Fear of Flying Solo

An Empowering Guide to Recovery from Divorce

Marsha Vaughn

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781642790122
• Topic: Derecho
• Subtopic: Derecho de familia

Are you newly and shockingly divorced?You bought the til death do us part thing. Now you are alone, and perhaps feeling unlovable? Is being single again overwhelming, scary, and totally not what you want? Are you freaked out about ever getting your life back together? Do you ask yourself, Where do I start? every day, then take a few steps and give up when the grief or panic overtakes you?In Fear of Flying Solo: Recovery from Divorce, Licensed Clinical Social Worker Marsha Vaugn teaches those going through divorce how to manage the transition and all of the overwhelming to-dos that come with it. She guides them through asking for support, what to do (or not do) about sex and dating, how to begin anew, and what practices carry them forward into their new life.If you are caught in the divorce transition and dont want to do it alone, Fear of Flying Solo is there for you every step of the way.,

Chapter One

You Are Not Alone

I saw her wince, I saw her cry
I saw the glory in her eye
Myself, I long for love and light,
but must it come so cruel, must it be so bright?

– Leonard Cohen, Joan of Arc, Stranger Music

When I stepped through the curtains of the dressing room at the bridal shop in Brooklyn, my bridesmaid, Deb, and my maid of honor, Sandy, spontaneously burst into tears. My dress was beautiful beyond imagining and it transformed me into the perfect, the quintessential bride. It didn’t matter how much it cost. This was my dress. It fit my picture of my perfect marriage to my perfect husband, and would make sure that this perfection was sealed.

Now, I already knew that he was far from perfect. But marriage before my friends, family, and God, in a picturesque and quaint Connecticut church was going to iron out all the imperfections and bring us to what I thought of then as the ideal state of being: married to a handsome man and on the road to building a successful life together.

I did get that first part right. We found a wonderful little white church in a bucolic neighborhood in Connecticut. I had the dress of a princess, three gorgeous bridesmaids, and three handsome grooms. My youngest brother was my ring bearer in his little tuxedo. Both of our families attended, as did hundreds of our friends. The pastor told the story of the Velveteen Rabbit, encouraging us to know that love gets deeper as it gets raggedy and worn through the years. We cried and kissed. Our guests cried and hugged. Our wedding photo album is a treasure of beauty. In short, we created the perfect wedding!

We lasted for 14 years. In those years, we traveled the world together. We bought a cabin in upstate New York and then my dream home in California. He was my best friend, my companion, my advisor, my family, and for some years, my sole provider. A lot of the time, I thought I was living the dream.

But the cracks that had been there even when we were dating widened when we began living together and eventually became chasms during the marriage. What do you do when the road you dreamed of develops chasms? Well, of course, you get really, really good at building bridges. Or at catapulting over them. Or at finding a long path around to the other side. That’s what I did. Instead of facing the cracks directly, we both figured out ways to avoid them, temporarily repair them, and keep moving on.

Before I describe some of the pressures that cracked and then destroyed my marriage, I have to say that there was absolutely no lack of love in my marriage. We did not divorce because we stopped loving each other, because we fell in love with someone else, or because we realized we never had loved each other. Love was not the issue. Not really.

My ex-husband was gay and didn’t want to be. He thought and I bought into a reality where this could be ignored and wished away. He struggled with hating himself for his attraction to men. We spent lots of time in therapy, relationship workshops, and in other attempts to “process” the discord between us that was caused by this very simple fact. It speaks volumes about the depth of our denial of reality when I tell you that it took us 14 years to realize this was not going to work. This was not going to be the perfect, ideal union of a marriage that we both so desperately wanted. I wanted a fairy tale romance. He wanted to be heterosexual. Great fantasies, both of them.

My ex-husband died in 2016 saving someone else’s life while swimming off the coast of Mexico. That is who he was. He gave a lot to a lot of people. Including me. And yet….

Our marriage was filled with incredibly ugly, drunken, violent scenes. Like the time he called from the freeway raging and clearly intoxicated. Driving home, he threatened me over the phone. I called my sister to come over. We were both waiting for him, hoping that her presence would calm him down. His car screeched into the driveway. He crashed into the garage door with a tremendous bang. Car door slamming. Steps pounding up to the front door. He flung the door open with such force that it cracked hard against the wall. His eyes were wide and bloodshot. His nostrils flared with his labored breath. He paused only momentarily in his trajectory when he saw my sister. He stepped forward and slammed her against the wall, screaming at her to, “Get out! Get out of my house!” She stayed with me while I gathered my things. We both left. I, for the weekend, to reconsider. My sister, for the duration of my marriage to him.

The regular threats, physical abuse, and rages followed by the next day’s silent treatment were intermittent. They were followed by periods where he was conciliatory in profoundly moving ways. Not just with huge bouquets of roses delivered to my work, but trips to magical places, spa treatments, and fabulous jewelry. It was a wild, wild ride from the depths of rage and hatred to the heights of bliss and beauty. Through all of this, I continued to love him. Changing the gender in the Longfellow poem so it makes sense, I used to say that, “When he was good he was very, very good and when he was bad he was horrid.” I convinced myself for 14 long years that the good made up for the horrid. Towards the end of the marriage, in an attempt to again catapult over the chasm, he flew me to Paris for Valentine’s Day and ushered me into the most ornately stunning hotel room I had ever seen. Ten-foot-tall French windows opened out onto the sparkling night skyline of Paris. We had dinner in a basement restaurant off a cobbled street, where I imagined brilliant French artists had sat and eaten before me. The romance was palpable. He told me over a glass of delicious French wine that he wanted to “see other people.” I put down my wine glass and said, “No, not if you want to stay married to me.” We left our meals unfinished as I started to cry. We returned to the romantic hotel room. His anger escalated as he attempted to convince me of the reasonableness of his need. As I sat at an 18th century desk weeping, he strode over to face me, grabbed my face and shook it so hard that the next morning I had fingerprint shaped bruises on both of my cheeks. That was the night – Valentine’s Day – that our marriage ended. It took until August to negotiate a divorce. In November, with six of my female friends helping me carry boxes and furniture, I moved out of our dream home in the pouring rain. My devoted friends made trip after trip up and down the dark, wet steps to load up our cars and take me to my new little yellow house. My tears flowed like the rain on the night streets.

When my friends left me in my new home with all my wet boxes and our cats, my own transition from married to divorced to single began. Let me be perfectly clear. I did not welcome it at all. I knew intellectually that there was no going back. There was no way to fix it, no possible bridge that could be built to reach across the chasm this time. Still I cried every night for a year about wanting my dream back. I wanted that picture of perfect love, life-long companionship and unconditional support that I had worked so feverishly to believe in.

My process involved slowly coming out of denial about what was and making peace with it. I tried a lot of things. Frankly, I wallowed in misery for too long before I reached out for help. I was broken, afraid, alone, ashamed, and hopeless. Some decisions I made were helpful. Some, not so much. I do believe that life only gives us love and/or lessons. At that time, I continued to get a lot more lessons, as I didn’t know how to connect to the love. I muddled through for years. Which is the reason I have decided to write this book.

You don’t have to muddle through. You don’t have to take years to heal from the disappointment and devastation of losing your marriage. I am not saying it will be quick, easy, and overnight. What I am saying is that you can take advantage of the things I learned to guide you on your way. You don’t have to make as many missteps as I did.

One of the gifts of my divorce was that I also got to use these lessons in my work with both my clients and the people who I train to be clinicians. I believe I got these lessons in order to become an effective teacher who can support women to find their way out of that dark, dark place and into the sunshine.

Chapter Two

THe Path

Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.”
Say rather, “I have met the soul walking on the path.”
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does
it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.

– Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb to guess that your divorce came with an onslaught of intense feelings and an overwhelming to-do list. Doesn’t it feel unfair that at a time when all you want to do is crawl into bed – or even under it – there are suddenly a slew of tasks and details that need to be handled? What this book and I can help you with is to guide you through the recovery process, step-by-step.

In the coming pages, you will learn practices that you can use for life so that if your boat is ever rocked like it is now, you have ways to steady yourself. I don’t want you to need this book again ten years from now. I know you don’t either. One of the risks of not doing the work now is that you could find yourself in another relationship – even marriage – and repeat the same scenario over again. This is remarkably common. One of the reasons I wrote this book is to help you avoid that. No guarantees, but if you take the steps in this book and practice the practices, you are more likely to create a different result. Your future is in your hands. I am reaching out to hold them.

Chapter Three will help you understand the difference between a change and a transition. Chapters Four through Six will address some common areas that need immediate attention in your life such as money, housing, etc. I will give you practices to help with these areas. In Chapter Seven, you will begin to assess yourself and discover more deeply who you are now. Chapter Eight will teach some practices to deepen your connection to yourself and your spirituality. In Chapter Nine, we will start to look at marriage as a choice. Chapter Ten will focus on the lessons learned. Chapter Eleven will give you practices to support you in manifesting your new life. In Chapter Twelve, I will describe ways you could stay stuck or have difficulty moving forward as rapidly as you might want to. Finally, in Chapter Thirteen, you will create a new Life Plan to follow.

EXerciSe

We are starting out fun and easy. I want you to pull out your iPod, open up Pandora, and listen to upbeat, happy, inspiring music during the day. One song I recommend: Three Little Birds

– Bob Marley.

Chapter Three

THe TranSition

N...