Latest / Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce / 55. Making Sense of WHY my Ex Moved on so Fast After Divorce and Handling the Obsessive Thoughts

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55. Making Sense of WHY my Ex Moved on so Fast After Divorce and Handling the Obsessive Thoughts · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Hi love, this is Dawn and you're listening to Dear Divorce Diary with my coach, dawn, where we explore the post-divorce life and you, the woman who lives it.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: We cover everything from trauma during and after divorce to feeling like a stranger in your own life and the new frontier of life as a single woman.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: We're cozy in for the conversations we've been longing to have about this new life.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Hi, love, thank you for coming to hang out with me every week.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I really, really appreciate us having this conversation and the relationship that we're building, and know that I think of you, right?
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I was just on a walk with Producer Joy and was talking about how you show up and you listen and you get curious and you dig in and gosh, that's just so impressive.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: I love you for that.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Let's talk today about one of the biggest triggers for women who are recovering from divorce, and that is your ex moving on.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Ugh, is there anything that brings up as many complicated feelings as when that happens, especially if you're co-parenting right, because it just opens so many doors to painful hallways?
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: So today I want us to talk about all the things that are getting activated when he's moving on and you're feeling all the ways about that and talk about what you need to be doing instead in order to really recover from this aspect.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Right, because this is a specific aspect of divorce recovery that often gets us stuck and you end up overthinking and ruminating and coming back to what he's doing and not doing and you can't quite figure out how to get out of that.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: So, okay, first things first.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: When you first get the news, whether it came via Facebook or you know a community telegraph system the first thing that it brings up is it makes you question all over again what was real and if you or your relationship mattered, right.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: And so then you dive right back in headlong into that whole thing about did I even matter?
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Did it even matter?
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: and questioning what memories from your lives together you can trust and which ones.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Maybe there was something that you didn't fully understand.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: And so then you start this autopsy of your entire married life and trying to figure out if you know that picture where his eyes were smiling or that date he took you on, like, was it real?
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Did you actually matter?
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: And that is super painful, because of course you mattered and of course it mattered.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: It was so exquisitely purposeful love so exquisitely purposeful.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: There's no take-see-back sees.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Fun fact though, my ex actually got our 10 year marriage annulled, so apparently some people try to take-see-back-see.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: So that was fun.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: So, like I get it right, i get it.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: So he actually sent his fiance to I love you both.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: He sent his fiance to do the paperwork with me over email and I was like I am not doing this with you, lady, i'm not working with his fiance to get our marriage annulled.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: That was like right, anyways.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: So of course it was real, of course you mattered, and I want you to really pump the brakes on getting into that rabbit hole, and we're going to talk more about that in a bit.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: One of the most toxic things this whole trigger does is it activates the behavior of comparison, and there's this really brilliant saying that I cannot remember who said it, but it is that comparison is the thief of joy, comparison is the thief of joy, and so as soon as he's moved on in a new relationship, like oh my goodness, you could get drunk on the process of comparing and just get really obsessed with and in that rabbit hole of is she better than, is she worse than, what's he seeing her, what's she seeing, like oh my goodness, it's endless, right, but know that the behavior of comparison is a mental habit, a mental, emotional habit that is really, really, really damaging your sense of confidence, your ability to feel happy, all the things that you want.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: I know you want to build confidence, i know you want to move on, i know you want to feel peaceful, i know you want to write all these things, and so when you're actively comparing, you're not able to access any of those things.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Comparison is a much, much lower on the emotional vibrational scale than all these things that you're longing for.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Him moving on also brings you back to questioning yourself and everything you thought you knew about life and how it works at the beginning of your relationship.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Right, because although I think many of us, when we look back and we do the autopsy, we did find red flags or seeds of doubt inside of us.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: You know, i can certainly look back and see seeds of doubt, but at the time, like, oh man, nobody was going to stop me.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: I was going to marry this man and I was definitely going to stay married to him forever And I definitely made a promise to myself that I was never going to get divorced.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: And so when he moves on, it's like bringing back all of the things we thought we knew about ourselves and making us question that right.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: That whole struggle to trust is was did I make the right choice then?
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Did I have it wrong then?
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Or was it right?
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: It felt so powerful, like there were all these things right.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: So really second guessing your choices and second guessing your sense of knowing yourself well, which then also highlights that maybe you didn't know him as well as you thought you did, and that's like a gut punch, right.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Like here's this person you loved, dated, married, maybe had children with, built a life around, and is it possible that you didn't know him as well?
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that sucks, right.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: But also I think it's really common to find that a lot of people don't know themselves that well.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Right, he might not know himself that well.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: It may be that part of this relationship coming to an end is because he started to know himself better, but left you out of that part of the conversation.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: And so I think it's very common love that many of us, until we are invited to, we only go surface deep and maybe a little deeper than the surface in life.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: But then when really big stuff happens, like this, then we're called to go deeper than that And maybe we just didn't know ourselves or each other or him that well, and that's okay.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: I want you to think of the process of having deep, intimate relationships where you know each other really well.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: I want you to think of that more as a skill set than as a metric of your worth, right?
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: I think that it's possible that your reflexive reaction to thinking and feeling like maybe you didn't know him that well is to feel like oh you, like you did something wrong, or like you are wrong or he's wrong or somebody's wrong.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Right, it's some sort of judgment or blame or like, but I want you to think of it more as a skill set that there is.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: There are a series of skills that need to be developed in order to go deeper in a relationship And, just like you, love, i had to develop those skills, and they had to do with me being able to tolerate Taking a look at things that made me really uncomfortable in life, really uncomfortable inside of myself, question beliefs that were long-held and question things that I thought I understood about how the world worked right.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Having really deep, intimate relationships Called for me to be more honest about my inside thoughts.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: That Weren't very pretty.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: So it's a skill set and it has nothing to do with your worth or your value or how magical you are.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Another thing that him moving on triggers is you feeling behind, like you think you should be further along in this process than you are, and That is a sub.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: It's like.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Feeling behind is like a subset of comparison, right, it's like the outcome of when you got on that comparison wheel and you judged yourself to be behind.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: And so There's all of this internal narrative about I should be doing better than I am, i should Have moved on faster, and, and I think that's all a bunch of garbage.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: You know, like this process that you're in of transforming your life, you know it's not like you're traveling from your home to like an attraction in your state.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: You know, like I Made the analogy like it's not like traveling from South Florida to Disney World right, that's like a four-hour trip.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: This is like a we're like driving around the globe.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: You know, this transformation It's lengthy and so so often when we are like, why am I not there yet?
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Why am I not there yet?
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Well, because the journey is long, love, and you're not necessarily doing it wrong.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: You may not be as consistent as you could be in the process of Self-discovery and recovery.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: But no worries, like no big deal, you're gonna get there right.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: So so stop accusing yourself of being behind Just because he's moved on.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: He's on a different timeline and a different journey and a different car, headed in a different direction, right.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: And so Back to that shutting down that comparison thing, because, love, you are right on time.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Let me say that again You are right on time And because of all of the things we've already mentioned today, i know that's hard to trust, right, but we learn by doing, we learn by doing, and so you can't skip all the learnings that come from doing Versus.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Just, you know, we read a lot of books and they're very helpful, and we listen to a lot of podcasts and they're very helpful, and we, you know these things are very helpful.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: But ultimately, the learning really comes from the application of the things we've heard, trying out the things we've heard here on the pod or in that really great book you read on grief or whatever.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: It is Right.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: And so you are right on time because you are trying things out right now.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, you are not behind, you are in a process.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: So another thing, this one's kind of sexy.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Another thing that comes up when he moves on is it triggers a Finality that he's not coming back.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: And more than that, not only is he not coming back, but he's not waking up to realize what he lost.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: And I say this one is sexy because a lot of times we prop up our sense of worth in the early days by Leaning on this narrative, right, we fantasize how many songs have been written about figuring out what, what he's lost, right?
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: And how many girlfriends or how many people in the world told you that He's gonna one day He's gonna realize he doesn't know what he lost, but one day he's gonna realize.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: And then you know this is like part of the grief process.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: And so When he's moved on, it's like, oh shit, that thing I told myself to get by earlier.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: It ain't happening.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: And and that's just another gut punch, right, like, uh, do I have to have so many awarenesses in this process?
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: because awarenesses seem very painful, and I get that a lot of times.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: They can be right, but not always.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: And Then, of course, there's the situation where, if you're co-parenting with him, it's like all of these things that I just spoke about There's an invitation to focus on them every day, while also having to somehow figure out how to adapt and make space for this woman in Your life on some level, even if it's very peripherally right.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: And that process of making space and figuring out if she feels safe to you or if you can't write, if you're Co-parenting, if she feels safe for you, for your children, and right, that process is Again one of learning by doing and there's kind of no shortcuts to it.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: So it's obviously exceptionally triggering and Chronically inviting you to compare if you have to encounter her because you're co-parenting, and so I get all of that.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: And that is where having the discipline to be consistent around, using tools and to catch it when your brain starts doing it is really valuable.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: So These are a lot of things that get triggered when he moves on.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: There's more but, but this is the bulk of it, right, and so, as We're moving into the, okay, but what to do about it?
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: and it's hard dawn.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: I want you to know that.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: I understand that and it is hard at first because your brain is Really had a lot of momentum lately focusing on These behaviors of ruminating.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Right, your brain feels like it's over busy all the time and Especially around comparing and especially around asking why and especially right all these things.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: So It takes, if you think about a car having momentum and How long it takes to slow it down using a break in the car, i want you to think about you are the brake system in your mental car.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Love and Your car, your mental car, will slow down in proportion to how often you break, use that mental break, and that requires a really robust toolkit and You know the toolkit that I often advocate for is journaling, eft, tapping, deep breathing.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Do you know?
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: I was looking back into the journaling program because we're in the process of migrating it from one software to another software and you know how many of you said that journal prompts like two, three, four were incredibly like, invaluable to you because, as You were breathing deeply and sitting with and noticing your body While using the playlist and having used the tools that I taught you in the how to journal coaching piece, you felt so much calmer than you ever do in your day-to-day life.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: So so, deep breathing, with a body scan and a body awareness, these are all tools to help pump the brakes of all of these things that get triggered When you start focusing on your ex moving on right.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about the big big thing that it triggers, and that is That it brings back this conversation about why.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Why is this happening?
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: What does it mean?
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: because you can't make sense of it.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: Because, at the end of the day, you were a good wife not perfect, no but you were committed and you were really, really committed to fulfilling your role as his wife and with this family and and to grow old together and to work through the Shit together.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: You knew it wasn't perfect, you knew there were red flags, but you were willing to do the work and you cannot wrap your head around Why this would happen.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: If you were so Committed and willing.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: How did you get it so wrong?
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: How did the universe get it so wrong?
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: like, why, and?
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: and the thing is love, at the time when you married him, it was your calling and it was your purpose, and and?
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Are there soulmates or meant to be relationships?
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: are there people who are the one?
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but I definitely think we can have more than one of those in our life and I definitely believe that you marrying him was your calling and it was purposeful.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: And The role that you were in, the many roles, the many cats that you wore during the time and space that you were married to him were such an integral, important part of your journey.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: And when you Compare yourself and you question whether or not it was worth it, and you get into all of this, why, business, you are minimizing The beauty that did exist in that relationship.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: And maybe you're gonna say to me no dawn, i'm not minimizing the beauty of it.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: He is, he's the one that moved on.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Aha, i know, but I know that you also feel scared and you feel angry and you feel concerned about You know, you struggle to access peace and happiness and you feel all this heartache and and so, when all of that is going on, that's not necessarily grieving with Gratitude for the magic that did happen in the marriage, right?
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: And so there's this process of Leaning towards acceptance that that it was purposeful, you were committed, you were willing to work through it.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: You did a beautiful job of fulfilling that purpose.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: You were a good girl, you did a good job.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: And now the thing I want you to start doing rather than analyzing and feeling your big feelings about what he's doing, i want you to start getting curious about what your new purpose is, and your new purpose doesn't have to do with a boy.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Oh shucks, i know.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: But and the reason that you crave a boy?
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: perhaps, if you're someone who craves a boy, i was someone who craved a boy.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: The reason I craved someone in those early days is because I needed so much reassurance.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: I was craving affection and attention and validation, and I was not yet skilled enough to provide myself all of those things, cause that is one of those travel around the globe, journeys, right, the skill set to be able to provide myself with reassurance and acceptance and affection, and all those things, right, and companions and other places that don't have to do with a romantic relationship.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: So now it's the time to get curious about a different purpose, a bigger purpose, a deeper purpose that is more to do with who you are than your role in a relationship or in a family.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: And we've touched on a lot of these things around purpose in the pod, but maybe we haven't talked about it this directly, you know, in the interview with Christina Drew and where we talked about finding your life's purpose and her framework that she uses to help people do that is beautiful, right, but seeing this divorce process and seeing him moving on as a clue for you.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: it's actually a memo that says hey, love, gentle nudge.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: It's time to refocus, actually on the deeper purpose that's calling you.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: And so how do you get in touch with that purpose?
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, my goodness, there's so many ways, right, but it's to get curious and to start following the breadcrumbs.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: You know, a lot of times in this process I hear us talk about saying yes to things.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: You know, like trying new things and getting out in living is often the way that we kind of stumble into new adventures and we accidentally feel happy sometimes, and so I think a lot of discovering your new purpose is going out and living and trying things and exploring things and allowing yourself to question stuff that doesn't feel good for you anymore.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: That doesn't mean cut it out, right, but it means get curious about it, because maybe there are other things in your life that don't fit as well as they used to and maybe there are new things that are calling you and those new things can be really, really scary.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: You know, i've come very full circle with Jesus.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: Jesus is my homeboy, but in the process of divorce recovery there was a long time where I did not feel well.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: In the very, very early days I clung to church, right, and I went to church and I read my Bible and I did the things that were gonna soothe me in that belief structure that really worked for me.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: But then I went through a whole season of exploring other things that were calling to me so that I could integrate them into my new sense of spirituality here later down the road.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: And so that's just an example of being on the journey, of allowing yourself to explore into things that may have been scary And fun fact, my Jesus journey, like it's been unfolding for a decade or longer, right, like actually, when I got remarried to my current husband, i still was very afraid to examine my faith as it was And I still was very hyper focused on needing him to be saved and have Jesus in his heart.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: And so these transformations they are such a journey, but actually me marrying my husband was my current husband was an extension of me, allowing my beliefs to start to shift and change right, because one of the qualifications I had in my first marriage was he had to be a Christian.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: So being able to shift away from that to something that was slightly different was it, was that allowing myself to explore, allowing myself to flex into new ways of experiencing my purpose.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: And so this is your reassurance that this is happening for a reason.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Him moving on does not mean that you're not good enough, it doesn't mean that it didn't matter, doesn't mean that you're behind.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: It means you're right on track and that you are being funneled in a different direction, love, and that direction is safe to go in.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: You remember in Finding Nemo, when they're in the whale's mouth and Dory is like it's time to let go, marlon and, and he's like but how do you know?
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: She's like, i just know.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: And they let go of the back of the throat and they, you know, end up getting shot out and they're right where they needed to be.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: So.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: So this is a scary process, right to let go and to not know where you're going to land when you fall.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: But this is your reassurance that him moving on is for your benefit and it is part of your deeper calling.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: And I know this, like I know my name is Dawn.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Go in the direction of your calling, love.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: And when you feel all of this ruminating, all this activation, these negative thought, feeling patterns, that you've had a lot of momentum, use a tool to pump the brakes, start with deep breathing and a body scan, move into whichever other tools.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: Move the needle for you today, because part of feeling into your purpose is feeling your way into which tools you need on which days.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Right Us healers, we've got a lot of recommendations, but, but it's always about finding what works for you and allowing yourself a core upload of grace in the process.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: I love you so much.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Peace, dear.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Divorce Diary is a podcast by My Coach, dawn.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: You can find more at MyCoachDawningcom.