Tiny Buddha

Tag: ex husband

  • 4 Lessons I Learned from Leaving a Toxic Relationship

    4 Lessons I Learned from Leaving a Toxic Relationship

    “It takes strength and self-love to say goodbye to what no longer serves you.” ~Rumi

    I promised myself at a young age that when I got married, I was not going to get divorced, no matter what! My parents had divorced when I was five, and I knew that I didn’t want to put my kids through what I’d experienced as a child who grew up in a “broken” family. I wanted my kids to know what it was like to live in a house with both their parents present and involved in their lives.

    So, when I found myself seven years into my marriage, sitting in a therapist’s office wondering if my husband and I were going to make it, I had no idea what I would be facing if I had to navigate life, let alone parenthood, without my husband. How does one break free from emotional and verbal abuse without it permanently affecting who they are as a person?!

    All I could think about at the time was my three beautiful girls, who deserved to have happy parents in a happy home living a happy life!

    From the outside, our lives looked that way, but our reality was nothing of the sort. The yelling, the name-calling, the threatening, the withholding, and the verbal and emotional abuse were taking their toll on all of us until one day, after five years of trying to make it work, I had had enough.

    The night I will never forget, almost twelve years into my marriage, we were all sitting at the dinner table, and like every time before, with no warning, a switch flipped, and the yelling began. But this time, I packed up my things and I left. And this would be the last time I would leave; after the three attempts prior, I was lured back with promises that everything would be okay and we would make it work, but this time was different. I didn’t go back.

    Okay, I was out; now what?! Little did I know that leaving would be the easy part. Some of the most trying and challenging times of my life happened after I was able to finally break free. But I didn’t know that learning how to love myself again and believe that I was worthy of good things was going to be the real challenge, especially after what I’d faced.

    The storms that happened once my marriage was over would shake me to my core. One particular time was when my middle daughter, only thirteen at the time, was able to find her way down to Tennessee from central Wisconsin without anyone knowing where she was or if we’d be able to find her.

    My daughter despised me for breaking up her family and wanted to get as far away from me as she possibly could, even if it meant entrusting strangers to drive her in a car for fifteen hours while they made their way to Tennessee. Waking up the next morning after she vanished and reading the “goodbye” note she’d left on her bed, I honestly did not know if I would ever see her again.

    To say I was in panic mode would be an understatement for how I felt during the next twenty-four-plus hours while we—my parents, my friends, my siblings, the police, and even strangers—attempted to find my daughter. I can think of no worse feeling in the world than that of a mother who is on the verge of or has just lost her son or daughter. I wondered, “How can this be happening? Haven’t we already been through enough?”

    Exactly twenty-six hours after my daughter had found her way into that stranger’s vehicle, I received a phone call from a deputy in a county in Tennessee saying they had found her. Thank you, Lord, was all I could think—someone is watching over us!

    I realized then it was time to figure out how to love myself again and heal from my divorce so I could be more present for my daughters.

    Are there things I would have done differently? Absolutely! But you can’t go back and change the past; the only thing you can do is learn from it and do your best not to make the same mistakes going forward.

    The best thing I did for myself was sign up for a subscription that gave me access to hundreds of workout programs I could do from home (since I was the sole provider of my daughters at the time). As I completed the programs, I saw improvements in not only my body but also my frame of mind, which pushed me to want to be better and do better with each one after that—not just for me but for my girls also!

    Being able to push through tough workouts and seeing that I could do hard things that produced positive results helped build my confidence at a time when I needed it most! This newfound confidence boost encouraged me to keep pushing forward, even in the eye of the multitude of storms I was facing, which allowed me to start to heal.

    The workouts were just the beginning for me. Ultimately, they led me on a path that would help me discover how to love myself again.

    When I left my now ex-husband, I had no idea what I would be faced with until I was finally able to break free for good. But now that I have been out and have been able to transform my mind and love my life again, I realize just how incredibly powerful some of these lessons that I’ve learned truly are.

    1. Forgiving is the first step to healing. 

    A lot of people believe that forgiveness means you are condoning someone’s behavior, but that is not at all what you are doing when you forgive. Forgiveness is intentionally letting go of negative feelings, like resentment or anger, toward someone who has done you wrong.

    Choosing to forgive when you’re ready means that you are making a conscious and deliberate choice to release the feeling of resentment and/or vengeance toward the person who has harmed you, regardless of whether or not you believe that person deserves your forgiveness.

    You forgive to allow yourself to move on from the event, which also allows you to fully heal from it.

    2. Mindset matters.

    Your thoughts shape your reality, so if you think you don’t deserve good things, you won’t be able to attract them into your life.

    When in a toxic environment, negativity has a way of clouding your judgment, which makes breaking free more difficult. But once you leave and start focusing on a growth mindset and optimism, everything changes. When you focus on the good, the good gets better. This is the foundation of how I rebuilt my life after breaking free from the toxicity of my marriage.

    3. It’s crucial to listen to your gut.

    Ignoring your intuition leads to situations you regret more times than not. Learning to trust my inner voice, the one that whispers to me when something isn’t right, has been my greatest guide to making better choices.

    4. Positive change starts with self-love.

    Self-love is not just a buzzword. It’s the armor you wear against people who try to break you down. It’s telling yourself that you deserve better, even if you don’t fully believe it yet, and taking action to create better, even if it’s just one tiny step.

    For me, self-love started when I left my abusive ex-husband and then grew when I started taking care of my body. Sometimes even the smallest act of self-care can help us feel more confident in our worth.

    If you’ve been in an abusive relationship too, remember—you can rebuild and thrive in a life you love!

  • How My Narcissist Ex Was a Catalyst to My Healing and Self-Love

    How My Narcissist Ex Was a Catalyst to My Healing and Self-Love

    “It’s okay to let go of those who couldn’t love you. Those who didn’t know how to. Those who failed to even try. It’s okay to outgrow them, because that means you filled the empty space in you with self-love instead. You’re outgrowing them because you’re growing into you. And that’s more than okay, that’s something to celebrate.” ~Angelica Moone

    I thought I had married the love of my life. I had never felt a connection so strong before. I was sure he was my soul mate, and I thoroughly believed he was my twin flame—my one and only.

    I can’t even begin to tell you the horror that started to unfold after we got married. The accusations that my beloved other started to hurtle at me. That I didn’t care about him and I didn’t love him enough. He was convinced I was having affairs behind his back, and conspiring against him, and was clearly out to take his money.

    I was not just perplexed by this, I was shattered. How could he not see that I loved him unwaveringly, without question, and that I never even considered having eyes for anyone else? And trying to take his money? That was incredibly bizarre because I discovered, contrary to his initial proclamations, that he hardly had any.

    Yet I didn’t care. I loved him. I tried to love him, and I was convinced that my love would be enough—that he would know that I loved him, and we would soon return to the comfort and the knowing that our love for each other was real, safe, and forever.

    No matter how much I tried to love him, things were spiraling out of control. I couldn’t be five minutes late from the supermarket without suffering his wrath. Life outside of “us” was getting smaller and smaller.

    If I looked out the window, I was thinking the wrong thing or looking at something the wrong way. If I didn’t take his hand when we were together, I was advertising that I was single. Visiting friends or family or working outside of the property became as possible as flying to the moon.

    Eventually it happened: I stopped trying to love us back to unity and fought back. Initially to try to stop the despair that he didn’t trust me, then for my literal sanity, freedom, and autonomy. Without these things I was losing my soul.

    None of it worked. As my attachment to him became more panicked and devastated and I was losing control of my reactions, his abuse accelerated, and then I realized I was coming close to losing my life.

    I had complicated post-traumatic stress disorder. I shook. I sweat. I couldn’t eat. I could barely sleep. Everything and everyone I cared about was turning away from me.

    I had married a narcissist. I didn’t realize it at first, because back then, fifteen years ago, not many people were talking about narcissism.

    I had always believed that narcissists were arrogant people who were “up on themselves.” I had no idea that they were people who presented in our lives offering the love, total acceptance, validation, and “life” that we thought we had wanted our entire life. I had no idea that someone like this could enter my life and they would feel so right to fall in love with.

    The day that the word “narcissist” popped into my head, and I googled it, I nearly fell off my chair. I was ticking every point that was so “him” off a list of traits and behaviors. I was in shock.

    Entitled—tick. Can’t take personal responsibility for wrongdoings—tick. Has hair-trigger reactions to things that most adults don’t get bent out of shape about—tick. Argues in circles in ways that make your head spin—tick. Pathologically lies while looking you straight in the eye—tick … and on and on the list went. I needed to get to the punch line: Could a person like this be fixed? Could they get well from this disease?

    I searched high and low; I turned over every possibility and read all the research I could find. The answer was a flat “no.” Then, believing there is always a solution, I was determined to heal him, to fix our marriage, to return to the dream of the “one and only” that I just knew he must have been.

    It didn’t turn out well. In fact, it turned out terribly. Now I was experiencing things I never believed I could or would: Mental and emotional abuse that had me curled up in a corner. Physical abuse that had me fearing for my life. Financial abuse that was ripping my life to shreds. At times, for self-preservation, I had to escape. Eventually, I left him and relocated.

    But I wasn’t getting better away from him. I was totally unprepared for feeling so haunted. By the fact that he was in the home I had bought, seeing other women and seemingly having a great life while I was so empty, devastated, and traumatized that it hurt to breathe, it hurt to live, and I thought that I was going to die.

    I returned to him countless times. Either because he would contact me and promise to change, or I missed him so much I couldn’t function.

    Every time I returned, it got worse. The makeup periods were briefer, and the explosions more damaging and horrifying. Then, I broke. I had a complete psychotic and adrenal breakdown. I was told I would never heal from it and would need three anti-psychotics to be able to function, but I would never be the same again. I was told I now had permanent brain and nervous system damage.

    Of course, he didn’t care. He did what he had always done when I needed him—he discarded me. It was then that I decided to die. So, I started trying to formulate how to do this in the kindest way for my family and son.

    However, my soul had a different idea for me. A voice in my head kept insisting, “No, there is another way.” I thought it was just my madness speaking. I argued with it, but it wouldn’t let up. In desperation I walked into my bathroom, fell on the mat, put my hands in the air, and shrieked, “Help me, I can’t do this anymore!”

    In that moment the most incredible thing happened. It was like my head parted and the blinding truth entered me. I had never known such clarity in my entire life. Maybe you have to be “out of your mind” to really know the truth?

    The voice in my head told me that my husband was a catalyst. He was never meant to grant me my “self” and my “life”; rather he had come into my life to show me the parts of myself that were unhealed, that I hadn’t healed yet, to generate my true self and true life.

    A whirl of incidents and truths flashed into my mind. The ways I was so hard on myself and was always needing more, saying to myself, “Melanie, I can’t even like you (let alone love you) if you don’t get your to-do list all done, if you don’t lose ten pounds, if you don’t look like this or that … “ and how he had treated me the same—as not good enough, right, or acceptable.

    How I had always kept busy rather than “be” with myself, care, validate, and love myself. How I had terminally self-avoided and self-abandoned my inner being, and how I had yelled at him, “You don’t even know who I really am!” yet had never taken the time to have a real relationship with myself.

    On and on, the realizations came hard and fast. And I knew, he hadn’t treated me how I had treated him; he had treated me how I had really felt about and treated myself.

    I knew that if I let go of him, healed, and came home to my inner self, I would recover. I would save my sanity, life, and soul. I knew I could heal, get better, and do better. I knew that finally my life and love could be real and work.

    I knew this because in this divine intervention experience, I had been thrust into a vision in the future where I was healed and whole, and I had felt it for real. I saw who I was. I saw what I had and most importantly, I felt who I had become.

    He wasn’t the healer of my wounds; he was the messenger of them instead.

    I let go. I turned inward. I healed.

    This I now know at the highest level of truth: A twin flame, as the nemesis who reflects back to us our unhealed parts in intensely painful ways, offers the greatest love of all—the returning home to ourselves. From there my life has blossomed, from this true relationship with myself, life, and others in ways that I could never have previously imagined.

    I am love. I am self-acceptance. I am free.