My Ex-husband Did a Number on My Otherwise Solid Self-Esteem

How in the hell did I let that happen?

I didn’t destroy myself attempting to save my marriage, I destroyed everything good I liked about myself. I didn’t think the day would come when I would love myself more than I hated myself.

My ex-husband did a number on my otherwise solid self-esteem.

How in the hell did I let that happen?

There is some good news…I’m back…I’m finally back.

I like who I am again. My marriage counselor was right. The pendulum swung far to one side during the worst of my marital struggles and divorce and it has swung back into the middle.

But it was a hell of a fight.

Colleen zero…Self-doubt and self-loathing one million.

My ex-husband didn’t have the power to make me feel bad about myself.

I did that all by my lonesome.

By staying too long and by turning into someone who was unhappy and miserably vented. Someone who made mistake after mistake because she gave a man who didn’t deserve it too many chances. Someone who made excuses for a guy who didn’t deserve her.

A woman that uncharacteristically began to yell.

A girl who mistakenly thought raising her volume would raise her husband’s ability to listen. A woman who found herself saying the type of ugly words even four walls shouldn’t hear.

A woman who became a stressed-out mess under duress.

Phew!

It’s exhausting even recounting it.

I allowed a man. Scratch that. I allowed an outrageously badly behaving man to alter my own behavior until I hated who I was. I abandoned the core confidence I had been gifted throughout my life.

I fight back tears, even now, as I’ve regained myself…

That I ever foolishly gave my self-esteem away to anyone.

Let alone a man who didn’t deserve it.

I remember anguishing over the loss of my entire self-respect. I continued in marriage counseling alone once my husband refused to return.

“I don’t feel good about myself,” I say to my marriage counselor.

“Colleen,” he says. “Once a happy and core confident person, always a confident person. Your rose-colored glasses have turned black. The pendulum has swung very far to one side but it will return to the middle.”

I left my counselor’s office that day hanging onto his words.

The hope I would one day find my own self tolerable again.

I hated myself for the mistakes I made. I beat myself up. My choices impacted my children. I thought saving my marriage was saving their family. I regretted my mistakes.

As my marriage counselor once said, “No one is harder on Colleen than Colleen.”

It’s hard to believe that when my husband began uncharacteristically drinking and scaring us that I allowed his actions to damage me. I didn’t permit it initially. I drew a hard line in the sand.

I was intolerant and made him move out.

But love wore me down.

It was giving my husband too many chances that damaged my own being.

The signature mistake of any true enabler. That was my flaw. My marriage counselor explained that overly caring people can get themselves into trouble that way. We can make repeated excuses for the one we love and remain in an unhealthy situation because of it.

Well, because we lack boundaries and self-protective instincts.

It was my lack of self-protection that sacrificed my self-esteem.

It’s why I Fell Out of Love With Myself and even like with myself.

It’s why I Gave Myself Away.

It’s why I Was a Woman Who Lost Herself.

And it’s why finally, I’m Catching Up With Myself.

It’s How Divorce Changes a Woman.

I’m still not sure how the hell I let it happen.

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