Don't know what you're missing until someone else gets it.

Dear Hoops, 

During a recent party, one of my mother's friends had a breakdown after she found out that her ex-husband is getting married. I see it like this: if he infuriated you enough that you stuffed his things into trash bags, threw them out onto the lawn, then legally dissolved your marriage, why cry over him moving on? He's *her* problem now! What's your take?

-Why Cry?

Dear Why,

We’re funny creatures, we humans.  We often hide things from ourselves or work very hard to make ourselves believe things that aren’t true.  We all have our defense mechanisms and we all protect ourselves from hurt.  The problem is that like all lies, the ones we tell ourselves blow up when they see the light of day.  

My guess is that is your mom’s friend wasn’t really crying over her ex moving on.  It may very well be that she was crying over her own failure to do the same.  There’s a good chance that his moving on shed light on what she considers her own failure to do so, or to do so in a truthful and real way.  Maybe she’s dating, maybe she’s remarried even, but I’m betting that underneath it all, no matter what her status may be, she is unfulfilled.

Think about it for a second.  She was unhappy.  She was so unhappy that she blamed her husband and she stuffed his things into trash bags and threw them on the lawn.  She legally dissolved their marriage.  She did all of that because she wanted to be happy.  So, she embarked out into this brand new world, ready to conquer it and get the happiness she deserved.  

Now, she’s confronted with the fact that this man—the supposed source of her unhappiness—has moved on and moved past her, he’s found someone new and he’s going to spend the rest of his life with her.  And here she is, still unhappy, still unfulfilled and maybe it starts to hit her that perhaps her unhappiness wasn’t just this man, perhaps it was something deeper, more profound and more personal.  Maybe part of the problem was her?  Maybe she was the whole problem?  I’m guessing those were some of the emotions at play that caused her to break down.

This is why divorce is the easy answer, not the right one in many cases.  It usually takes two people cause a divorce.  In fact, unless there is abuse of some kind going on, there are almost always two responsible parties for a relationship blowing up.  And those issues don’t just disappear.  We carry them on to the next relationship we have.  It’s like the old saying:  “Wherever you go, there you are.”

My all-time most favorite quote comes from one of my all-time most favorite movie characters, Obi-Wan Kenobi.  He says this:  “You’ll find that a great many of the truths we cling to, depend greatly upon our own point of view.”  And that is why its so important to talk to people that we trust.  It’s important to talk to people who we trust and people who are not just “yes-friends.”  If left to our own devices, we get stuck in a certain point of view and we accumulate evidence to support that view.  We dismiss all other evidence.  We entrench ourselves and before we know it, we stand directly opposed to the one we used to love.  We see an impasse.  We see no way around it.  We walk away.

I’m not taking shots at people who get divorces here.  In some cases, maybe even many cases, they are necessary.  One thing just about every divorce has in common though is that each side walks away thinking they are the good guy.  How can that be?  It’s because they only see things from their own point of view.

What happened to your mom’s friend is very likely that she was exposed to another point of view that her mind had been protecting her from.  It was like someone had thrown her into an ice cold swimming pool.  It’s a shock.  It may very well be that after a few days and some serious thinking and talking, she’ll realize that it was still all for the best and that she’s happier now, but she’ll also know that the tunnel she was looking down was a lie.

I hope your mom is a good friend.  I hope she realizes that there is more to this than meets the eye.  I hope she is there for this woman.  The truth hurts and it takes the love of real friends to heal.

-hoops