hello there my beautiful lovely internet friends as i sit down to record this video i keep telling myself don't do it joe don't be dumb don't say the word divorce so over the past six months i have been going through the process of ending a almost decade-long relationship and ending a marriage the word that we like to use for that is divorce now that's a word that i have avoided using with all of the power in me because it feels dirty and wrong and super shameful and like failure understandably our culture often sees divorce that way but also coming from an evangelical christian background i grew up with a very ingrained belief that divorce was never the answer but it is something that i am going through now and i've avoided talking about anything regarding that subject for you know personal reasons for the people around me but also because the amount of judgment and icky feelings that are tied up in that word for me and a lot of people are extensive however on this channel i've always made a point of trying to say the things that i'm feeling because i'm guessing i'm not the only one who's feeling them here are a few things i wish someone would have told me about getting divorced before i started this process would it change anything logistically no would it be good to be mentally prepared for the absolute disaster zone of a life that it leaves in its wake it would have been good okay so before we dive into my list i am very excited to introduce you to our new sponsor today helix getting really good rest is very important to me for a variety of reasons primarily so i can function which is why i'm very excited to introduce you to helixly helix sleep makes premium mattresses and bedding that are customized to your needs and shift right to your door and anything that can save me a trip to the store already a big fan of so every single body is different and that is why helix created a sleep quiz which you can take and it will match you with your perfect mattress they have a lot of different options and the ability to take their quiz along with a partner based on my results helix matched me with their twilight mattress which and this is a fact is not only joe but also puffy approved i'm a side sleeper and i much prefer a firmer mattress to kind of the softer one so this one's perfect for me my back and my neck feel really supported so waking up i'm not achy and sort of out of it you know the feeling and the firmness here is exactly like i like it with other mattresses i've had in the past i've had issues with lower back pain upper back pain kind of almost feeling compressed when i was breathing lying down on them not realizing it was just the wrong mattress for me and this helix sleep mattress is absolutely fantastic and solves those issues so i want my mattress to be a place i actually want to come home to and go to sleep on because it's cozy and comfy and supports me and if you also want to enjoy where you sleep at night helix is a fantastic choice start to finish from the quiz to the shipping to showing up at my front door this was a really simple process myself guests and the puppies have been using this for about a month now with your helix sleep mattress not only do you get a 100 day sleep trial to make sure it really works for you but there's also a 10 year warranty on these there are also financing options and flexible payment plans helix delivers right to your door if you live in the us and it's super easy to get set up and started like i being not a large person was able to get this set up on my own which you're pretty proud of true story ever since i set up this mattress this is where i find my dogs the majority of the time which makes sense because it's super cozy and comfy and we are all about comfort here i absolutely love having a helix sleep mattress and i think you will too so if you're in the market for a new bed check them out also if you use the link in my description or go to helixsleep.com footless joe you can get up to 200 off your mattress and you also get two free pillows one can never have enough um make sure you check out the link thank you again to helix for sponsoring today's video and let's jump back into it shall we we shall so as i go into my list of things that no one tells you about divorce i even made a list so i wouldn't get scared and forget things i want to make it really clear that i'm not going to talk about you know any details of our relationship it's simply not important to put on the internet i wish all the best for him he wishes all the best for me when i made the decision to end this decade almost long relationship i wasn't thinking about every aspect of my life and every relationship in my life i was thinking about what was gonna be the best and healthiest thing for me and for us so i made the decision first and then i was like i'll deal with the fallout i'll deal with the consequences you know it's funny when you like have trouble at work you lose a job or your boss is being a jerk or there's difficulties your work life sucks but you can still come home or if a hobby you participate in you know is having a fallout oh that's a bummer that sucks that's a loss but at least you still have work or you still have your relationship or your home life when you end a relationship as significant as something long-term or marriage there's literally no piece of you and there's no piece of your life that it does not touch so when i entered into this relationship i was barely 21 and now i'm 31.
So one could argue that the majority of my adult life has been developed within the framework of this partnership going through significant life changes and developmental stages whether it was rocky or stable or whatever everything came from this base of this marriage and i did so much growing throughout the past decade right like we all do specifically when it came to my mental health developing coping skills and coping tools and getting through trauma getting through pretty massive life changes like losing my leg and all that came along with that and i thought in my brain if i walk away from this relationship those tools i have still developed and while that is absolutely accurate it was shocking to me how every little piece of how i knew how to take care of myself take care of my brain take care of my body move about the world and life came from the foundation of that relationship when it was no longer there my entire identity and the way that i viewed the world was absolutely shook and while a lot of like the same pieces you know i still had a job i still knew that it was good for me to like journal and move my body for my mental health like some of the basic tools were still there but the nuance of all of it i felt like i was starting over from scratch as a human being as an adult as a woman you don't really think about how many pieces of who you are become not entwined with but very influenced by the person you spend the majority of your life with though it was my choice a massive piece of who i was was suddenly gone and i had no idea what to put in that place and while on the one hand there were moments of happiness or excitement of like oh i get to choose this i get to build this part of me a lot of it was just pure terror because every like knee-jerk reaction that i had to a situation involved my partner and that no longer existed and so i felt lost and spinning and confused for a very long time and i'm kind of assembling some of those pieces but gosh darn they aren't all there yet and i'm still working on it the biggest thing that came as an absolute shock to me was the way that people respond to you telling them that you are ending your relationship one that they are not in the middle of right when you're with someone you two are the only people who actually are in that relationship and know it the amount of judgment strong opinions or just straight up being thought of as a horrible person and a villain was really surprising to me relationships that i had that existed before i even met him got really affected by me saying that i was getting divorced especially if people around you come from religious backgrounds understandably the word divorce carries a pretty heavy punch because it's something that really isn't super acceptable in many of those circles and i knew that but it didn't really make it any easier to have people thinking of me so differently like as a person because i decided that getting divorced was what needed to happen for me i had to learn really quickly to be okay being seen however people were gonna see me because i didn't have the energy to try to like manage everybody's perception that was very difficult because i spent so much of my life developing survival skills in the world in part by people liking me by keeping relationships good by you know trying to communicate and be there for people it's always been important to me to make people happy that's something i'm working through in therapy and have been for a while but as all this occurred i realized really quickly that there was no possible way that i could make sure everyone was good with this decision because they weren't going to be the only person who had to be good with it was me and also realizing that i was gonna make mistakes throughout the process there was no way that i could handle every conversation every relationship perfectly i did not have the bandwidth for that and so i tried my very best and also understood that there were probably you know situations or things or words that i said that i might have to revisit and have a conversation with someone about or apologize something that i wish people would have told me was that everyone will have an opinion and most of those people will let you know one way or the other what that opinion is at the end of the day i think it is vital to ask the people you trust who are around you for input on major decisions but when that input is coming from everywhere all you got to do is be good with your choice that's really it if you're solid in that you can choose to handle people's opinions and advice any way that you want at a certain point once i had like talked to the major people in my life i kind of just tuned it out because i knew what i needed to do and if someone agreed or disagreed that was on them so like i said we were together for a long period of time meaning that we made a lot of friends as a couple we had a number of really good couple friends who like you know the four of us or the six of us or whatever would hang out do stuff it was great love those people you know many of those people didn't pick sides staying friends with couple friends when you are no longer a part of a couple is uncomfortable what i mean by that is the entire dynamic shifts because you're used to being paired with someone it's really weird to go to events without your person there it's really weird to like sit down with the three of you doing something instead of the four of you doing something you kind of have to just completely explore that friendship all over again and that one can still be pretty uncomfortable for me i've had to make very conscious choices to be like no go do the thing go see the people you love because they matter to you and you matter to them this is absolutely worth maintaining everybody wants to be here but there have been moments when i'm like i just want to cut ties with absolutely anyone who knew me as a part of this couple just because it's weird and uncomfortable to like re-establish a new normal and that is kind of true across the board when you're building this new life for yourself i guess it's kind of obvious looking back but that is another thing i didn't really expect was like the awkwardness of going out with friends who used to be couple friends with it just shifts even like family relationships right my parents my brother my sister-in-law these are my people right like they are 100 my people and it still feels so weird being there without the person i have always been there with worth going to absolutely but being prepared for that sense of like loss and loneliness and discomfort and just figuring out who you are again in that dynamic that's challenging okay so another thing that is mostly just really annoying is habits not all of them but pretty much every habit that you have is going to shift a little bit if you are ending a long-term relationship i cannot tell you the amount of times that something would happen i'd reach for my phone to text the person who was my person for years before being like no that's that's not what i'm doing now but it was just a knee-jerk reaction it was just sort of out of something i'd done so many times or driving home i drove home to my old house multiple times before realizing oh yeah that's right everything has changed i don't live there anymore but you have all of these habits and all these kind of pre-programmed things and if you end a relationship you're gonna be reaching for your phone to text that person or call that person when major things happen something else that feels kind of like a taboo to say i shouldn't be saying this because i'm the person that ended it there is so much grieving when you are going through divorce and when you're the person who made the decision it can kind of feel like you shouldn't have the right to feel those things at least that's what it felt like for me i was like you know this is my choice it is and has been the best thing for me but that does not detract from the immense amount of loss and grief ending a long-term relationship is it is intensely painful regardless of the circumstances or how cordial or fine or not it goes and if you ever face something like this i hope you at least have a couple people around you who will remind you that it's okay to feel everything you're feeling i've had a couple of those people in my life and i'm really grateful for them because it's just this weird bizarre rollercoaster of anger and hurt and loss and grief and missing the person who knew you so well and sobbing in the car then screaming in the car then being totally fine everything's fine and then being a wreck again like it is a it comes in big waves but as time goes on those waves kind of even out and i'm like in like this stage now you know it was like this but we're here now and maybe we'll get there eventually i don't know but grieving that like feeling those things is really important to being able you know to move through your life and get to where you want to be going it's really hard to lose the person who knew you the best though my platform my social media presence is often about vulnerability and saying things honestly i really have trouble and i always have in real life with that like actually letting people into who i am when they're sitting next to me that's hard that's scary that's a real challenge for me and having spent so much time with someone where in many ways i allowed them in i allowed them to be that person though there were certainly issues they still knew me better than anyone else did at that point in my life except for me so losing that losing the person who you share so many memories with who knows so many aspects of you who has seen you in many different situations again whether or not it was always healthy or a good thing is really bizarre because it feels like a piece of you is leaving with them and then on the flip side trying to imagine putting in that much work with anyone else friendship relationship whatever it is seems too painful and too exhausting and overwhelming sometimes and i think that kind of going back to what i was already talking about you've gotta grieve that loss you've gotta grieve the fact that you invested so much of yourself with this person of course it's gonna hurt when they go regardless of the circumstances you know good or bad so the last thing i wanna touch on is shane you know that lovely little monster that hides in the closet and sucks our souls out like i talked about the beginning of this video divorce carries certain implications depending on what you know communities you exist in pretty universally though it's not seen as a good thing and in a lot of cultures and communities it's actively seen as a bad thing and i would make the argument though perhaps i am wrong here that especially being a woman ending a heterosexual marriage there's like an extra large amount of judgment and assumptions made about you as a woman because you're doing this and the amount of shame and failure that going through a divorce brings specifically is pretty extensive it's funny because i haven't questioned my decision since i made it have i thought about it a lot absolutely but i mean i haven't been like shaky on it or wavered from it once i knew i knew you know i took a lot of steps in between there but once the decision was made it was done but the amount of i suck i'm a horrible person i've ruined everyone in my life and everything just shame and messages of how horrible you are still in some moments are pretty heavy or pretty loud and the feeling of failure because in our minds marriage is supposed to be forever that's certainly what i believed when i got married that is what i was entirely dedicated to and then things changed when i'm thinking about it logically and rationally i don't see this as a failure i see it as the right choice life takes turns things happen things happen in relationships and it is absolutely okay to decide that it's not the best thing for you and to move on even though i know that rationally the weight of you failed is still really strong even though i don't see that relationship as a failure but it is really hard to shake kind of the shame and failure paradox and something that i am still working through there are so many more things that i could say about this process but those are some like the first thing that come to mind for me the way that relationships shift people change sides you lose your identity habits change your your entire life shifts every single aspect of it so many pieces of that are intensely painful it's gonna take time it makes sense that the last few months have been awful uh on top of a few other things that have occurred in my life like losing my dogs like going through this is gonna be a really rough process in every area of your life and that is something that i wish i had been a little bit better prepared for and understood that like oh okay literally everything is gonna shift i gotta be along for the ride it's gonna hurt it's gonna be hard and i'm gonna find my way through it kind of six months into this now i feel like i have a better handle on things there are still aspects that are insanely difficult it's still ongoing it's painful it's weird but i am building this new life for myself i am figuring out what i want for me and going after it i'm doing a whole lot of reflecting and at the risk of sounding super cliche you know working on myself working on um what i actually want who i actually want to be and taking steps towards those things so if you're going through this it does get better it's just a process to get there a huge thank you again to helix for sponsoring today's video check out their link in the description helix is a company i would highly recommend it was so easy to actually get the mattress get everything set up and to you watching this video right now thank you for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today you could be anywhere else in the world doing anything else you chose to hang out with me for a few minutes and listen to me talk listen to my story thank you a big thank you also to my patrons over on patreon for continuing to support these videos your generosity is the reason why i can do what i do so thank you i love you guys i'm thinking about you and i'll see in the next video bye guys [Music] you
Recent Comments