Single Again For The First Time 6: Kicking My Own Ass

Vincent Truman

Love and forgiveness were the two elements I knew I needed in order to move beyond the  death rattle of my marriage, and they were two elements I resisted.  I could not say it felt good to walk around feeling angry and resentful, which I did for some time, but these negative emotions helped shore me up and prevented me from crumbling into a sobbing mess 24/7, although I did my fair share of that as well.  It has been postulated that divorce is like a death without the gravestone, and I would tend to agree.  Closure, especially for the one who was left and does not carry the bravado of having “escaped”, or abandoned, their commitment, is an abstract thing.  It took nearly a year to profess enough love and forgiveness to get to the point where I wished her well and, more importantly, get to the point where I could regain my life again.

But beyond love and forgiveness, I have found a layer of analysis lurking.  How could it be, I wondered, how my last two major relationships were like March: in like a lion and out like a lamb?  In other words, what the fuck happened to all the fucking?  It could not be disputed that I loved my wife with every fiber of my being – so what went wrong?  It was when the questions started appearing in my head when my friend Tina – she herself being the first of the two relationships that were uncannily March-like – turned me onto a book called ‘Mating in Captivity’ by Esther Perel.  Not even half-way through the book, I was faced with some uncomfortable truths about my own behavior.  A mirror was held up and, as Perel points out brilliantly, a mirror isn’t there to look at yourself, it’s to see what’s behind you.