What was actually lost
I lost the marriage, the daily contact with the kids, the house and the bleed of money that would hit me for a long time. But I wasn’t alone and it almost seemed normal and expected to people around me. Somewhere in the middle of it all, I remember feeling something more than just the throwaway headlines that were spoken around the office or the bar. I didn’t really know what those feelings were at the time. I suppressed them because I had to crack on, get focused and get back on the path. That is the expected norm, right!
What I later learned from the real moments of life, the scary moments where you catch a breath, was that I was actually deep in mourning for the human loss of being a husband, the father at breakfast, cradling arms around my children, what our Sundays in the forest were together, the winters in the snow and the shared joy and the smiles on faces. I had context and coordinates. I had a role and a reason.
Survival is not a destination
I see the same men now. Having dealt with all the legal and logistical obligations, all the anger and numbness and those first nights alone, they wake up on a Monday, functional, ready to crack on once more. That takes real strength and they do it to survive.
But survival is not a destination and soon a cycle will germinate unless it is arrested, and this my post-separation friends, is the point.
You got through it but you have no idea what comes next other than what you think is expected.
The identity within the framework
Let’s take a look at our identity for a second. We create identities that often depend on the structures around us, either self-created, provided for us or those that we fall into. The roles that we play for our job and the organisations behind them are obvious examples. The marriage or the relationship was also one of those structures and within it, we built an identity of ourselves that depended on its existence.
The kids knew us differently, the partner or wife, the close friends too. Open, relaxed, more fun to be around, expressive, more connected. We were more of a living being than a functional one. And we lost it. A part of us was ripped out and we were left exposed without that structure to hold us together. Then the intellectual validation of stoicism with a side helping of anger becomes the propellants of the new cycle that keeps us going. But disorientation? That’s the truth, isn’t it? And we can’t admit to it, to anyone. No wonder we feel contained.
Who am I outside of this?
In the quiet moments when we’re alone, when the propellants recede and we don’t know what to do with ourselves, there comes a moment of realisation, that we were navigating our life in someone else’s direction. Where we lived, how we socialised and what we were working towards was all built around a relationship rather than something built from within. The loneliness of the underlying question is a terrifying moment where possessions, the bottle, and other diversions, become easy to lean on. That question is, who am I outside of these structures? In that moment, you probably feel isolated, exposed and without a compass or bearing.
You can’t say to your kids, ‘I don’t know who I am anymore’, you can’t say to your colleagues that you’re lost, god forbid, and if you have any meaningful friends you can’t really tell them that you haven’t slept properly in the last few months and that the synthetic existence and the silence is killing you. The usual remedy is to escape which leaves you feeling even more isolated and suppressed.
And now the one person you confided in is on the other side of a legal dispute. The state you are living in, is a structural condition and it is not your malfunction.
The question nobody asks
They all ask, ‘How are the kids doing with this?’, ‘What’s happening with the house?’ and ‘Are you seeing anyone?’. But in my experience nobody asked the one question that really matters, terrifying though it may seem. That question is, “So who do you want to be now and why does that matter to you?”
New foundations
I’m not talking about therapy, that’s not my domain. I’m talking about arresting a potentially endless and negative cycle with a practical, intrinsic regrounding. You’re either going to make decisions based on the built identity that brought you to a collapse or else you’re going to have to renegotiate on something much firmer.
But it requires that you drop the mask, stop the intellectual jousting, stop seeking acknowledgment and validation via the manufactured exterior and have the courage to build new foundations that are yours to own.
Not a method that you follow, not another container to box you in, no theatre, no podcast mantras - just solid ground with values, skills and experience.
The danger of filling the void
The danger is that we, intelligent, resourceful, action oriented men move too quickly to fill the void with a relationship and a new exercise programme along with a new project. But that void you feel cannot be quenched by material wealth or diversion.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with taking these kinds of actions, except that if we do not take the time to reset the foundations and our compass bearing, then our actions will be built on the ones laid before.
And the space left behind is not only a void, It is room to fill, and perhaps the first real room you have had in years, to find out what is actually yours and move towards it.
