Divorce Recovery: How I Came Back from Being Shattered

A week before this book was scheduled to be published, with very little warning, my wife left me for another man.

For some, this might have been just a sad and moderately challenging life event, but for me it was without question the most painful and difficult thing I have ever experienced.

I tried for a long time to find words to describe the effect it had on me, and the one I kept coming back to was shattered. My hopes, dreams, self-identity, and self-confidence were all completely shattered.

Up until that point, I had believed that my wife was my best friend and that we were happily married. I absolutely adored her and was totally dedicated to our future together. She and her needs were an integral part of my mission.

Sure, we had our challenges, as all couples do, but we had been through so much together, and each of us had sacrificed so much to make the relationship work that I really believed it was “ride or die” for both of us.

I didn't see it coming and I just wasn't prepared for it, so when I received the news, I went into a state of complete shock.

It took me on a journey into an abyss of confusion, despair, shame, guilt, and anger that was so dark and so deep, there were times I didn't think I was ever going to find my way out.

My mind tried so hard to make sense of it all that I couldn't sleep for weeks. I wept more over the next three months than I had in my whole life combined up until then. Physically, the stress on my system was so intense that my health began to fail and I developed a stomach ulcer.

I remember my rock-bottom moment very vividly. I was lying on the floor of my bathroom, crying while coughing up blood.

Even though my friends and family were there for me in spirit, I was separated from them not only geographically but by the ever-worsening circumstances surrounding COVID.

It was then that I understood nobody was coming to save me. I'd never, ever felt so alone, vulnerable, and disconnected from myself, others, and the world as a whole.

Today, four months later, as I write this, the fog of that experience is finally starting to clear. Despite all of the trauma, throughout it all I managed to maintain a focus on introspection and face it head-on.

As a younger man, I would have found some way to run away or distract myself from the excruciatingly uncomfortable feelings, but deep down I knew there was a lesson in what I was going through, one that I was determined to find and learn.

And eventually I did.

The lesson hidden in the collapse

It's my current perspective that the Universe (or God, if you prefer) is always speaking to us and trying to guide us toward paths that are optimal for our health and growth. But sometimes we cannot hear it speak, and sometimes we hear it but refuse to listen. In these instances it's forced to “slap” us to wake us up.

In hindsight, I can now see that the failure of my marriage, something I had cherished and made every effort to succeed at, was a clarion call for me to wake up and realize that there was a crippling issue at play in my life that needed to be resolved:

I didn't fully love and accept myself.

Any token amounts of self-love and self-acceptance I'd had up until that point were contingent on external factors. The woman I was with, my appearance, how successful I was, my jiu jitsu black belt, etc.

And there were internal factors that had to be met, too: How “good” of a person I was. How much I believed I was helping others. How “conscious” I was. All of these things informed the way I felt about who I was at my core.

I can now identify the ways this chronic lack of self-love was mirrored in my marriage. For a long time, I had accepted so little — so little love, so little support, and so little affection. My wife had been checked out for months, and I hadn't been able to see it because I wanted so badly to believe in the fairytale.

I had loved her so totally and blindly that I had unknowingly placed her on a pedestal. I realized that all the positive traits I had projected onto her were elements of myself that I had failed to recognize and appreciate.

“Children cannot make oaths”

I remember speaking with a mentor of mine while I was at the depths of my confusion and trying to make sense of it all. “I just don't understand it,” I said. “The day we got married, we looked into each other's eyes and made an oath. Didn't that mean anything to her?”

To which he answered, “Children cannot make oaths.” It took me a long time to understand what he meant.

Almost without exception, human beings carry trauma from their childhoods, and that trauma will always seek to resolve itself. It does this by bringing people into our lives — especially romantic partners, who are perfectly positioned to trigger us. This invariably causes the trauma to be brought to the surface so that the emotions and energy tied to them can be felt, processed, and ultimately released.

We all have an inner child. This is an aspect of ourselves that is usually hidden, and it embodies not only childlike innocence and playfulness, but also all of the traumas mentioned above.

My parents are both deeply loving and wonderful people, but they are unfortunately, due to the family dynamics of their youth, emotionally stunted. I was raised by people who were still essentially children themselves.

Reflecting on this led to the challenging realization that what I was ultimately seeking in my romantic relationships was somebody who could be the adult this inner child had always desperately needed.

When it comes to our relationships with women, what men secretly crave is the same level of unconditional love that we received from our mothers. I'm sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, but this type of love is exceedingly rarein romantic relationships. The love a wife or girlfriend has for you is totally conditional. The conditions vary from person to person, but they absolutely exist. For us as men, this is an incredibly painful and disheartening truth to accept, but it's one that must be faced.

There is good news, though: even though you cannot get that type of love from a romantic partner or anyone else (besides your parents, perhaps), there is a far more dependable, eternal supply of unconditional love, and that's you. The only person who is able to give you the unwavering love you truly need is you.

The moment I became a man

I remember the exact moment I became a man. It wasn't when I got into a ring to fight another man. It wasn't when I had to make a difficult decision or sacrifice to provide for my family. It wasn't when I achieved success in the eyes of my father or the world.

It was when I stepped up and made a commitment to be there for my inner child. To unconditionally love, protect, and accept him regardless of the circumstances of my life. I chose to become the adult for myself.

I spent a long time deliberating on whether or not I should include this chapter in the book. I had concerns that it would make the reader feel that all the advice preceding it was invalid. I mean, how can you trust a guy claiming to have all these answers about manhood when he couldn't even keep his wife around? Some of my friends also commented that it broke the flow of the generally positive nature of the rest of the book.

I made a decision a long time ago that I would try to live a life of total authenticity. Hypocrisy and dishonesty are two characteristics I absolutely cannot tolerate, in myself or others. I realized that leaving out the impact and lessons of one the most powerful experiences of my life would have been inauthentic.

Ernest Hemingway once said, “The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”

When this event happened, it broke me. I can't pretend it didn't.

In the world of men, fragility and vulnerability are generally rejected and scorned. We're expected to be strong all the time and never show weakness. I see this so often on the jiu jitsu mat. But the truth is, we are all fragile and we are all vulnerable. You cannot armor yourself against life. It will always find a weak point in your defenses. Parts of it will be hard, and it's going to continually test you. And none of us knows what's around the corner — stuff you never saw coming will hit you when you least expect it.

But I can say that the guidance in this book will give you your best chance at getting up off the canvas when life inevitably knocks you down. It has been battle tested.

When I was broken and alone, I didn't lose myself in alcohol or porn. I meditated, took long walks in nature, and searched for the courage to look at the parts of me that were hurting. I drank ayahuasca and faced the darkness I found in myself. I did my best to maintain healthy routines and habits. But, most importantly, I kept listening to the soft, steady voice within that kept telling me, “Love yourself.”

And that's why today I can look at the person in the mirror, see all of his flaws, failures, and insecurities, and still say he's the best man he's ever been.