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Joined: Nov 2009
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Been forever since I posted on this my original thread.

Because I knew that although the most painful part of my former relationship with my late wife was Waywardness, her self abuse, and the betrayal and rejection, being here has helped me to realize a lot of what happened, over the 20+ years together.

But healing from this grief has many parts, so I am also besides a therapist I see weekly sought out advice from someone who handles complicated grief issues.

So because this was a grief thread in the title, I posted this here.

Dr H explains adultry betrayl as even more painful than the loss of a child to some people, and that makes sense to me, but I thought I would post these letters this therapist had because it again shows how deep the pain goes in adultry. The names are changed to protect them ..

______________________________

Why Patricia's Daughter Was Furious At Her For Grieving
My client "Patricia" kindly gave me permission to share the following letter exchange publicly. I simply changed the names to preserve everyone's anonymity.

Why did I want to share this letter exchange - along with what happened afterwards? Because it illustrates so clearly several key points I often make when talking to people who are grieving:

�It shows how profoundly DIFFERENT simple grief is from complicated grief.
�It shows how the same person can suffer from simple grief during one loss, and complicated grief during another loss.
�It shows how people suffering from complicated grief can be tragically misunderstood by family and friends.
�It shows how getting CLARITY about simple versus complicated grief lays the groundwork for effective grief recovery, for families as well as for individuals.
As always, if you have any questions, or would like to talk with me about your own situation, please feel free to CONTACT ME.

My best to you,

XXXXXXXX

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PATRICIA'S LETTER TO ME
Dear Paul,

As part of my complicated grief counseling and in anticipation of our session on Saturday, I wanted to give you a heads up regarding one of the issues that will need to be address as we go through the complicated grief counseling process. Because the following is extremely important, whatever time you spend on reading and responding to this email should be charged against our next session.

As I mentioned, I have two children: a daughter Jane(28) and a son Peter(26) from a previous relationship.

I lost my mom in August 1998 from breast cancer. I was extremely devastated by her death and still long for her today.

My daughter is extremely troubled by the complicated grief and devastation I am experiencing as a result of my divorce. According to her, I did not experience/exhibit the same grief when my mom died, and that upsets her tremendously.

I believe she thinks that I love my ex-husband more than I loved my mom � which is ludicrous. I�ve tried explaining to her that the two are entirely different emotions and that my mom�s death did not leave me with an overwhelming feeling of rejection and abandonment as my divorce has. She is not buying my explanation.

During a conversation this morning, I shared with my daughter that since all else had failed, I contacted you and have started working with you in the hopes of finding some relief from this overwhelming, devastating grief that has consumed my entire being. She then asked me to pose the following question to you from her in the hopes that you can provide a response that she might be willing to consider.

Her question is, �Why did my mother�s death not have the same devastating impact on me as my divorce has and is still having?� Whatever your response, I will forward it to her.

Paul, I hope you�re able to provide her a better response than I�ve been able to give her. Thank you, and I look forward to your response.

Patricia


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MY RESPONSE TO PATRICIA
Hi Patricia -

Your daughter is confused because, like most people (including a lot of professionals), she doesn't understand the difference between simple grief and complicated grief.

In simple grief, a person feels sadness over the current loss. It can be a deep and painful sadness, but it is a SIMPLE sadness - a clean feeling - a feeling that reflects a normal uncluttered sense of missing someone who was loved and cherished.

Complicated grief is VERY different from that.

In complicated grief, in addition to the normal sadness of simple grief, there are other deep and painful feelings that are triggered by the loss, but actually have their source in other parts of the person's psyche.

In particular, we all have parts of ourselves that are childlike or childish - parts that are immature and reflect our inner wounds rather than our inner strength. In complicated grief, these parts of ourselves are triggered by the loss event.

Two people can go through the same type of loss - let's say the loss of a divorce - and have very different reactions to it. One person might experience simple grief - being sad over the loss of the relationship, but able to move on with her life. For the second person, the loss can trigger deep feelings of self-rejection, abandonment or despair - because of her inner wounds from her own childhood.

Those two reactions have NOTHING to do with who loved her husband more - who was a better wife - and so on. They are just subjectively different experience of the loss, based on the fact that the two women have two different kinds of psychic make-up, and thus two different types of reactions.

The same principle applies to you, who experience two different kinds of grief - simple grief when it comes to the loss of your mother through death, and complicated grienf when it comes to the loss of your ex-husband through divorce. Apparently, the experience of being divorced has triggered your wounded sub-personalities in a way that the loss of your mother did not.

That does NOT - I repeat does NOT - imply that you loved your ex-husband more, or your mother less. Your daughter is simply wrong to come to that sort of conclusion�though it's an understandable mistake for someone to make, when they don't know the difference between simple and complicated grief.

I hope that helps, Patricia�and I look forward to our session tomorrow.

Best regards,

Paul


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POSTSCRIPT: WHAT HAPPENED AFTERWARDS
Patricia forwarded her letter, along with my reply, to her daughter Jane.

During our next counseling session, I asked Patricia how Jane had received it.

Patricia told me that what I had explained in my response made a world of difference to her daughter Jane. Jane now realized that her mother Patricia didn't love her ex-husband more than she had loved Jane's grandmother.

That was a great relief to Patricia, and freed her up so that we made excellent progress during our coaching session�.and at the time of this writing, she is seeing daylight in her life for the first time in a long, long time.

____________________

The therapist deals with the many parts of ourselves that come screaming to the surface afraid that the adult in us who made the decisions screwed up. But it is interesting to note, how deeply she mourned for the loss of her Husband in divorce.

He also says that it can be up to a two year process, to recover from these losses, but unless dealt with properly, some people never recover to the point where they have thier life back, and can move forward effectivly. Some never do.

I say Screw that, never say die, and find a way to live well past your pain, mistakes, and loss. Pound on every door and turn over every rock untill you have not just moved past the pain, but have overcome it so well you can chase it away.

Live well friends


Joined: Nov 2009
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And another one..

______________________________
Dear XXXX,

Approximately two years ago, I went through what was for me an incredibly devastating divorce. I felt I had died, and even in that death, I continued to experience devastating, excruciating pain � the kind of pain that no human being should ever have to go through. The pain was so much bigger than me and grief consumed every part of my being. My heart bled constantly.

For almost three years, when I haven't been weeping outside, inside I've wept nonstop. I was alive in the natural, but I've really been dead.

However, I knew I had to function because of certain responsibilities - so I sought the help of a very seasoned therapist, in addition to seeking help from anywhere and everywhere because I was insane with grief. I bought so many books on the subject that I should own stocks in amazon.com.

Last year, during my desperate search for help, I came across your website. While my heart ached for you as a result of what your devastating and heartbreaking experiences, I was nonetheless skeptical in contacting you. While there is lots of great information on the internet, one also has to be extremely careful.

So I accepted my fate to live in hell the remainder of my life, because I knew the kind of help I needed to get through what I now understand to be complicated grief did not exist.

I continued to read the emails you send out to your readers. Finally, after reading the story about the woman whose husband had passed away from a heart attack, I made the decision to contact you. At that point in time I knew I had nothing to lose, because I�d already lost me.

BEST DECISION I�VE EVER MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When we first spoke, you assured me that you would be able to help me in a relatively short period of time and my attitude was, "Sure, ok, you are deluding yourself".

XXXX, I apologize.

You�ve not only given me my life back, but I have now begun dreaming of and looking forward to a new life. I�ve started living again. I CANNOT BELIEVE THE MAJOR TRANSFORMATION between our 2nd and 3rd session.

Paul, I am ecstatic to report that after our 3rd session and for the first time in ages, I feel optimistic about life and I actually feel ALIVE!! I feel like I�ve awoken from the dead. If I hadn�t gone through this experience with you, I never would have believed this was possible.

What you�ve done for me is nothing short of a miracle. I�ve started taking steps towards doing things I had all but given up on. I can�t believe I�m even writing this because of where I was three weeks ago. NOTHING SHORT OF A MIRACLE!!!

Thank you so very much for giving me my life back; for giving me a renewed vision of how wonderful it is to be alive. Yes, I�m alive and it feels great!! I am still in disbelief.

Thank you and may God bless you always because what you do for others like me is priceless!!

XXXXX

Again the deep pain of Divorce. I bet she really loved him also.

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Originally Posted by ConstantProcess
I'm sorry I just drew a blank today. I realize that living in the past is a waste of time. I had this post all prepared yesterday about my life as a child that maybe could explain how I turned into an enabler. Why I have fallen into extreme poor self image issues and Why I get so locked up in guilt from time to time.
Success in life to me is to be balanced and when I leave this world I want to know I did everything I could to make it a better place than when I came into it. A positive self image and a realistic expectation of myself are the reasons I have allways sought God as the source of strength. I have sucked it up all my life and tried to be the hero so many times. On the outside I have been very successful in many instances. Practical accomplishments have kept me going and I just let painful experiances go and would just chalk it up to being sensitive.
I did not choose wisely in my seriuos relationships/marraiges and for variuos reasons. First one I was to young. Second I was to proud. Both times I rushed in when so many issues needed to be addressed and although I feel I was completly honest, she wasn't able to in both cases.

I Was looking for help in understanding my condition i am being treated for,(Bipolar Disorder or what they used to call Manic-depressive, Extreme highs and lows of mood), which of course can lead to wrong thinking and/or decisions based on wrong thinking. (The emotions are powerful motivators huh?), and came upon these three tests I took last week. They were quizs and if you check them out it wont take long. But if ya don't have time I will summarize the results

http://allpsych.com/tests/diagnostic/anxiety.html I tested high like 9 for anxiety

http://allpsych.com/tests/diagnostic/depression.html 13 for depression

http://testmyquiz.com/anxiety-test/ 45 for anxiety.

All these scores were high. Lol help! Ok, so What does that make me? I think it shows there is some problem with how I am handling my life.

I just need to find some answers and because I tried so hard just to provide for my family and I so wanted my intimacy and trust to grow in both marraiges I am afraid to move foward till I set some boundaries and expectations for myself.

So if you think you want to hear about my life and here my rather long story I would like to start by explaining how I started out as a child. It effects how I percieved myself and also how I treated my spouses emotional and practical needs and also how I understand I responded in my relationships.

In the end its all about the future and avoiding more mistakes. I am just looking for answers that I can stand on to build the future for myself and kids.

This is a great place to open up because of the aynominous nature here and I doubt a counsellor has the time in 30 mins a week to really look at this. Plus I get toungue tied and anxios so easily talking to them ussually ends up with me trying to explain myself so desparetly I just spin in circles and never seem to come to the point or explain the issues. (lol, i bet you guessed that allready..)

Ok let me know.. I will get the saga together and post the beginning of the story tommorow. I have to go do some housework Thx for reading this and seeya laters

It is enough, i took them all and i can't say welcome to my anxiety because my level is normal.

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Originally Posted by mallah
It is enough, i took them all and i can't say welcome to my anxiety because my level is normal.
I don't understand your post, mallah. Would you care to start your own thread and tell us how we can help? It is not a good idea to bump a thread that is nearly four years dead and pin your problem to the bottom of it.

Welcome to MB.


BW
Married 1989
His PA 2003-2006
2 kids.
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