Getting Past Your Breakup

The following stories of my relationships and of my childhood are extreme, but I tell them for you to believe that if I can do it, you can do it. I have a life today that not only is successful but is absolutely joyous. I am healthy, happy, and strong. I’ve done the work that I ask you to do in the following pages. I know that it’s hard, but believe me, it’s so worth it.

When I ended my marriage, I was convinced it was the right thing to do for about twenty-four hours. I had been unhappy for a long time, the fights had become unbearable, and I was convinced he was cheating on me. Although I had lived with my husband’s criticism for years, things grew much worse when my company went bankrupt and I suddenly lost my job.

My boss gave me a good reference, and I tried to think positively in the first few days after the layoff. I edited my résumé, bought an interviewing suit, and researched potential employers. But each night my husband would come home expecting a clean house and a cooked dinner, since I was “home all day doing nothing.” Arguing with him was the last thing I needed, so I put the job search aside and spent the next few days cooking and cleaning. He then took issue with the “simple” meals I made and the fact that his clothes were not washed. When I spent the next day doing laundry and making an elaborate midweek meal, he complained that I wasn’t actively looking for work and barked at me for “playing house.”

This type of no-win situation was nothing new in our relationship, but without my job to distract me, it began to grate on my nerves. I was stressed over money and my professional future and didn’t need someone haranguing me over meals and laundry.

One day I thought I had hit upon the perfect balance. I went on a job interview in the morning and when I came home I waxed the floors. While the floors dried, I picked up the kids from school and brought his favorite take-out food home. I had looked for work, cleaned the house, spent time with the kids, and had a surprise dinner waiting for him. I was sure I had hit the home run of domestic bliss.

He came home that night and pointed out that there were streaks on the floor and accused me of purposely messing up the floors so that he would not “let me” do it again. I was stunned and tried to explain that was not my intention. It reminded me of my mother’s criticism when I was a kid. She said that I purposely screwed things up to shirk my responsibilities. Hearing the same thing, I insisted that was not what happened. He called me a few choice names, and I retaliated with names of my own. As had become the norm, the argument grew violent and we each threatened to end things once and for all.

The next day I told him it was over and he had to leave. He scoffed at the idea and blamed me for what had transpired on the previous night. Whenever our arguments escalated into violence, it was my “fault.” Most of the time I believed him, but this time I didn’t care whose fault it was. I just wanted it to end.

I packed a box of his things and left it on the kitchen table with a note telling him to take it and leave. Instead of arguing with me, he grabbed the box and stormed out. I felt an immediate sense of relief—I was so glad to be alone.

But in the morning I could barely lift my head off the pillow. At first I thought I was sick, but soon realized there was nothing physically wrong. Forcing myself out of bed to get the kids to school, I felt more than a little sad. As the day wore on, I tried to stay busy to brush off an encroaching feeling of doom. With each passing hour, I found myself increasingly glancing at the phone. By the early afternoon, I was checking it every few minutes to be sure it had a dial tone.

As the boys played, I arranged some chicken in a pan. Instead of my usual jeans and T-shirt, I put on a skirt and a blouse, applied a thick coat of mascara, and brushed my hair up to one side. I secretly hoped that he would come home and see a cooked meal, a clean house, a lovely wife, and quiet children and want to move back in. What? I had tried to get out of this relationship for a long time. Why was I thinking these bizarre thoughts?

For the next few days, he didn’t call or come over, and I stopped eating and sleeping. I felt dazed, anxious, depressed, and obsessed with thoughts of him. Instead of concentrating on our recent battles, I relived the good times of our relationship. Missing him desperately and realizing that I had made a horrible mistake, I tried to get in touch with him so we could talk. He didn’t answer any of my messages.

One afternoon he walked through the door unexpectedly, looking for a few things and asking about the boys. The conversation started off slowly, but then I blurted out, “Please come home.” I cried and begged him to come back. Unmoved, he sneered at me and turned to leave. I ran after him, trying to wrap my arms around him, imploring him not to go. He shoved me hard and walked out the door. I sat on the stairs, humiliated and weeping uncontrollably. My life was over if I could not find a way to make him come back.

In the morning I was determined to clean the house, find a new job, and cook an exquisite dinner. Instead of asking him to return, I would just show him that I meant everything I said. I would coax him by being a good wife, a good mother, and a good earner. Bounding out of bed, this was the day to start my life over and get my husband back.

I fed the boys, got them off to school, and then it was time to tackle the house. Everything looked clean, but I was going to make it sparkle and shine.

After I washed the boys’ breakfast dishes, I pulled a new yellow sponge from its cellophane, dipped it in cleaner, and proceeded to scrub. As I moved the sponge across the kitchen counter, it occurred to me that it was already clean. Growing up, I would clean the house from top to bottom to please my mother, but inevitably she would find the one thing that was out of place or the one corner that was messy. It had been the same way since I married my husband. So now I asked myself, “How clean is clean enough?” And the answer coming back was, “I have no idea.”

As I scrubbed, tears began streaming down my cheeks. “Is this clean enough? Is this good enough?” My mutterings turned into rants and the rants turned into screams, “When is it clean enough? When is it good enough? When am I good enough?” Then, suddenly, I collapsed on the floor.

I was physically unable to move under the weight of the realization that I had no idea who I was or what I wanted. I didn’t know what “clean enough” was and I didn’t even know if I liked everything “clean enough.” I had known families who were perfectly content with messy houses and no one was punished or castigated for it. Maybe I wanted to be one of those people. Maybe I wanted to be someone who really didn’t care either way. Maybe I cared but wanted to have a housekeeper clean for me. But here I was, scrubbing a spotless countertop not because it really needed to be clean, but because I was trying to win approval from people who had never really approved of me.

Suddenly I was propelled backward to my first memory at age three or four: waking up from a nightmare where the “bad people” were taking me away. As a foster child, I would dream that evil creatures in dark garments were grabbing me out of my bed.

Growing up, I heard many rumblings suggesting that my foster family would not be able to adopt me. I also visited with my birth mother occasionally and met two of my brothers and played with the oldest, Edward. I couldn’t figure out whether I would be better off with my birth family or my foster family. I didn’t feel as if I belonged in either family and waited for cues from others as to what I should do and where I should go.

One day, when I was seven, I walked into the visiting room at the Catholic Charities office. My mother sat on a chair, my youngest brother next to her, and Edward played in the corner. I went over and sat next to him, and he silently offered me one of his toys. We didn’t talk but smiled at each other now and again. His eyes were a little sad, and he seemed like a kindred spirit. I had no idea that would be the last time I would see him. Shortly thereafter, my mother relinquished me for adoption.

After years of traveling to the Catholic Charities office to see my mother, I spent the last subway ride away from there imagining my life out of the limbo of foster care. When the papers were signed, I was enthusiastically looking forward to being a “normal” American kid. In fact, we went to dinner that night to celebrate the beginning of my new life. Born at the age of eight! I was thrilled.

But the bubble burst shortly thereafter. All was not well at home. My adoptive father was a drinker, and when my mother smelled alcohol on him she would begin to rage. When he would not react to her anger, she would threaten to drown herself in the East River or lock the bathroom door and say she was going to swallow all the pills in the medicine cabinet. I would listen in horror as my adoptive mother—the only one who had been there for me—swore that she was going to kill herself. Even when there were not dramatic threats of suicide, the arguments would go on for hours until he walked out of the house. She would turn her wrath on us, and we would scramble for cover or try to make things look “nice” in the house so she would stop being so angry.

We did also have some good times when my parents were in sync. Forgetting about the horrible fights, we would go to movies, or out to eat, or spend a night at home playing cards. But soon enough my father would start drinking, my mother’s shouts would pierce the calm, and there would be pandemonium once again. By the time I was ten, I had learned that a nice night was really just a pause in the fighting. By the time I was twelve, I had learned that nothing was as it appeared to be. By the time I was fourteen, I really didn’t know much of anything.

The influence of my parents and my early experiences was soon evident in my teenage attractions to boys who were either abusive like my mother or absent like my father. By age eighteen, I was in a relationship that was not only abusive, but potentially lethal: When he drank, there was a good chance he might kill me. Incidents in the relationship included several black eyes, being choked until I blacked out, and being locked in a closet for two days. After he let me out of the closet, I tried to take off down the street, and he attempted to run me down with my own car. My life, bad as it had always been, had officially disintegrated into a horror movie.

Finally, I got out and moved safely away from him. Shortly thereafter, I reunited with a friend of mine, the man who would be my first husband. Once again I was looking for the elusive “normal” life and whatever the thing was that would turn me into a normal person. I thought that if only someone loved me enough, I could be normal and happy.

As I stared up at the ceiling, I began to realize that I had held on to my dead marriage to avoid this parade of awful memories. The chaotic patterns of my relationship—the cyclical breaking up and making up—kept me from dealing with all the abandonment, abuse, and grief. Into the void created by our separation and the loss of my job came this pile of horrible thoughts, feelings, memories, and unfinished business. I couldn’t deal with this enormous pile, this daunting task. I needed help. And fast. I called a therapist and babbled my desperation into the phone, and although she was booked for weeks, she told me to come in the next day.

Having arrived almost an hour early, I sat in the parking lot, chilled to the bone and wondering if I was making the right move. Finally, I went in at the appointed hour. The therapist was small, thin, and young with a turned-up nose, perky smile, and strawberry blonde hair pulled up into a swinging ponytail. I wondered what in the world this little person could do for me. She motioned to the chair across from her and asked me to tell her why I had come. My voice quivered and grew small as I recounted how wrong I had been to end my marriage. In between wracking sobs, I talked for a half hour. Then she stopped me and asked what was wrong with my face.

My life was falling apart and she was worried about my face? At first I tried to ignore her and go on to something else but she kept commenting on my appearance. My clothes were messy; my hair was stringy and kept falling in my broken-out face. When I wouldn’t answer her because I didn’t know how, she said, matter-of-factly, that what she saw before her was a person with no self-worth and no self-esteem. Not low self-esteem, but no self-esteem.

I told her I didn’t care about my self-esteem; I just wanted my marriage back. Recounting how much I wanted the separation but then how I caved in and everything was now wrong, I howled, “Tell me what to do!”

For a moment she was silent. Then she leaned forward and said, “This reaction sounds like fear of abandonment.”

Fear of abandonment.

I had never heard those words before, but instinctively I knew that “fear of abandonment” summed up everything that had been wrong my whole life. And if there was a term for my condition, perhaps there was also a cure for it. I still wasn’t sure of her, but I was willing to hear more. She gave me some books on trauma, abuse, codependency, and alcoholic family systems. Even though I was skeptical that these books held any answers, I promised to look at them.

Reading was painful, yet amazing. I had never read any self-help books before and had no idea that any would speak to what was broken in me. After being a foster child and an adoptee, I always felt like the odd person in every crowd—something my therapist would define as “terminal uniqueness.” For the first time in my life, I felt hope and realized that I might actually be able to fix things I had thought were permanently broken.

It also never occurred to me that my husband was part of our problem. I was still operating under the assumption that everything wrong with our marriage was my fault. My therapist would later explain to me that “water seeks its own level” and that your partner’s flaws and issues usually go hand in hand with your own. A person chooses a partner with a similar degree of “brokenness” and does a dance of dysfunction where they both know the steps. Therefore, one person cannot be so much healthier than the other. Healthy people do not dance with unhealthy people.

Still, I fervently believed that if I could find something in these books that resonated with my husband, I would connect with the man I loved, the father of my children, and bring him back to us.

So I would read the books and write him letters afterward. Sometimes he would get angry over a letter. Other times he would be sweet about it and we’d have long, dramatic talks that usually resulted in our falling into bed. Sometimes he’d come over and we’d both be confused and cry together. Other times we’d have screaming matches with name-calling and occasional violence. We were a mess, but every time we interacted, I hoped that whatever had happened would bring the separation to an end. I was still waiting for someone else to end my uncertainty.

Therapy was not helping to put my marriage back together. My therapist encouraged me to stop having contact with my husband except where the children were concerned. She encouraged me to journal and write letters to him that I would not send. She also encouraged me to look at my entire life and see all of the abuse, abandonment, and blame by others. If I wanted to stop the cycle of abuse and raise healthy children, I had to look at my entire life, figure out what had gone wrong, and fix it.

To do that, I had to go down into the abyss and face the pain.

The first month was the darkest time in my life, and I didn’t think I was going to make it. Once the lid popped off, I realized I had opened an excruciatingly painful Pandora’s box of loss and grief. It was hard to think that any good could come from such an agonizing task. To make matters worse, my husband was now being open about his relationship with a coworker, and I found a love letter from her in his car.

One day he came over to visit the boys when I was just getting in from work. I saw them playing in the backyard and went inside to change my shoes. The next thing I knew he was standing there, yelling at me for not saying hello. I didn’t know how to respond. I sat there, still putting on my shoes and not answering him. He grew angrier, marched across the room, and slapped me in the face.

I didn’t react, but quietly and firmly said, “Get out.” The next day I saw a lawyer and finally filed for divorce and a restraining order. He wanted to challenge the restraining order, so we set a court date.

I knew he wanted the showdown-in-court date to intimidate me. He was probably thinking I would not go through with it, and the old me would not have. The only problem was that I hadn’t ever stood up for myself and I wasn’t sure I could do it. When the day came, as I walked up the courthouse steps, I was shaking and holding on to the railing to keep from falling over.

When our case was called, my lawyer put me on the stand and questioned me about the abuse, incident by incident. At first my voice was barely audible, but then I remembered my therapist’s voice: No one has the right to abuse another person. I had never known that, always thinking that I made everyone do what they did because I was such a screwup.

As I repeated my therapist’s words in my head like a mantra, something inside of me shifted. Deep down, I knew she had told me the truth. My entire persona changed; my voice grew stronger and louder. I turned and looked my husband in the eye.

To my astonishment, his lawyer whispered to him and then stood up to withdraw their objection to the restraining order. The judge said I could be seated and granted the permanent restraining order.

I practically floated down the stairs and out of the courthouse.

It was a new beginning. I knew that from that day forward, no one would ever abuse me again. I finally took control of my own life and said, “Enough! You cannot do this to me anymore!” Setting boundaries and limits became a priority in my life and changed everything for the better.

The divorce was not easy and took over two years to become final. But I kept working with my therapist, going to support groups, reading books, and getting stronger. Over the first holidays I had a bit of a relapse, but I leaned on my support system, moved past it, and kept doing the work.

All my life I had hated uncertainty and looked for someone to bring me security. All my life I had looked for someone to love me into being normal. Now I was learning that I had to make my own certainty, and discover and develop my own normalcy.

Even though it was hard, I not only confronted the past, but also changed my attitude in the present, and planned for the future.

I learned how to have friends, interests, and hobbies. As I spent time by myself discovering what I liked and what I didn’t like, I was able to find my voice in relationships. The more I worked on myself and became healthier, the healthier the people in my life became.

The better I treated myself, the better I was treated. As my self-confidence grew, I met people who were loving and there for me when they said they would be.

With men, I learned how to date and how to say no. I learned to be true to myself and stopped trying to figure out what hoops I needed to jump through to get someone to like me. I started to ask myself, “Do I like him?” If I didn’t, I said goodbye. Relationships weren’t easy for me, and for the first few years my abandonment issues were in full force, but with each one I learned. When I started to see my relationships as learning experiences, and inventoried them when they were over, they helped me to understand what still needed attention in my life.

Along the way I decided what would have once been unthinkable: that I would rather be alone than accept the unacceptable from anyone. Never again would I give up all that I am for a relationship . I was not willing to be ignored, called names, or remain low on the priority list. I was not willing to accept unacceptable behavior just to keep someone around. For years I had been afraid that no one would love me. Now I was sure that I would get what I settled for, so I would not settle for less than I deserved. I was slowly coming to believe that I deserved the best.

It took a while for me to feel confident in my abilities as a parent. As I learned what was healthy and not healthy, it started to show in the kind of parent I became. We had boundaries in our house, cared about each other, and were there for each other. We didn’t worry about stupid things like whether the counter was clean enough; we worried about being a family. Today my kids are grateful that I broke the cycle of abuse and abandonment. They never hang up the phone without saying they love me, and they always give me a hug when we greet and when we say goodbye. Whenever they need advice, they come to me. They are certain of me and I am certain of them. They are wonderful young men and I’m proud of them.

In trying to heal my broken places, I looked for my birth family. All through my abusive relationships, my heart cried for my brother Edward. I was certain that if he had been there, no harm would have come to me. Maybe I romanticized it, but to me he felt like my other half, lost somewhere in the world, and I wanted him in my life. I always thought that if we had been together, life would have been better for both of us.

It took me several years of searching to find him, and when I did I learned that Edward had died a few years earlier. I have two brothers, Billy and Ricky, and have forged relationships with them. My biggest grief has been not growing up with them and not being able to make that heal completely. I am as happy as I can be with a loss as big as never knowing my brother Edward and never being able to have a full history with my brothers. But other than that, I have healed the past. In therapy I worked through the relationships with all my parents, and I learned to accept them and eventually forgive them. I forgave them so that I could go on and heal.

Learning that “water seeks its own level,” I was able to understand what issues needed attention by observing the people I was attracting and attracted to. It gave me the understanding that I could control what happened in my life and in my relationships. So many times I would think I was ready for “the one” and then get involved with someone with glaring issues. By looking at his issues, I was able to figure out what still needed work in my life and go back to the drawing board. Sometimes it was frustrating, but my goal was to improve myself to the point where I was ready and able to have a healthy relationship.

I was enjoying my single life when I met a man I fell in love with. He was a single parent as well, raising a little girl. He was honest, open, kind, and caring, and he thought I was the same. We both operated very well on our own, and each of us had decided we preferred to be alone rather than have any drama in our lives. The only way we would change that commitment to ourselves and our kids was if we found someone who lived life the same way. Neither of us thought we would, or could, find someone who valued our life and our kids, someone who encouraged independence and being who you are while forging a life together.

And then we found it in each other.

We’ve been happily married for over twelve years now. I can count our serious arguments on one hand. He has never called me a name. He has never made me cry. He doesn’t care about the house’s cleanliness; he cares about my happiness and loves me unconditionally. We are good and loving partners in life and in love.