{"id":1052,"date":"2014-01-21T10:46:37","date_gmt":"2014-01-21T17:46:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/?p=1052"},"modified":"2014-04-08T11:33:24","modified_gmt":"2014-04-08T18:33:24","slug":"the-moment-i-knew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/the-moment-i-knew\/","title":{"rendered":"The Moment I Knew"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"done\"<\/a>Recently, Huffington Post put a slideshow on their “Divorce” page that was very <\/em>enlightening.\u00a0 They asked readers to respond with “the moment I knew my marriage was over.”\u00a0 There are over 150\u00a0responses\u00a0in \u00a0that slide show<\/a>\u00a0and, boy, do they range far and wide!\u00a0 Yet they do<\/em> tend to fall into a discrete number of set categories.<\/p>\n

One category is the “I just woke up one morning and knew<\/em>.”\u00a0 That’s a hard one to work with, as I often liken the decision that the relationship is over to a campfire (appropriate image for the Northwest).\u00a0 At the end of the night, after staring at a brilliant, dancing flame hovering over intense, glowing embers, we turn in – and upon awakening, sometimes the logs are still there, charred, but partly intact.\u00a0 If you lift one up you may see a bit of life that, if blown upon intensely enough, will start to smoke and a flame may emerge.\u00a0 However, other times, it may have rained overnight and in the morning, we emerge from our tent to find a dead<\/em> fire.\u00a0 No amount of effort will revive anything.\u00a0 The fire is simply……gone.\u00a0 That’s like the woman who responded, “when I took my wedding ring off and couldn’t bring myself to put it back on.”<\/p>\n

There’s another category which Dr. Sue Johnson, the founder of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy calls, “relationship traumas.”\u00a0 Infidelity is, of course, a leading (and searing) relationship trauma.\u00a0 It is difficult, but by no means impossible, to heal from this, but that’s another story for another day (post).\u00a0 There are others, however.\u00a0 Some people responded that they were facing a health crisis and their spouse was unresponsive or disappeared.\u00a0 An example is, “The moment I knew was when I went into the hospital for emergency surgery and nearly died.\u00a0 I was in the hospital for 6 days.\u00a0 He didn’t visit once.\u00a0 I got no calls and all of two texts.\u00a0 People I barely knew at least called.”\u00a0 Others describe an incredibly demeaning statement or attitude, like the one respondent who said, “”when I was picked for a prestigious conference in NY – he didn’t congratulate – asked who would watch the kids.”\u00a0 Others relate statements made by their partner that just floor<\/em> them, like one who replied, “When he said he’d divorce me if I went to console my best friend (who is like a sister) after the passing of her mother.”\u00a0 For sure, these are all blows and there’s a lot<\/em>\u00a0of\u00a0<\/em>healing that needs to be done if the marriage can overcome the trauma of one spouse’s sense of utter abandonment at a moment of deepest need.\u00a0 Yet, when I read these kinds of posts, I don’t automatically think, “Well that <\/em>marriage is over!”\u00a0 Actually, that’s the way I found myself responding to many of these posts.\u00a0 Many of the wounds that people describe are sharp and deep and they absolutely need to be talked about.\u00a0 Honest remorse and forgiveness are necessary and entirely possible, but, again, I don’t think people are able to do this on their own – or for that matter in an office of a couples counselor who acts as an umpire and decides who is right and who is wrong.\u00a0 It’s really fascinating and heart-full work.\u00a0 That’s why I love it so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, Huffington Post put a slideshow on their “Divorce” page that was very enlightening.\u00a0 They asked readers to respond with “the moment I knew my marriage was over.”\u00a0 There are over 150\u00a0responses\u00a0in \u00a0that slide show\u00a0and, boy, do they range far and wide!\u00a0 Yet they do tend to fall into a discrete number of set categories. Continue reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[42,5],"tags":[13,15],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1052"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1053,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions\/1053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}