opinion, consoling people who are divorcing where both parties have mutually decided to divorce is much different than the latter. In this situation, which I've honestly seen very rarely, most of the time, friends and family more than likely know there are problems and that this couple has been trying to work things out for a while, but couldn't. The divorce is sad but doesn't come as a big shock and no one has done anything necessarily wrong to other, they just couldn't make it work. It's much easier for loved ones to still continue to be a part of the other's lives, grandparents can still be a part of their grandkids' lives, there is still a respect factor for both parties and a friendship can be grown that allows for healing.
In my situation, my marriage ended suddenly and obviously, because my ex found someone else. I began looking for resources that could help my family and friends know how to console me. There were so many times I heard, "I just don't even know what to say." Our situation was so crazy and unbelievable that there were many, many times people were just speechless. I also tried to find resources that could help family and friends heal from this as well. Obviously, divorce doesn't just effect the people in the marriage. Divorce is a ripple effect that reaches out to grandparents, siblings, in laws and extended family. All of those people are losing something by the divorce as well, but there are no resources online that talk about how to deal with that situation. In our situation, no one saw it coming, Not only was I left behind but almost everyone in our lives that we were friends with were also left behind. It's like anything that was a part of our life together had "cooties" and he couldn't bear to be around it. I wasn't the only one who suffered loss, my friends and family did as well. Not just loss of time with Avery, but the loss of a brother in law, a son in law and a friend. I suffered the loss of the family I gained through marriage.
So, how do you handle it?
1. Grieve the loss of the relationship.
Often, it is our instinct to think that the loss of this marriage wasn't mine, so why would I grieve it? When you are involved in that marriage, either by way of family, friends, extended family or parents, you have lost someone who means something to you. It is OK to grieve and you should. The amount of grief you experience will likely reflect how involved you were in that marriage to begin with. If you were close to your daughter in law, you are going to have a lot to process. If the split was unexpected, your grief might even mirror the grief of the spouse who was left. You will not only grieve the marriage, but also grieve the loss for that spouse. The 5 stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Just as the spouse left to deal with the emotional fallout, you will need to grieve as well.
You might even find yourself in a special kind of grief because your son, brother, father, sister, daughter, etc. is making terrible decisions all along the way that are making the situation more painful and difficult along the way. We will get to what to do about this in a second.
2. Journal your feelings
Writing your feelings down with a pen and paper are incredibly important and very therapeutic. When you are faced with a bunch of feelings about a marriage of two people you love coming to an end, you have a lot of thoughts. What I found was that people outside of the situation began examining their own marriages and comparing. "If this could happen to Jason and Jenna, it could happen to anyone!" was something I heard a lot. It sparked conversations among married couples about how the other person would handle it if one day they became unhappy and decided to leave. This can pretty quickly spiral out of control if you let it - so write down your thoughts. Write down your concerns. Do you have questions to ask your spouse? Are you angry about anything that is going on in your own marriage? Are you angry at your son/daughter/brother, etc who left the marriage? Journaling is a very effective exercise and helps you to understand what you are really upset about.
3. Say something - Even if You Don't Know What the Right Thing is to say.
If you want to truly hurt someone you love during a time of crisis such as this - go silent. That happened to me by two people whom I loved. There is nothing worse than being left by your spouse - then being forgotten by your loved ones. My rule of thumb is...when you are thinking about someone, tell them you are thinking about them. Even if it's just to say, "I'm thinking about you." Avoiding a loved one who has been hurt, especially when the person doing the hurting is your family member, is the absolute best way to tell that person, "We don't care about you."
4. Do NOT give them advice.
I know some people in my life who can attest to my relunctence to receive advice during this time. There are times for advice and words of wisdom. But those times need to present themselves appropriately. Even if you've been there, even if your situation was similar - hold off on the advice until it is asked for. One great question I personally appreciate is "Do you want my advice? Do you want me to hate him with you? Or do you just want me to listen?" Some days, all I wanted was to vent. There was nothing anyone could do to make me feel better at that moment. There was nothing that could be done to fix it at that moment. I just wanted to be angry. Other days, I needed to do something but didn't know what that was - so I would ask for advice. Other days, I needed people to support me and commiserate with me. Every day with a person going through grief is different, so what they are needing is different.
I think a great scene of consoling a loved one in anguish is the funeral scene in Steel Magnolias.
4. Do not - and I repeat do NOT - blame the person who was left.
Something that made me sick to my stomach are things I heard from other women when their husbands left them. One woman told me "My mother-in-law told me that men who are happy in their marriages don't cheat." I was so angry for that wife I wanted to scream. Are you kidding me right now?!? I have a whole other blog post topic about our culture and how we've come to treat the victim of adultery and how she/he is expected to handle themselves....but I will say that statement right there is straight from a 1950s pamphlet on "Being a Good Wife So Your Husband Doesn't Stray."
A spouse who is unhappy in their marriage has a variety of options available to them to remedy their situation. One would be to seek counseling themselves, as their unhappiness just might possibly come from within themselves (more than likely the case.) Another would be to talk to their spouse about their unhappiness and be honest about their feelings (what a concept!) Even a third might be to enter marriage counseling or a support group at church. If all other options fail, they end their marriage in the respectful way in which it began, leaving their spouse with loose ends tied, financial obligations met, children taken care of and relationships with family members still in tact. If their spouse is still choosing to be ugly about things, well, that's their issue. It takes two people to get married and two people for that marriage to end.
It does NOT take two people to have an affair and leave your family. Well, it does, but those two people aren't the ones married to each other. It takes one very selfish, very cowardly, very immature person to leave their marriage this way, to walk away from their spouse in the most disrespectful way imaginable and to do this to their children. It is NEVER the fault of the betrayed to take responsibility for their spouse's actions. I did get told on a few occasions, "You played your part in this too." I even had someone say to me at one time, "I'm beginning to have more sympathy for why Jason left you in the first place." Just disgusting. Don't be that person. Seriously, Don't be that person.
4. Have patience.
It takes two people a long time to decide to spend their life together. Years. It's going to take some time for your loved one to accept the new reality of their lives when their marriage ends. It is so hard to see people in pain. It's so hard to hear, for the 2,000th time, someone be upset and cry and be mad. It can get frustrating when that loved one isn't saying or doing things that are helping themselves. I had a friend explain watching me from the outside looking in as looking at a fish tank, with me a fish swimming with a shark that I couldn't see well. They can see what is happening fine. They can tell me where to swim to get myself to safety, but I'm swimming with my own limited sight and instincts. I really thought that summed it up well. However, you must have patience with that fish, so to speak. Feelings don't always come and go as you want them and grief is a tricky business. Just be patient. There will come a time when that fish finds that tunnel that leads him to a new, bigger, more beautiful tank with another big, beautiful fish. You just have to wait for that fish to be ready.
5. Say Something If Your Loved One Is Scaring You.
I know I say don't give advice, but do intervene if your loved one is handling this in ways that seem dangerous to themselves, to their financial well being, or to their mental health. Even if you are overcome with grief, staying in bed for days and days, missing work and not taking care of yourself or your kids is not healthy. If they are saying things that seem dire, get them help right away. If it has been months and months and months, and their grief isn't on the upswing but seems to be getting worse, there might be a sign of a more serious issue, like depression. Encourage counseling from the very beginning. My church provided me with a bank of sessions to a counselor which helped me so much. There are free resources all around us that can be utilized where mental health is concerned.
6. As an Acquaintance, Choose Your Words Carefully and Know You Might Not Receive a Response Back Right Away
I had, and have, so many people who want to offer me words of encouragement and I appreciate it more than you know. I loved hearing, "I'm thinking about you," "I'm praying for you," and I loved compliments. I craved hearing people tell me nice things about myself because there are lots of days your mind (Satan, really) wants you to feel like a worthless person who was the blame for the situation. I loved hearing I was beautiful, I was smart, I was strong, all of those things. I might not have always believed them, but I remembered them and went back to them a lot. Tell that person great things about who they are, who they are in Christ and what you love about them.
I would steer clear from saying things like "You are better off," "We always thought he was a jerk, anyway," "You will find someone better," "Your life will be better," etc. Here's the thing. When a person is left like I was, there is nothing more humiliating in the world. Hearing other people thought he was a jerk makes you only feel stupider, like, what's wrong with me I didn't see that? When you say you are better off, well, my life I just left was pretty great and I'm not ready to think about my new life right now. And definitely don't say "You will find someone better." The last thing I was thinking about doing was dating. And I was in such pain, I wasn't exactly rushing to find the next man who could do that to me again. Plus - guess what. It's OK to just be single for right now. If God brings another man into my life, great. But for right now, it's OK if I'm alone and it's OK for me to just work on me and finding my new identity as a single mom. Again - all of these things come from people's own experience and perspective. They aren't meant to be malicious at all - what they are really saying is, "I was better off." "I found someone better." "My life was better after my own divorce." You know what I mean? They are meaning to inspire hope. Just realize that person might not be ready to hear all of those things right now.
Also keep in mind - sending your thoughts is great. Always do that. Just realize that person might not be interested in starting a conversation right then. And that's OK.
And it's always OK to say things like this: "This situation really sucks and I'm so sorry." "He/she was stupid to ever leave you (yeah, he was)." "Can I take you for coffee?" "What do you need right now?" "This happened to me too..." (I really found a lot of comfort in hearing other women's stories. I was surprised by some of them. It helped me to see, visually, that this person went through the same thing and look at her now!)
6. If It Is Your Son, Daughter, Brother, Sister, Friend, Etc Who Is Acting A Fool, It Is Your Right To Say Something About Their Behavior.
Not everyone is going to agree with me on this one and that's OK. But we have a real problem in this culture of "letting people be" and not holding people accountable for their actions, in terms of this issue. If we have a bully and the victim on the bullying - our culture says, "That bully should be held accountable for their actions." We do not say, "Well sure, we saw that bully punch that kid in the face and hold them down and continue to pummel them, but we really need to get both sides of the story before we decide how to proceed." No, we say, "Hey bully, your actions are not OK, stop doing this right now or you will be expelled."
For some reason, we've all decided that leaving your family for someone else is no one else's problem but those two people. It's a personal matter and others need to stay out of it. But it's not just the problem of the two people, especially if there are kids involved. I hate that there are no longer any legal or financial consequences that come from adultery. 50 years ago, it was illegal. And now, you can literally get a divorce, even without another person's consent, in 60 days or less.
You can't, as a loved one, control what that person is doing. You can't make that person stop their actions. But here is what you can say: "We know you are lying. We know you are cheating. It is not OK and we are upset with you." You have the right to discuss how their actions have affected you and how it's changed your life, because it has. This divorce took away someone you loved from your family. This divorce means you get to see kids less. This divorce means you might have to accept someone into your life who helped hurt someone else. If that spouse doesn't want to hear it or it makes them upset - TOUGH. This is the decision they made when they did what they did. It's the consequences of their actions. Of course they don't want to hear what they've done is wrong, that's why they slithered off in hiding and did what they did in the first place - to avoid seeing or hearing the consequences of their actions.
This really goes for both parties - things I said crossed lines at times and I needed someone to hold me accountable for my mouth, as well. Just because this happened to me doesn't give me the right to treat others poorly. I needed to be brought back a time or two, or ten, as well.
Above all, just show compassion for your loved one. Be there for them. They will definitely appreciate it.
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