Our life experiences of loss, our shared experiences, and our ability in general to love and receive love‑‑these three factors help inform us about what our departed lover came to mean to us (more on this in chapter XII). In the self-discovery, we began to see the needs that developed and how the departed loved one met our needs.
When I find out most of what my wife meant and how she met my needs, I will be able to see better just what the nature of my loss was. If I can loosen her from my needs, then I will be able to move on in healing without losing my love.
Easy to say. And as easy to deny. The physical loss‑‑like hugs and sex‑‑is the first and easiest to see, but until I am able to look deep enough inside and see a portion of the good and bad, positive and negative of what I lost to my inner needs, I will not move on toward healing.
As the Bible informs us, when two marry, they become one in flesh. Whatever that means, it at least means that some part of my wife will have a place in my heart. Forever. If I ignore that, I will never grow. What did I say about love in Chapter III?
Looking at and dissecting as best I can all of her positive and negative qualities is one point in the process. Viewing what I meant to her and how I may have met her needs is but another point in the process. But since she is absent‑‑and all of the conflict that has come between us‑‑whatever qualities I can find and however I may have met her needs, there will clearly be some points that will forever be beyond my grasp. Though these are somewhat important, that is, understanding "her" informs me about me; but that is not crucial, because there will nevertheless remain some ignorance.
Through all of the differences and conflicts, misunderstanding and ignorance did play an important role in my contribution to the divorce (in her role too).
Viewing her positive and negative qualities, and viewing what I meant to her and how I met (and failed to meet) her needs are secondary, of much less importance. Much less important for you too. Secondary for several reasons. Our inability to fully understand this is part of reason. But insight about her is only secondary.
If I am to grow toward healing, looking at her is of much less importance than my looking at my self, my inner self. This is difficult because this goes against love which wants to focus on the departed instead of self.
If I am to truly grow toward healing, then I must see how much she‑‑all of her, good and bad‑‑meant to me. If you and I are to move toward healing, then we will have to move off the subject of our ex-spouse and on into the subject of our own inner self.
What needs came about from my relationship with her? What did she mean to my inner self? What did she mean to all of my positive and negative parts? As specifically as we are able, what deep needs of mine did she create? Did she meet? Not meet? That I wished she had met? For until I am able to see how much she meant to me and how she met my needs, in all my positive and negative qualities, I will never, never know just what I lost.
Part of the difficulty lies in knowing ourselves. This is part of the pain that is more significant in divorce than in death. Most persons have never looked so deeply into themselves before such a heart-love-loss. Knowing some of our own positive and negative qualities is sort of a prerequisite. For until we see most of these qualities, we will not see the needs that lie under them and how our departed lover met those needs.
The most remarkable miracle of great love is how you not only come to know another with a grand level of intimacy, but also how through such intimacy you can come to know and accept yourself. In the process you come to know and accept yourself for better or worse. Because of the great self-discovery and self-acceptance in great love, the pain in divorce confuses the issues of grief (so much more so than in death).
One major curse of divorce is that your frailties are highlighted and trampled (whereas in marriage they are shielded). Peculiar to divorce, you must at some time separate the pain of rejection from the pain of seeing your newly revealed frailties: those frailties that were once accepted, but now rejected.
Even if my frailties were some of the reasons for my spouse's rejection of me, nevertheless, I have got to realize that the rejection brings a pain all its own. This rejection is separate and apart from the pain of viewing my frailties. When all of the rejections bring to first light my frailties, how much greater will be the pain?
When grief has to be tied up with self-discovery, the task in healing becomes much more complicated. This is too much for me. I have to tackle grief and a new look at my trampled frailties.
In the tackling of grief and self-discovery, I begin to ask, "Oh God, what a wretched man am I." Is there any relief?
As I view my negative and positive qualities, I will be able to better view how my departed love met my needs. Without that viewing, I will never be able to free her from my needs. Without the freeing of her, my love for her will not be able to grow. For as I cling to her, clinging to how she met my needs, I will never be free from my anger and sorrow over the deprivation and frustration of my needs.
One of the most grief-stricken persons in the Bible was Judas. In Matthew 27 Judas only comes to partial terms with his loss, returns the thirty pieces of silver, then hangs himself. In Judas' grief, he felt the pain and sorrow of what he did. But he never did come to terms with what he had done or just what Jesus had come to mean to him, what needs Jesus met of his.
Rather than encounter his grief and look at his needs, he ran and killed himself. Rather than face the perfect love of Jesus, he ran away. Judas never came to terms with what he lost. Rather than look inward at just what Jesus had meant to him and could mean to him again (of the needs Jesus had met and could have met), Judas just ran and killed himself.
Instead of grieving, Judas chose suicide. Rather than face the love of Jesus and his own possibilities in love, Judas ran to self-destruction. Love is demanding. Denying love is always tragic.
There are other kinds of running from the inward pain of divorce. Sex, drugs, violence, isolation, bitterness, stereotyping, anger are some the negative ways. These negative ways of running from the inward pain of divorce need close examination.
If you were truly in love (or maybe I am speaking only of myself), then several of these methods of expression and running were tempting. Honestly, it is my personal opinion that if you were not tempted with a few of these, then you were not in love with the departed or you are still in some major denial. Who can casually endure such pain without any temptation to run? I do not believe any one of us is perfected in love. It is too easy to blame, run, or otherwise dodge the pain. Our world gives opportunity everywhere to do anything but attempt to do what love might demand.
However, running is not totally bad. There are some positive ways to get distracted and run for awhile: writing, music, and all the creative arts; work, physical activities, and church stuff‑‑all these are healthier and more positive ways of running. Obviously preferred to the destructive forms of running, they can nevertheless become negative if they become an end in themselves and you dodge the inner work in grief and love. But again, do know that getting away from your grief in positive ways is only part of the work in healing, only part of the movement toward a higher level of loving.
We will hurt in proportion to what our spouses meant to us. Our success toward healing will for the most part be determined in how you and I come to terms with most of what our spouses meant to us and how we free them from our needs. Only when we do this will we be able to grow in our love for them and grow in love for our selves and others. With a growth in love, we will be able to change some needs.
Only as our love grows will we be able to tackle the future, wherever that future may lead. To singlehood. To possible renegotiation. Or to another.
Forgiveness is part of the issue in healing, but by no means the most important part. If in the future reconciliation is negotiated, then at that time the issue of forgiveness becomes truly important. Of course, with regard to the betrayal‑‑whether real or perceived‑‑forgiveness is crucial. But not the most important at this time.
Hold on to your hat. Given that the marriage was founded in deep love, the reason forgiveness is secondary at this time is because of the prerequisite self-discovery that is so necessary to growth from a divorce. Whenever there is great love that has been torn asunder, there will be a considerable amount of self-discovery in the healing.
Forgiveness is crucial. Sometime or another. But forgiveness is secondary to love and some amount of self-discovery. We have to find out most of what needs to be forgiven‑‑in ourselves as well as with the departed. Otherwise the forgiveness is too shallow and indistinguishable from denial of the inner feelings of anger or bitterness.
Our marriage created the needs that have ceased to be met (as with death), but also created the needs that are now being rejected (absent in death). Also unlike death, in divorce the person who formerly helped create and meet the needs is still around. The issue of most importance, from which forgiveness will be a by-product,
the most crucial issue of all is love.
Love of the departed lover, love of my hurt self, and love of others. True love will free, where selfish love will bind.
From a great love will spring forgiveness. It really does not work the other way around. A forced forgiveness is no forgiveness at all and will impede healing.
She has departed. Unless I free her from my needs, I will never be able to get my needs met anywhere else. She is a unique person. I can pretend that the arms of another are hers. But this would be deceit, selfish, and devaluing of the person I am with. If I marry to replace the wife I lost, I cheat myself, have lied to my new wife, and cheapened the relationship I had with my ex-wife. No one can take my ex's place.
Rather than getting my needs met somewhere else, the noble task is the more difficult work of growth: the work of changing my needs. Said more positively, as I free her from my needs, I will be able to begin work on those needs. On changing my needs. Or most important of all‑‑I will be able to come to love her beyond (and without) the expectation that she meet my needs.
The goal: to love as God does. Not that I will be able to fully attain it, but I will press on (Philippians 3:12). There are so much promise.
On a dreary day, I sat down and began to write a poem about my struggle. Inadequate and obscure at times. Not very substantial when compared to the great poets. It took a long time and many edits.
What did my departed love come to mean to me? Which needs of hers did I meet? What needs of mine did she meet? Am I growing yet? Have I actually come under the Bridge of Finality? Or is my healing still illusion? Am I beginning to truly heal a little and look ahead?
Or am I caught up again in another whirlpool in the Bay of Heartbrokenness?
L O V E L O R N
When into the recesses of my heart I fall,
There cannot be found a sufficiently deep call.
Though my forlorn state dreams for the smallest of touch,
Every longing and stretching reach seems, oh, so much.
Fogged in, bound, and so weak--how on earth can I know
The tunnel or path out from this abyss to go?
Only knowing that from it I must surely come,
If into this fallen life there might shine some sun.
How my love's hurt and pain so cripple and dispose,
Throwing her into confusion beyond repose,
Recollecting times past of wounds so deep and sore;
Halt--a heedless plea is made to settle the score.
What scream can I do to appease this kind of pain,
Running so deep, so solidly linked as a chain?
How can I understand--even begin to stroke,
What seems to be the hub of so many a spoke?
Harder and darker it gets--this abyss of mine;
When each tumbling step up, seems to be a decline.
For each effort I exert seems to make her scream,
Though only from my heart I wish my love to stream.
What abyss can this be that so confines and blinds,
Scratching our broken hearts and confusing our minds,
Searing away a long sought wish that now seems lost--
A treasure that cannot be bought at any cost?
Then I begin to see some shape to this abyss,
Like a small dim light flickering with a slow hiss.
This plight is something worse than a rude helpless state
That's laid my heart open upon an ice-cold slate.
This slate upon which my heart so openly lies
Seems boxed so tightly with my very own heart-cries:
Screamings--these are, in their longing attempt to reach,
To touch . . . approach something of this imposing breach.
The screams of the past increase this distance, so cold;
Whichever way we turn, these dark shadows--so bold.
They spin--twist--churning graves over, over again:
Pushing up, up the dead--a new walk to begin.
All seems lost in this helpless abyss of Lovelorn,
Where walking dead of a darksome past are reborn.
For her, much more terrible than a raging sea;
For a kind, tender heart--so much worse than for me.
Once innocence has longed under duress to care,
And through the years has pursued to lovingly share--
The long time resolve of a warm and precious heart
Kindles a love that from itself, it cannot part.
Sores of many pains, long ago, were deeply buried,
Hoping that from their graves nothing will be ferried.
The years press and pound to tightly secure their hold:
Padlocked deep--only a pure heart could be so bold.
And never from those graves will those warm embers burn,
From deep pains--even a kindled love cannot churn.
Though a pure heart--so bold--gripping tightly to love,
The padlocks of the past prevent the smallest shove.
And I, in this abyss, can do nothing to free,
Or even loosen for a moment love to be;
For every turn that is made on this ice-cold slate
Seems to freeze whatever warmth my hurt heart would make.
"Lovelorn--what pit is this," I solemnly declare . . .
That if I must turn elsewhere for sweet love to share;
That no matter where I go--or on this earth search--
Some part of my life will on an ice-cold slate perch.
For though out of the abyss I may rise one day,
Part of my broken heart in the abyss will stay:
Lying cold on the slate for the dank air to dry,
Something of my past about which I will always sigh.
There will be no rejoicing on that day I rise,
For my work will be so very hard to disguise.
Oh--to shovel over what will be my grave past
Will be a hard journey that cannot come too fast.
Oh, Lovelorn--sweet and callous . . . what kind of abyss?
Though wanting to arise . . . what kind of hope is this?
What makes us want to stay deep down beneath the earth,
Where the dead ever lie in wait for their rebirth?
What kind of place are you, you so ugly Lovelorn--
That keeps hearts entwined, though they are certainly torn:
Lovelorn, who moves two souls in crude, creaking shackles;
Bound and buried, opened and bare to rude cackles.
Sweet . . . callous--who knows what you are when you move forth?
Two souls caught in your whirlwind of hurricane force:
Mixed about in some sweet kind of tangled amiss,
While longing for nothing more than a true pure kiss.
Lovelorn, you beast of unspeakable proportions:
A fitting dark place to displace our emotions;
You--some kind of aberration we doubtless hate,
Yet from whom our feelings we will not let escape.
How the pendulum swings long in our broken hearts;
Feelings we both cherish and hate flow off the charts.
Who did what . . . who was sincere, who betrayed the most?
Demanding this, that--we will stand our ground and boast.
All the while, that dark beast of brokenness--Lovelorn,
Stands in the abyss for one more love to be shorn.
We resist till we can no longer stand upright;
It seems that now we are forever out of sight.
When then the final curtain is closed with a sigh,
And then broken hearts pack their bags and say good bye--
Lovelorn stands tall and larger with a very broad smile,
As we pine and fret our lost love all the while.
And victory is now just around the corner,
For that beast of Lovelorn is such a scorner;
Nor will he finish till he's had all his fun,
Shrinking sweet love to the size of a nucleon.
The hardest cruel task that has ever been sought,
Pushing lonely tears at any cost to be bought,
Begins to push from the sight any kind of hope,
So that the soul can begin in the night to cope.
As that lonely soul begins its new bad estate,
The last piece of love is swept up with his cruel rake;
Mixed with hope and haste is thrown to the wind of scorn
As two loves are now in darkness forever shorn.
The job done . . . a satisfied smug smile is born
On the proud head of that darksome beast‑‑Lovelorn.
Identifying the meaning, seeing the needs, and finding the binding ties: there is no other way. Only by such sight will be able to begin to free our departed lover from our needs. When we begin to release, we are moving past the Bridge of Finality. Only as we begin to free our loved one from our needs will we be able to get some of these needs met elsewhere or better still change those needs.
Just past the Bridge of Finality, we are on the way to a higher level of loving.
Through greater loving we will be able to live alone more comfortably. Or we will be able to look at reconciliation more intelligently. Or we will be able to negotiate a new relationship a little more wisely. Though there will never be a return to the age of innocence. No return to Eden. No return to Snowy River. There is promise. A future state looms just over the horizon.