Are you being a victim?
It took me 6 years after my Divorce in the despair of depression, resentment and anger until I learnt that I was being a victim. I use to hate that word, and use to be totally offended when people used it to try to snap me out of my self-pity to get a life!
I’m afraid I have some confronting news for you! I played contributed to the demise of my marriage. People don’t leave a happy marriage, people don’t leave someone they love, people leave because there was something missing for them in the marriage! Now I am not saying it was all my fault, not by a long shot but you have to sit back and take responsibility for your part in the demise of the marriage.
I’m not saying you need to do an autopsy on your marriage breakdown and I’m not saying you should blame yourself for what went wrong. I am saying that if we don’t learn from our mistakes in our marriage we are just going to repeat the same patterns and wonder why we get the same outcome.
We need to learn how we contributed to the marriage failure so we can learn from it and change ourselves so we can go into our next relationship as a better partner and a better communicator.
You may have been someone –
a) who was a workaholic and was feeling you provided for your family but your partner felt alone in the marriage and a low priority.
b) who didn’t take responsibility to be part of the decision making but complained about the decisions being made making your partner feel unsupported and that there was a lack of unity.
c) whose partner needed a lot of affection but you’re not a very affectionate person showing your love through actions instead.
d) who didn’t stand up for yourself against a dominant partner demanding respect because you’re worth it.
There are many cause and effect scenarios, with a deep misunderstanding of yourself and your partners’ needs.
You can spend years feeling the aftermath of the emotional destruction of Divorce but stop to think how you may have contributed to this outcome and how you might change as a person to give a new relationship a chance of success. Past and current behaviours may send you straight down the same path of ground hog day, so work at being your best self because you deserve the best life !