A Woman Just Asked Me if I Ever Miss My Ex-husband

My response may help you get over your ex-husband or ex-wife.

I am out getting a salad at a local restaurant.

It’s a beautiful day and I decide to eat at the outside bar. A nice couple sits beside me and we bond over our shared Irish monikers. They are cute and happily married.

It always does my heart good to see couples who seem to get it right.

Don’t get me wrong.

I’m also pro-divorce.

I don’t believe anyone should remain in an unhealthy or unhappy situation. It’s foolish and self-destructive to do so. Not to mention, it can destroy the entire family. But the world isn’t all or nothing.

There are relationships that are truly good.

Not perfect, but happy.

The wife and I chat about our lives.

She’s fun and easy to talk to. We discover her mother went to my college and her father went to my ex-husband’s university. It may not sound like a unique coincidence but it is for me.

We went to college in Scranton, Pennsylvania and I live in the Washington, D.C. metro area. I rarely if ever, meet anyone from Scranton.

Let alone a couple who met and married from there. It’s a college that is more popular in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey.

“Do you ever miss your ex-husband?” she asks me.

“No,” I say.

“Really?” she says.

“I lost any remaining feelings I had for him,” I say. “When he was willing to hurt our children to hurt me during our divorce. A man who is capable of that destroys any emotion you may have left for him.”

“I get that,” she says.

I understand her curiosity and her question.

It’s a good one and it’s relevant to most divorced couples.

It’s difficult to completely distance yourself from someone you spent decades building your life with and around. You can remain somehow invisibly tethered.

It’s why I initially couldn’t leave my husband.

It’s why I wasted too many years trying to resuscitate our marriage.

I wanted to let go yet I couldn’t let go.

I hung on for dear relationship life.

I was miserably unhappy but I still loved my husband. I believe it could have continued throughout and after our divorce. If my husband hadn’t hurt our children to hurt me and leave me with nothing.

In reality, relationships end for a reason.

They are over. They aren’t working. They are broken.

But we romanticize them.

We hold onto the better times. We continue to see the best in the person we loved as we alternate between that, and feeling angry and unhappy. We are in love with the version of the relationship that once met our expectations.

I don’t believe it’s the actual person that we miss in a divorce.

Though that may be shocking and unbelievable to some.

It’s the feelings we never let go of.

It’s the hurt of unresolved conflict. The disappointment of a spouse who didn’t feel a strong commitment to us or marriage. It’s the eternal bruise of an adultress affair. It’s the corruption of lies that leveled themselves at the end of the relationship.

It’s the anger and/or sadness we can’t abandon.

It’s why some pine for their husband or wives long after a divorce.

It’s why some divorces are overly long and abusive.

Divorce is the moniker of an emotional battleground.

A war that began while married and that some are intent on continuing even in separation. It’s a crime and punishment inflicted on a spouse because they left, lied, cheated, hurt, or disappointed their spouse.

Unfortunately, people hurt people during a divorce the only way they can.

Their spouse no longer loves them enough to remain with them. They can’t control them or get the distorted satisfaction they desire so they weaponize children and money. They withhold financial assets or custodial visits. They fight over the house or the dog they both adored.

It’s not real love.

It’s not missing an ex-husband or an ex-wife.

The relationship ended for a reason.

Pining or punishing isn’t the result of missing a husband or wife. That may be a controversial opinion. But after more than a decade in the counseling and research of love, relationships, marriage, and divorce…

It is my firm belief.

The spouses pining for their partner are romanticizing the relationship.

The spouses punishing are consumed with anger and retribution.

These things have to do with ‘self’ and not with ‘spouse.’

You can’t miss a partner who repeatedly hurt you or cheated on you because that love wasn’t real it was romanticized. You can’t love a spouse enough to miss them if you’re willing to punish them and seek retribution.

Divorce may create the illusion of missing a person we once loved.

But in truth, the marriage ended for a reason.

We miss the past, not the person.

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