andrea (00:00)

I have a confession. When I was married, my first marriage, I became really good at pretending, pretending that my marriage was fine, pretending that I was happy, that I wasn't lonely. And looking back, I realized that I wasn't protecting my marriage. I was protecting my shame. And we talked a little bit about this on the previous episode, but I want to talk about shame a little bit more.

Cause it's really powerful on this episode of How Not to Suck at Divorce.

Okay, so full disclosure, I'm already a little nauseous before we start talking, which is always a good sign. And usually that's an indication that things are about to get vulnerable. So buckle up. Here we go. I had so much shame in my first marriage because I spent so much time making up excuses for behavior and spent so much time.

Dancing around what was really going on inside my house. I don't know that I've ever said all of this out loud before. And it's not because I still feel ashamed. well, actually, maybe it is because I still feel ashamed on some level.

And I have a feeling that a lot of you out there listening today are carrying that same kind of weight. So when people think about divorce, they assume that the shame comes afterwards, that you have this embarrassment or this shame that your marriage ended, that you came that you had a broken marriage. We we couldn't make it work.

That was not my story. My shame happened, entered the room way before I ever got divorced. I mean, I I've said this part before, but I knew right from the beginning that this was not good. So my shame came from living in a marriage that looked one way on the outside and felt completely different on the inside.

And like I said before, I became really, really, really good at pretending. I'll give you an example. My my marriage had no intimacy, like at all. not like a struggling sex life. We're talking like not one that like just slowed down after you had kids. Like we're talking a non-existence.

None. And God, like even just like saying it right now, like I feel like little like bumps, little shivers. I I just rubbed my arm like this is turning into like an ASMR video. I think I'm feeling so much because I s I think I get still get so embarrassed saying it out loud. I felt so much shame.

around that because I think that it made me feel broken and my God, I can't believe I'm crying over this. unloved and gross. And I never told anybody this about my life when I would go out with other mom friends and they would joke around about their husbands. I I remember one night in particular, I was out to dinner.

With a group of moms, like our kids were babies, and they were all saying how when they got home that night, they were gonna have to get in bed and like pretend that they had fallen asleep right away because their husbands knew that they were all going out for drinks with the girls. So they assumed that that meant that they would have sex that night or something. I don't know. and the women were all laughing about it, right? Like, me too. I'm gonna have to pretend.

'Cause he's gonna nudge me in the middle of the night. And I remember sitting there and laughing and joking around like, my god, me too. No, that wasn't my truth. I hadn't had sex in months, maybe even a year.

But I let other people assume that my life looked like theirs because saying my reality out loud felt like unbearable. It felt gross. It felt nauseating. It was nothing that I was even close to doing. But looking back on this, I realized that it wasn't that I just I wasn't just ashamed that I wasn't having sex. I was ashamed about.

What I believed that that said about me. Like maybe I'm not attractive enough, I'm not lovable enough, or maybe I just wasn't enough in general. I took the loneliness that was happening inside of my marriage, and I somehow turned it into this evidence that there was something wrong with me. But wait, that's not all. That's not the only thing that I did. I also hid.

From everybody how lonely I was. I did not talk about how disconnected I felt. I didn't tell anybody how much I questioned myself. I hid how much energy I was spending every day to try to keep the peace in my house. I didn't tell people that I would analyze conversations. I would like map out conversations in my car before I would have them. Like,

Talk about like dancing on eggshells, I would have to like practice what I was gonna say to make sure that it wasn't gonna come off the wrong way and I wasn't going to get in trouble. I'm using ear quotes right now, but like getting in trouble was a a big thing for me. I was so scared of making someone angry. you know, people hear the phrase emotional abuse and they automatically picture like screaming.

And emotional abuse for a lot of people, there's no screaming involved. It could be like very calm but calculated, pointed comments. And that I think also gets really confusing because and we all we've heard this so many times: like abuse doesn't have to look like broken bones and bruised rib cages.

We all know that intellectually. And at the same time, we all are so quick to assume, like, I'm not being abused. Brenda might be abused, the chick down the road with, you know, the black eye, or the guy that screams at her in the middle of Costco, but I'm not being abused.

And you might be because it can be so quiet, so tiny. We talked about this on the last episode. How it's just tiny, tiny little pokes that just slowly but very steadily chip away at the relationship and chip away at who you are. It could be slowly losing confidence in your own judgment. you start apologizing for things that you didn't even do, you start questioning your own memory.

I did so much of that and I didn't tell anybody because I was so ashamed of how much I was controlled by fear of something. Fear of, I guess, just getting in trouble. I couldn't even see the that.

I had a choice in all of this. I think that I went, I was in this place in my life where I thought, well, this is just your life. Like this is just what it's going to be. You've got these two small kids. You're lucky to have a family and have a house and have things that look totally fine on the outside. I was so far from fine on the inside.

I smiled so much in public. I mean, I even had a public profile for a while during this time. I was singing and dancing over on Instagram, making funny videos. look at me. I'm this like silly mom blogger. My life is fine, Things are so busy. I'm just crazy, just like you. And I was falling the fuck apart.

And here's what I want you to know. And this is what is so fucked up about shame is it turns you into an editor. You start editing yourself with everything. You edit the stories you tell, you edit the answers to questions, your smile. What did you do this weekend? Well, you better quit you better quickly come up with an answer that sounds like what everybody wants to hear.

I just heard myself say that and like I felt again, I felt like those little shivers on my arm. Cause it's so true. I would always think like I have to say something that sounds right. Cause you can't just say, my weekend was horrible and I spent the entire weekend avoiding being home because I feel the loneliest when I'm at home. back when I was married the first time, I

had a a business. I owned a hair and makeup services company. And I would do hair and makeup for funny enough, weddings. And you would spend the day at this fancy hotel or country club or whatever do styling the bride and the bridesmaids and the moms and whatever else to, you know, for the big day. And

They would look great and you would be, your hands would be covered in makeup and sticky hairspray, and you would just feel and look disgusting. And I always had this like sense of sadness when I was done because they were off to the ball. And then I had to go back to my house. And I thought, my God, am I such a shit person? I had these two beautiful little kids, and I should be.

So excited to get back home to them. And I wanted to see them, but I was so filled with dread about the idea of going home. And my business partner at the time also had small kids. And and she couldn't wait to get back home. she would always say, like, I gotta wrap this up because I can't wait to get back to my family.

In the beginning, I'd say, Yeah, me too. And I would just feel like this like pit in my stomach. Like if somebody needed something at the last minute, if one extra bridesmaid, you know, was like, can you do this? I was the first one like, sure, no problem. I can stay late. Anything to drag it out. that should have been a big sign. But I just kept going. There's a lot of shame there.

I talked about this last time. We know why. We know why we don't just instantly rip off a band-aid and and say, I'm out of here. Because for a lot of us, this is a very, this is a major decision. It's a major decision for anybody. But you know, you're looking at how am I going to get myself out of this thing? Don't just wake up one day and say, like, that's it. I'm leaving.

But when I look back now at all of the birthday parties that I faked being okay and, school events. My God, I still hate school events, but they were a real shit show back then. Vacations. my God. There was one family vacation that I took with my ex's family. I think that story deserves its own episode because we went to Disney World. And let me just say it was not the happiest place on earth. I literally, true story.

Had a panic attack while in line for It's a Small World After All. I think I'll leave it at that. But I think back on all these events and I wonder how many other people are also faking it? Like we th are are we the only ones who are just stuck in all of this shame? We can't be. I think so many people are also.

Holding things back. I mean, of course, we don't walk around like airing everything. But I wonder with the amount of pain that I know that I was in.

How powerful it would have been to have somebody that I trusted recognize that or me being strong enough to share that with someone because the minute that you say it out loud, it gets so much better. Going back to my business partner at the time, I remember the first time that I told her how bad things were. I was so scared to say it out loud because once you say it out loud, then you have to do something about it because you said the thing.

And then of course someone's gonna look at you and say, like, what the fuck are you gonna do? And you can't just say nothing. But I felt so much better that somebody knew.

But even now, I'll be honest with you, it's been years. I'm still nauseous just telling these stories because that pain just hits you on such a deep level. That pain of hiding something, the fact that you lived in this uncomfortable, unlovable place for so long. And here's the part.

That's so messed up is that I carried this with me for years. I went for years. I mean, this stuff was going on before I even got married. I was in this relationship. So I was doggy paddling for years, years of survival mode, years of carrying the stress that I never allowed myself to acknowledge. And then eventually.

My body stopped believing the story that I was telling everybody else. My body basically said, you know what, bitch, I cannot carry this anymore. I don't know exactly how I developed my panic disorder. There's not like one simple answer. but that's my hypothesis. I remember being in the hospital one time in in the ER and in a really bad state.

And I remember a physician telling me that these attacks are basically like a way of your body holding up these red flags, saying, Hello, something is not right. You need to pay attention. And like we've talked about this if a lot, at first your body will whisper and you ignore the whisper, and then the voice gets louder and louder, and then your whole body will shake you until you pay attention and you stop living in survival mode.

Hier's the part of this that really breaks my heart.

I wasn't protecting myself by not saying anything. I wasn't even protecting my marriage. I thought that I was protecting my family. I thought that I was protecting everybody else from the truth, but that's not even true. I was just protecting my shame. that's the truth.

This whole time, all of these years that I didn't say anything, I was just like feeding the ugly beast. So please don't do that. The sooner that you can start owning what's going on and talking about this stuff, if you are sobbing while while you're taking a shower or you are wandering around your block feeling like you're gonna throw up.

Or you're carrying around this loneliness that feels impossible to explain. And I want you to hear me. Your circumstances are not your identity. That loneliness that you feel, that is not proof that you are unlovable. That confusion that you feel, that's not proof that you're broken.

And the fact that you are surviving something that's really hard does not mean that you have to keep pretending that it's not really hard.

One of the greatest gifts that came after I got divorced wasn't suddenly that my life became poof magically easier because it didn't. I just no longer had to perform. I didn't have to pretend that I was okay anymore. I didn't have to carry two versions of myself. I didn't have to be this just silly fun mom on camera for people. And then behind the scenes.

fall apart. I was able to tell the truth. So

If no one else has told you this lately, you don't have to earn love. You should not have to earn love by pretending. And you don't have to protect an image at the expense of your own peace. And you certainly don't have to carry shame for surviving. Shame grows in silence. So maybe it's time that we're not so silent about this. We all want to feel better.

Obviously. And I hate the word healing because it just sounds so like, ooh, I'm gonna go hug a tree. But healing begins with the moment that you tell yourself the truth. So maybe today, after hearing my words, maybe today can be the day that you start telling yourself the truth. Because if I would have told myself the truth years ago,

I would be so much farther along

I want you to remember that we say on every episode: divorce is a marathon. It is not a sprint. I hope that not every day you are filled with all of these feelings that I just laid out for you today. Every day is not this hard. Every day for me is not this emotional. You're gonna have good days, bad days, horrible days, great days. That's normal. Our job

It is to help you get through them. That's why we do this show. And that's why we are so grateful that you guys listen to this show. If you could just click that little follow, subscribe button at the top of whatever platform you use to listen to the show, that would be so fantastic. It means so much to us. Message us, reach out.

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Than for you guys to look back at this time that you went through and thought, yep, that was hard. But those two, Morgan and Andrea, man, they really got me through it. It's the best compliment that we could ever get. We're here for you. I know that you can do this. I believe that you can do this. And you have got this. And we've got you.