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Resources » Steve's Rebuilding Experiece
Steve took the Rebuilding Seminar with Norm Gibson toward the end of 2008 and wrote a blog while attending. Below is his first-hand account of what our seminar is like:
I’m about to start the Rebuilding class (10-6-2008)
I’m not a fan of psychobabble, so I’m working on going into this Rebuilding with an open mind. In fact, this year I feel like a victim of psychobabble, because my wife of 30 years just started trotting out all these books on emotional abuse and narcissism, pointing out how I have this checklist symptom or that one. When you read these lists, most “normal” people would admit to having one, two or maybe even several symptoms, but that doesn’t mean you come anywhere near the psychological criteria for the condition. But it’s a good way to brand your spouse with the pent-up frustrations of marriage issues never resolved.
I felt blindsided when she brought all this up. I felt deeply ashamed, not because I had been “caught red-handed” but because it was my wife & soul mate doing it. She’s the one person who makes life’s many hassles worth it for me, and now it’s like she’s telling me I should be in a cell along with murderers and child molesters. And she’s telling me it’s over between us, and I can’t believe it’s come to this.
After several months of feeling shattered, I talk to an old friend who did the Rebuilding class years ago. She was a basket case for a long time around her divorce, but the class really got her back on track. I tell her that I’m not even sure my wife & I are going to get divorced, that we’re being more caring than we’ve been in years, so maybe all we’ll do is a separation and see how it goes. My friend points out that the legal labels don’t mean a thing, that I’m still on an emotional rollercoaster that’s shaken my world to its core. She’s right. I’ve got to deal with this disintegration now, no matter what the final outcome. My trust and self-esteem are at lifetime lows. How am I going to deal with that?
That’s why I’ve signed up for this Rebuilding class. I just hope it’s a lot more than 10 weeks of group hugs. I don’t know what I need, but I’ve got to get to my feet again. There was plenty in our marriage that I wasn’t happy about either, so if I can find a way to get past all this grief, maybe I can have a new & better relationship in the future.
I told my friend that I’d be keeping a journal and might even be willing to share it if it didn’t feel too weird. You’re reading my first journal entry. If I suddenly stop posting in the future, it’ll probably be because I got freaked out. We’ll see how it goes.
My first Rebuilding class (10-16-2008)
When I entered the Divorce Seminar for the first time, I was afraid of “standing out,” of being the oddball.
I just knew that my situation couldn’t be the customary divorce scenario shared by all the other people in the room. After all, I wasn’t even sure if I was really going to get divorced. I might just want to live apart and see how things went. Not that there was any real likelihood that my wife and I would reconcile. And as for our somehow falling in love again… impossible. After 30 years of marriage, yes, we still had love and caring between us, but we just couldn’t stand each other a lot of the time. Thirty years of mutual head-butting had taken its toll.
All around me in the seminar were people I imagined had far stronger commitments to divorce, and far better reasons for it. Perhaps some of these women had been physically abused. Maybe some of these men had been scorned and belittled by their wives. Or maybe others were the “dumpers” who had cut & run from their relationships and were now trying to cope with their residual guilt… I just didn’t know.
The Seminar started with the instructor talking to us about the 19 rebuilding blocks that we’d encounter along the way to a full recovery. Things like Denial. Anger. Grief. Loneliness. Things I was already feeling. But there were other things I hadn’t even thought of being part of this process: accepting Singleness. Cultivating Relatedness. And at the top of the Rebuilding pyramid, the biggest prize of them all — Freedom.
I wasn’t sure what Freedom meant in a divorce scenario, but I liked the sound of it. But Norm said we first had to deal with the grungy, low-level junk before we could move on the good stuff.
We broke into small groups of four or five people each, each with a Rebuilding volunteer to facilitate. The volunteers were all people who had been through previous Rebuilding classes. I had chatted with a few of them out in the lobby and they were all friendly and excited. I took that as a good omen.
The small group began, and I was the first one to speak on why I was there. “I guess I want a legal separation,” I said, “but I’m not ready yet to say I want a divorce. I feel like I’m probably the ‘dumpee’ even though I’m the one pushing for the separation. It’s really confusing. My wife and I really care for each other a lot, but we’re still getting stuck on the same issues after 30 years. We’ve seen a half-dozen therapists and counselors. Now our kids are out of the house and we can’t ignore this crap anymore…”
I felt like I was rambling, not really making sense. It felt confused and messy. But then the other folks in the group began sharing their stories…
Surprise! The woman next to me also wanted a legal separation. And yet she also wanted her husband back, even after his affairs and neglect. Another woman was dealing with the shock of her husband abandoning her and their kids, moving cross-country and refusing all contact… how could he do that to his own kids?
As the stories were told around the circle, it dawned on me — there are no “typical” scenarios in real-life relationships. They’re all full of jarring twists and turns, just as the people in my group were describing. We may all have started off feeling some shame at our predicaments, but the small group process washed that away. We were saying things to each other that we probably hadn’t shared with anyone else… and it felt really good. Life had dealt us a bad hand and we were responding as best we know how. It’s a lot easier to do that when you know you’re not alone.
That’s what I took away from my first Seminar. My personal details didn’t make me an oddball. I had a right to be there and to start a healing process. There might, indeed, be light at the end of my tunnel. And I can see how the key to rebuilding my trust in relationships is going to be the honesty & support of all these caring strangers I just met for the very first time…
Stuck in Grief, freed by Anger (10-22-2008)
Since my last entry, I’ve gone through the Adaptation and Grief portions of Rebuilding. Adaptation by itself didn’t seem all that significant, but the Grief exercise freed me from a dark place I’d been stuck in for months.
Adaptive behaviors are all those “coping mechanisms” we acquire as we grow up. A lot of these are bad habits that we come to mistake for our true selves. For me, those would be such roles as the Rebel and the Entertainer. I’ve known for a long time that both of those are habitual strategies I use to compensate for my basic shy or even antisocial nature… ironic, huh? Take on roles that are inherently high profile when I’d really rather be low profile. I think it’s something I learned from my mother — kind of a “the best defense is a good offense” thing.
I resisted parts of this exercise, because I was afraid it might devolve into psychobabble — you know, casually labeling difficult people as Passive-Aggressive or saying that all unmarried men in their thirties are afflicted with the Peter Pan Syndrome. I was glad to see that this exercise didn’t really go there.
The focus on Grief was much more meaningful for me, because that was a place I’d been stuck in for more than six months. No matter where I was, if my mind wandered to the unraveling of my marriage, my tears would start to well up. That was especially awkward at work, so I’d have to jerk my mind out of that place and focus on something else, stuff it down, only to open it up later, when I was somewhere safe.
Moments like that felt like a tsunami wave of grief came out of nowhere and leveled me. I wasn’t able to move past that point until a Rebuilding exercise had me writing a goodbye letter to all the things I was leaving behind in my breakup… the good moments with my wife, the home where we raised our kids, our special shared memories, and so much more.
Then an odd thing happened as I wrote — I shifted from saying goodbye to the good things and began thinking of the things I wouldn’t miss, such as pointless arguments and the corrosive pride of two people unwilling to give an inch. It brought back the lyrics of “Husbands & Wives,” an old Roger Miller song:
Two broken hearts, lonely, looking like
Houses where nobody lives.
Two people each having so much pride inside,
And neither side forgives.The angry words spoken in haste,
Such a waste of two lives,
It’s my belief
Pride is the chief cause in the decline
In the number of husbands and wives.
…and then I got angry, angry at that stupid pride in both of us, and the tragic impasse we had created. I certainly was glad to say goodbye to that. A half-dozen more painful memories leapt to mind, and I finished the letter with those, feeling some satisfaction that they, too, would someday vanish in my rear view mirror… providing I learned some lessons from this experience.
When I put my letter away, I realized that I had somehow come unstuck from Grief and had moved into long overdue Anger. I’d been wallowing in grief too long. By writing that letter and breaking-down my grief into bite-size pieces, I could finally deal with it rather than be crushed by it. That felt great.
For me, anger put me back on the road to processing my breakup. I may get stuck again in the future, or have to revisit issues I thought were fully resolved, but it gave me a lot of faith in this rebuilding process. I’m not the first to go down this road, and I won’t be the last, so I’m sure glad there are experienced guides out there.
Masks, Transitions and the return of Self-Esteem (11-6-2008)
I was talking about grief in my last post, and how I was stuck in it for months until it turned to anger. Anger can be healthy if it energizes you and puts you back on the path. That’s what happened for me. It wasn’t anger directed at a person, but rather anger at the seeming unfairness of my marriage coming apart.
In the Rebuilding exercises on “transitions,” I started by making a list of the things I wanted to leave behind as I moved forward, and the things I wanted to preserve. On the leave-behind list, I put “shame-based grief” as #1, followed by a bunch of my counter-productive behaviors that contributed to the problems in my marriage. I don’t want to get into those here, but a lot of it is stuff I acquired in childhood, and I’ll probably be wrestling with it for years to come.
The preserve list was a pleasant surprise. With that cleansing, energizing anger came some restored perspective. There were things about me – good things – that I was happy with and wanted to preserve… Humor. A sense of wonder about the world. A sensual nature. Loyalty, creativity, intuition and much more. It wasn’t at all hard to fill the preserve side of the ledger, and that was the pleasant surprise. My self esteem was back after taking a long, long sabbatical. I was a worthy person again. Heady stuff!
(By the way, don’t think that all the Rebuilding lessons happen in a classroom. I’m starting to attend more of the social events for Rebuilders, and my fellow classmates are a tremendous support network, and a ton of fun! We’ve shared personal stories & insights with each other, so I’m closer to them than I am with some of my old friends. And a few of my Rebuilder buddies keep urging me to learn salsa dancing with them, so if they succeed… well, that would an amazing achievement, given the shy guy I am.)
Back to the classroom: Some of the transition exercises weren’t as much fun for me. I didn’t really understand the Three Stages of Adulthood (”Shell,” “Rebel” and “Love”), perhaps because it depended heavily on remembering what you were doing & feeling at various stages in your life, on different fronts. My memory just wasn’t up to the task; I couldn’t remember the milestones. My memory has always been an embarrassment to me, with more holes than swiss cheese. I sometimes wonder if my flying headfirst through the windshield of a school bus at age 10 might have had anything to do with that.
Anyway, the exercise on Masks was better, although a bit sobering. Masks are roles that we play in life that don’t serve us well. Looking at a long list of masks, I easily picked out several that I’m apparently fond of – Depressed. Judgmental. The Rebel. The Intellectual. The Joker. Enough roles for several curtain calls…
This year, I added the role of Dumpee. I think that’s a mask that has kept me from looking closely at my role in the decline of my marriage. So now I’ve started reading some of those ‘psychobabble’ books I’ve always resisted. It’s probably too late for introspection to save my marriage, but maybe for my next love relationship…
The next Rebuilding class focuses on Self Esteem. I’ve made a good start at recovering mine, but there’s still plenty of work I can do in that area. Let’s get started. With the support of my new friends in Rebuilding, that’s not as intimidating as it once was.
A sweet class for my ’soft animal’… (11-21-2008)
Last Sunday’s Rebuilding class focused on Self-Worth and was really delightful. I don’t want to say too much about it, lest I spoil things for future attendees. I’ll just say that there was a certain sweetness to the experience that made me appreciate how far I’ve come in the past 7 weeks of Rebuilding. Not so long ago, I would have struggled (and probably failed) to see anything worthy in the mirror. Back then, grief and anger ruled my days, leaving no room for, well, me.
We heard two poems, both of which were beautiful and very welcome. One was an E. E. Cummings poem that I hadn’t heard in decades (”…nobody, not even the rain, has such tiny hands…”) and the other was Mary Oliver’s The Wild Geese, a poem I had never heard…
“…You don’t have to be good.
You don’t have to walk through the desert on your knees
For a hundred miles, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
Love what it loves…”
I really like that “soft animal” image. Forget slashing claws and bared fangs. It’s time to relax in the burrow, no need to be on guard or be anyone but who you are. Peace and acceptance. I’m ready for some of that.
As I left class to drive home, I had a Chris Smither song playing in my head and lifting me up:
“…I’ve been left for dead before
But I still fight on.
Don’t wait up, leave the light on,
I’ll be home soon…”
Thanks, Chris. It’s good to be back.
Self-doubt is self-sabotage. (11-29-2008)
I had a major meltdown this week, a day of intense self-doubt and emotional collapse. I’m not sure what triggered it, but it started with a vivid image of myself juggling 6 or 8 small balls simultaneously. Then I added another ball to the dizzying display with the thought, “I must handle this one, too.” Except right behind that thought was self-doubt: “Yeah, maybe you can handle it for a few more seconds, at best… you’re bound to drop one of them soon, and when you do, the whole thing will fall apart… the circle cannot hold…”
Then I added another ball. And another. And then… what came crashing down was not the spinning circle of balls, but my self-confidence. I felt totally overwhelmed and defeated. My life was too complex a juggling act, and every ball was being kept in the air with a promise and a prayer. The balls I was juggling were my life issues. Things like the legacy of two narcissistic parents. Depression and ADD. Money problems. And 30 years of recurring & unresolved conflicts in my marriage. Who was I kidding? It was ignorance, denial and dumb luck that had gotten me through so far, but I felt like my luck was about to run out… (Thank goodness ignorance & denial are renewable resources!)
Thankfully, I got unstuck from this panic quickly. Even though my wife and I are living apart in a trial separation, we’re nonetheless very caring with each other. She compassionately talked me through all this by reminding me that this self-doubt wasn’t the real me, it was just my fears and the general crap I’ve hauled around since childhood.
The next day, I read a few chapters in the Rebuilding book and it had the same message for me — it’s our thoughts and fears that sabotage our self-worth, but we need to separate our fears from our true self, our core of self-love. Yeah, I know this sounds like the touchy-feely stuff I said I was going to avoid, but after the meltdown of the previous day, I knew it was true. Life lessons don’t get much clearer than that.
At my last Rebuilding class, we did exercises on exactly this topic. One exercise involved stating our fears, then rephrasing them in a series of tiny ways. In doing so, the power they held over us fell away. I’m sure I’ll need a lot of practice before I get in the habit of separating my fears from who I really am, but I’m sure going to work hard at this.
What I liked best about all of this is the realization that when you strip away your self-doubts, you’re left with a pretty darn decent person! I really like that person in me, and I’m proud of him. That’s the guy I want to introduce to the world.
Graduating from Rebuilding, but taking these friends with me… (12-16-2008)
Women do it with their best friends. Men do it with their buddies. But talking openly and honestly about relationships and S-E-X is not all that common in mixed crowds. When it’s attempted, it’s often very superficial. Or worse yet, it’s alcohol-fueled and over the top.
The mature middle ground is hard to find. My final two Rebuilding sessions had ample middle ground. What a treasure to engage in a serious exploration of the mysterious terrain that lies between men and women.
Week Nine was devoted to our panels on Relationships. The men and women in the class met separately outside of class and prepared questions to ask the other gender. There was no lack of questions, so prioritizing them became the challenge. Which ones best captured the underlying issues we were after? How do we phrase them to elicit the broadest and most revealing insights?
In the end, our questions weren’t that noteworthy — but the answers were. On both sides of the gender fence, those answers were thoughtful, direct and personal in a way that can only come from people who have bonded and grown together over an intensive 10-week period. We trusted each other, and it showed.
The lighter-weight questions included “Is it really okay for us to call you?” (the women) to “How long should we keep trying when you don’t respond to our messages?” (the men).
The more involved discussions were over issues like “the Games Men and Women Play,” “What is ‘Chemistry’?” and when and how to introduce expectations and intimacy into a dating relationship.
(The answers to these and other questions are printed upside-down at the bottom of this page. Just rotate your computer monitor 180 degrees for our revealed truth!!! Just kidding!)
Week Ten took us to the topic of Sex and the Newly Single. For a lot of us, we hadn’t dated or had new sexual partners in decades, and BOY have things changed! Anymore, birth control is a relatively minor issue compared to nasty STDs and life-threatening viruses like AIDS. Condoms are for survival these days, not just sexual variety.
Against this grim background, you’ve got a room of middle-aged people who have forgotten everything about the dating game, have been badly singed in their last long-term relationship, and are not too keen about taking their clothes off with the lights on. The prognosis is not good…
Again, the amazing trust we’ve built up over 10 weeks comes to the rescue. We talk about what’s really on our minds — the fear and the fumbling, the horrible questions that must be asked, who should pull out the condoms — and we get past it. We share, we practice our questions and responses, we even find that bananas look charming in French Ticklers.
The real world won’t be this easy, but it’s a start. These are the best friends you could have when tackling the Single Life after years and years. We know that, and we’re going to stay connected even after the class formally concludes. These folks are special friends, part lifesavers and part courage-makers.
As I left that last night of class, I felt surprisingly steady and resolute. Sure, there are plenty of speed bumps ahead, but how far I’ve come in 10 weeks! I came in a basket case and am leaving with about 500% more self-worth and a big ol’ support network. My pre- and post-FDAS test scores show it, and I feel it. There is life after heartbreak.
What’s next for me? I’m not sure. First, Christmas. Then a really great New Years celebration. 2007 has been the worst year of my life and I can’t wait to kick its ass into the sunset!
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