After the Collapse of A Marriage
Turning Failure into Lessons to Move Forward
There’s a moment no one talks about it. That feeling you get after you realize it’s not going to work. Your marriage. Your business. Your dreams. Gone up in smoke. Maybe you spent years building it… but now… flush.
My girlfriend said to me the other day, as her marriage of 30 years came tumbling down around her, “I feel like a failure.”
Intellectually, she knows she’s NOT a failure. She knows her husband is not a failure. The relationship just wasn’t working the way they had hoped.
The pressure of life became too much and their dream world came crashing down. The question is: what’s next?
When you’re standing in the hovel of detritus, what do you do? How do you regroup? Promises made were broken. Trust is shattered. What are the next steps?
It’s hard to be level headed, calm, and thoughtful when you just want to kick someone in the shins, call them a fucking asshole, throw things at them.
Venting can be helpful to get the emotional energy out of your body, but it creates a whole different sort of mess. Which will require cleaning up.
The thing is… after my wasband said he wanted a divorce, I felt like I was a failure because my marriage failed. I felt like I could have done things differently, or understood what was happening and made changes.
But hindsight is 20/20.
And then there is that belief that everything happens for a reason and then I spend hours trying to figure out the reason.
And there are those people who say there is no failure, only lessons. So what are my lessons here?
How does one take that “failure” energy and turn it around into something productive and not Hallmark Greeting Card-esque?
Here’s what I’ve come to believe:
Failure isn’t the event. It’s the energy you carry forward from it.
You have a choice.
You can take that energy and turn it into:
self-blame
regret
contraction
Or…
You can transmute it.
(Not in a woo-woo way—in a very real, practical way.)
The Shift
Instead of asking:
“Why did this happen?”
Ask:
“What do I want to do with this?”
Because you may never fully understand why.
But you are 100% in control of: what you build next
A Better Way to Work With “Failure”
Here’s how I work through it now:
1. Separate Facts from Story
Fact: The marriage ended
Story: I am a failure
These are not the same
2. Extract the Data (not the drama)
What did I learn about myself?
What will I never tolerate again?
What do I want more of next time?
3. Reclaim Your Agency
From this: “This happened to me”
To this: “Now I choose what happens next.”
4. Channel the Energy
That restless, emotional, uncomfortable energy?
It’s fuel. Use it to:
create
decide
move
The Truth No One Tells You
Sometimes things don’t work.
Not because you failed.
Not because they failed.
But because…
they were only meant to take you this far.
And now?
You’re standing at the edge of something new. You have so much further to go!
Final Thought
You are not starting over.
You are starting from experience.
And that is a very different place to begin.
Before my Aunt died, she told me to fight for what I had with Gunnar. (She was VERY trad-Catholic.) I thought about that. I decided what I had with Gunnar was good for a time and now the time has changed.
There is no going back to what was because we have grown beyond that. We could come together to create a new relationship if that was the desire, but we have both evolved.
When you are facing an ending, it’s worth looking at what you got out of the relationship, what you put into it, and how you would like your next relationship to be different.
What I have found is that I fall into old ways of being out of habit… I see old patterns emerging. And I don’t choose that. I want things to be different going forward. So what can I actively do to ensure that my next relationship is different?
Being really conscious of my actions and decisions.
Being open and communicating with my partner.
Not burying how I feel for the sake of “the relationship.”
Taking the time to understand what it is I do want on a conscious level so I can speak up.
I am sure I still have a lot of lessons to learn through this process. But one thing I know for sure: there is no going back. What was is no more. And frankly, it wasn’t that great. Now a whole new world has opened for me. Yes, it is scary at times and I do fear being alone in my old age, but knowing that fear allows me to address it. The me that has evolved in this process wouldn’t fit in the space that I’ve left behind. I’m like a tree that has been repotted in a bigger urn… now my roots have space to grow and stretch.
I am just beginning. At a whole new level.
More on defying old beliefs:
The Tarot Nook
King of Swords Reversed
I pulled the King of Swords reversed to go with this reading. Upright, the King of Swords is about clear thinking, truth, and emotional leadership. Reversed, he’s about distorted thinking, self-criticism, harsh criticism, and misuse of logic to justify pain.
Isn’t that EXACTLY what we’re doing when we label ourselves a failure when a relationship falls apart?
The mind is biased toward blame. It will try to turn failure-energy into self-blame and call it logic.
Know this: not everything can be solved by thinking harder. Sometimes you have to release the old to make room for the new. If you try to drag the old along, your progress will be deterred.
And it’s rarely an easy process. To recognize that something is not working and then take the steps to change it. Change is hard. No. I mean hard. Harder than that. But diamonds don’t come easily.
Sometimes problems can be solved with love. The analysis can lead to the proverbial paralysis.
So when you feel the King of Swords reversed energy trying to drag you down, shift your thinking, move into action to change the energy. Take control of your thinking. Look forward, not backward. What can you do today to make for a better tomorrow?
Framing is everything !! Excellent advice and point. Also loved wasband. Made me giggle.