Over ten years ago I went through my second divorce.
I wondered if I would survive, though everyone I knew told me the pain would pass, I would stop crying, I would begin a new life - all the things friends tell you to make you feel better.
Unfortunately they weren't crying in inopportune places at inopportune times.
They also didn't have a clue how frightened I was.
Most mornings I could barely get out of bed.
It wasn't just 'why bother?' I was afraid to get up, afraid of what I would have to figure out about my life that day, and most afraid because I no longer recognized the timid person I had become.
Though I would have hit someone who suggested this at the time, in retrospect I know it was the work I did figuring out how I ended up divorcing a second time that saved me from making the same mistakes all over again.
Ten years ago most people saw me as very together, competent to a fault, energetic, active: a woman with a very definite sense of purpose.
They probably still do.
But I knew ten years ago that I was a puddle.
I tried to tell a few of my women friends, but I don't think they could comprehend that I could be that terrified.
I wasn't the Nancy they had always depended upon.
I don't mean this in a disparaging way about them, because over the years we had often depended upon one another.
They just had no idea how to deal with the depth of my despair and its resultant fear.
I was living in a shack donated by a new friend in the new town I found myself living in with my soon-to-be ex.
There was no toilet in the shack.
I peed in a bucket, and had to traipse into the main house to shower or eat.
The owner worked at home and frequently looked annoyed when I appeared at her back door, thought she told me it was not a problem.
When a therapist suggested I had other choices, I was furious.
Couldn't she see that I didn't? And then it dawned on me: I could go on a road trip and visit my daughters and friends in California, where I had lived for over 25 years.
I think that was the beginning of change for me, as well as a return to sanity.
Finding a new way to live life was a whole other question.
If a man had asked me out during those first few years, I think I would have done unspeakable things.
I certainly did not feel capable of pursuing a relationship when I had been such a dismal failure at two marriages, a belief that took years to belie.
I was no longer miserable by then, but I also didn't feel happy.
Joy was something I remembered from my distant past, and something I had no idea how to recapture.
The therapist stepped in again.
She suggested I compile a list of the ten things in life that were most important to me, as well as a list of the ten things I wanted from and with another human being.
She ordered me to put each of those lists in order of importance as well, numbers one through ten.
I worked very hard at those lists.
What was amazing to me was that neither of my husbands possessed many of the things I said I wanted with a partner.
My first would have laughed at some of the items on that list; my second would have been baffled by them.
I had ended up in the same place with then both: walking on eggshells, afraid of their anger, their opinions, and the demise of each of the relationships if I didn't shape up.
Neither of them thought there was anything they had to do, and I believed them.
I also felt responsible for the happiness of my husbands rather than my own.
What this entailed was almost always doing what they asked, whether I wanted to or not.
In an odd way it also put me in charge of their lives.
I frequently told them how to behave, how to pursue their interests so they might succeed - in a word - living their lives rather than my own.
If I was supposed to put them first as I had been taught to do since childhood, how could I do otherwise? For someone who felt responsible for everyone near and dear to her, each of these marriages seemed a perfect mating! Through the tasks I was being given by the therapist and the books I was reading, as well as the divorces themselves, I was learning that putting my partners first was not a good way to live.
I took this realization very seriously.
It was time I learned to focus on my own wants and needs.
I also needed to learn to butt out of other people's business.
If I didn't know what was best for me, how could I possibly know that for anyone else? I felt embarrassed by my own behavior: I gave my opinion with certainty even if I wasn't asked for suggestions At first my daughters found my new behavior very annoying.
I remember my younger daughter standing with her hands on her hips in exasperation, saying, "I don't want to hear you don't know what's best for me! I want you to tell me what to do like you used to!" Both of my daughters gave me lots of practice looking inward rather than outward.
Today I think both are relieved that I stay out of their affairs.
At least most of the time, because I am still a work in progress.
Once I began to get the hang of this new behavior, I realized how little I knew about what I wanted for myself.
I didn't even know what I enjoyed anymore.
I had been too busy figuring that out for everyone else.
It sounds ridiculous, but I believe many women fall into this trap, and many of us never climb out.
It took six long years figuring out where I had gone wrong in those marriages, and then how to change my behaviors.
Slowly, step by step, I began pursuing what seemed important to me, altering friendships, and finally figuring out how to make money at something I would enjoy, even if my path made no sense to anyone else.
Where am I now? I have been living with a new partner for over five years.
The first year was bumpy, to say the least, but by then I genuinely liked the person I had become, and better yet, knew who she was.
That helped, especially when I would fall back into thinking about who to be for him, and doing it; i.
e.
, making all the meals so he would be well fed and I would be seen as a 'good' woman.
As he told me back then, "I am an adult, and you are making me feel incompetent in the kitchen.
" My mother would have been horrified, but I wasn't.
I asked him which nights he wanted to cook, relieved I wasn't solely responsible for that task.
I still like 'helping' him, but he quickly sets me straight.
He does now ask me sometimes how I would handle a particular issue, and I have to confess I love it when he does.
After all, I have so many ideas I know would work for him! Fortunately we both have a sense of humor about our own foibles, and can acknowledge them to each other.
I am forever grateful to that therapist.
I also honor my own willingness to look hard at myself, at the behaviors that had contributed to my two divorces, and to find ways to practice new ones before I involved myself romantically with another human being.
I am a living testament to the fact that we can change in ways we never would have thought possible.
The years of pain and struggle were worth it to find the life I have today.
I still have those lists, and am finally with someone whose traits reflect the ones I said I wanted in a partner over seven years ago.