“So it begins, the great battle of our time.”
Gandalf, Lord of the Rings
Two months ago, I created my profile on Hinge and Bumble. It said I was divorced. Technically that was not entirely true. I was divorcing, in the present continuous, but it was a nuance too hard to explain, and it felt more optimistic to speak of it as if it were already so. I guessed that if I put it out there, then it would come to pass.
November is here, like the extension of the Simon and Garfunkel song. Now that I am properly divorced, I can happily claim the status without any guilt of prevarication. For someone who thought of marriage as a given not to be questioned, it was odd to have desired a divorce as keenly and fervently as I did. I wanted to be done with it, as quickly as possible. Put a lid on it. Bring closure.
Closure, though, is a more complex beast. It is not merely a court judgment. There is the not-so-trivial matter of the heart and its wounds.
I clearly remember the morning when the first thought of divorce pierced my mind, like a sharp shard of glass, surprising and frightening at the same time. “Hello, what is this?” was my first response, as I attempted to shoo away the intruder. But it persisted, and wouldn’t go away.
The disturbing thought was triggered by something very trivial (aren’t all last straws so?) and yet symbolic of what had become troublesome in my marriage. The previous night, as I dangled precariously at the edge of my side of the bed, rather than adjust quietly as I had done countless times, I did something unusual – I asked N to move over to her side a little bit so I would have more space to sleep. I don’t remember the exact words, but I do remember the discordant tone in her response. So there it was – the song of our marriage – with me claiming my space and voice, and her exasperation at my temerity to do so.
I found my therapist from a list of mental health professionals suggested by the school I was working at. Her profile said she specialized in couples counseling and attachment theory, and that struck a chord.
Her fees were high, and that made me pause for a moment wondering if it was worth it. What was she going to tell me that I didn’t already know to justify this additional expense I could ill afford? I reasoned this would be an investment in myself – a rarity – and perhaps the act of simply investing in myself would be worthwhile. I decided to set aside enough money to do ten sessions first and then take it from there. It turned out to one of the best investments I have made.
In therapy, I sought to understand two questions: First, what was my role in the unraveling of my marriage? Second, what did I need to do to form more secure attachments going forward?
During our times of turbulence, N had read Attached and suddenly the dynamic of our marriage made sense to her. She rushed in excitedly one day to explain it to me, how she was anxiously attached and I was avoidant, and that we were caught in a never-ending dance of approach and retreat. Ta-da. It all fell into place for her. But not for me.
Much as it seemed to explain our dynamic to some extent, there was a deeper incompatibility that we had not come to terms with, and also the broken trust. We had somehow moved away from working as a team to fencing with each other.
My own reading of the book left me uncertain that the seeming mismatch of our attachment styles was at the heart of our troubles. To begin with, I was not at all sure I was avoidant in my attachment style. Clearly my need for space made me seem like one, but the description did not ring true for me. Months later when my therapist said I probably had an anxious attachment style, I was like “Oh yeah, now that’s more like it!”
Of course, when two anxious people get together, one might become more avoidant given the dynamics at play. In our marriage, I had played caretaker for too long, wearing down my jangled nerves to their frayed ends, so it wasn’t surprising I morphed into the seemingly avoidant one when the caretaking became decidedly one-sided and overwhelming.
There was also the small matter of being an INFJ, in relationship with an ESTJ, and its attendant challenges.
During my first hour of therapy, I cried for 55 minutes. As I told my friend later, those were some of the most expensive tears I have shed! I had been crying for a while though, much before I started my therapy. At a time (called the Dark Dark Days) when I felt pushed into a corner with no way out, unable to write, and with no one to talk to, I found my first release by locking myself in a room and crying into a pillow. Initially, the sobs were tearless, but as time went by, the tears began to flow, and I would eventually cry a lifetime of tears.
Single. On Purpose.
The book arrived the same day I ordered it online, at Prime speed, and it sat there on the ledge in all its yellow and blackness.
The book is at once a candid account of John Kim, The Angry Therapist, and a mirror to those who find themselves in that nebulous space called Singlehood. Though there is nothing vague about being single (just as it’s clear whether one is pregnant or not), there are forces at play, typically from one’s past, that make it more complicated. For instance, is it a synonym for being a failure?
Kim’s book works best when it challenges the idea of perfection in life and relationships. It helps dislodge “the idea of not having a partner as being defective.” Especially for someone who had built his life around a single relationship. Who was I now if not a husband? But then there is a better question to ask: Who was I in the marriage?
The very first few words of the introduction get to the heart of it:
I’ve been single. Many times. I have struggled with loneliness. Rejection. Not believing I was desirable. I’ve tried “dating myself” again and again, and it was bullshit. The truth is, we’re humans and we’re not meant to do life alone. We want to love someone. And that’s okay. We’re biologically built that way. What’s not okay is losing ourselves because we don’t have someone to love. Or losing ourselves in the person we’ve chosen to love.
John Kim, Single. On Purpose.
Read that last sentence again. Losing yourself. If that is what you tend to do in relationships, pause and rethink, because much as you might think that is love, it isn’t.
For all my life, I have believed that if I give of myself fully, things would work out. That is not to say that one should be lukewarm or half-hearted, with one foot out, waiting to escape at the first sign of conflict. I deeply value the both-feet-in approach to everything I do in my life – work, parenting, friendships and husbanding. As Mark Manson says quite eloquently: if you cannot say “F*** Yes” then it is a “No”.
But being wholehearted and fully committed is not the same as losing yourself. Why the hell did no one teach me this simple difference for forty eight years? Isn’t that what parents are for, to teach you these fundamentals? Where were mine?
Singlehood is not about living by oneself, it is about living with oneself.
Kim’s journey through singlehood is peppered with several relationships, both with himself and with others, and it evolves over many years, as he rediscovers his old passions (biking), finds new ones (CrossFit), makes new friends (Gosh! It is hard to do that as an adult!) and becomes a therapist!
Here are some nuggets from the book that I found useful to think about:
- Love and relationships are only one part of your life, not your entire life. (Seemingly obvious but difficult to see at the end of a long relationship in which you have given it your all.)
- When you’re single, it’s more important to have good friends than to find a partner. (So true, especially if the pull to find a partner feels desperate. Perhaps you are drawn more to the idea of being in a relationship rather than actually being in relationship with a particular person.)
- “Closure” requires nothing from the other person involved. (Probably the most significant and challenging shift in mindset during the process of healing.)
- When you believe you are worth something, the universe moves. (Ah, indeed!)
My first taste of singlehood happened when I came to Bombay for a short-term teaching assignment. I clearly remember the first two weeks I spent alone in my apartment. It was the longest stretch of being on my own since my marriage 20 years ago.
As I sat in the apartment by myself, I found I could just breathe again!
It was physical as much as psychological. Gosh! Such a simple thing!
I had lived in a state of constant anxiety, holding my breath, for the longest of time. Now I could breathe again, and I realised what I had missed. This precious thing that I had taken for granted – my breath.
As an INFJ, with the tendency to absorb the emotions of people around me, having no one around for a stretch of time was a welcome opportunity for my nervous system to calm down.
Solitude is a blessing, a warm blanket against a cold night.
Anonymous (ahem!)
This short stint on my own taught me that I could not continue to be in a relationship where this basic need for space could not be met. Once that became clear, ending the relationship, however difficult and impactful, was the only way forward.
The first sign that something had shifted in me was my desire to meet my brother. Someone whom I had never wanted to meet again in my life. Gosh, I hated him! (Oh, that is a bit harsh, isn’t it? Should I delete it? No. But I will modify it a bit.) I think it would be more accurate to say I hated what I tended to become in his presence. And here I was, thinking of meeting him again.
The urge to meet him was a simple thought and strangely I found it was easy to email him and ask if he would like to meet for breakfast. He said yes, and we met.
As I sat at breakfast with my brother, I broke the news to him of my divorce, and he was suitably shocked. Like many others who perhaps assumed from the outside that all seemed well. In trying to explain what went ‘wrong’, as it were, without having to get into messy details (there are always messy details), I told him it was my realization that I had disappeared in the marriage. I was simply not there anymore. This, surprisingly, was not a surprise to my brother. “Oh but we (as in him and his now ex-wife) saw that right from the start and we thought you were happy with that.” That made me put my fork down. Really? Why didn’t he tell me? (Even if he had, I wouldn’t have listened, right? Because I believed that my ‘love’ would carry the day.)
The crux of Kim’s book is “find yourself first”, reminiscent of the ancient Greek aphorism: Know Thyself. Self-knowledge is the basis of a meaningful life.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
Socrates
By ‘first’, I don’t think it necessarily means doing things sequentially in time, as in first finding yourself before doing anything else. Life does not arrange itself so neatly. I think it means prioritize yourself. Always, at any given time.
Don’t lose yourself, through addictions, work or in a relationship.
And if you do, be kind to yourself, and find your way back. First things first.
During the Dark Dark days, with no end in sight, there was a nagging sense that this crisis wasn’t merely physical, financial, emotional, or even psychological. It was all of them and yet much deeper – it was really spiritual. The void was too black. Where was my anchor? What ground did I stand on? And of course, why bother about it when a leap from a tall building could resolve the questions far more efficiently?
When you are down and out, therapists and friends are keen to see you bounce back, they would like you to stop being miserable, a basket case with no hope. While exercise, dance, and friendships did help me step out of the darkness, it didn’t seem enough. Something more was needed.
My original purpose, from my school days, was to be a Buddha. Ha! To awaken. Yes! Such a bizarre goal to have!
It seemed to me if the Buddha and J. Krishnamurti spoke of what they did, it was because enlightenment was possible for all human beings, that it wasn’t meant to be only for the select few, and that it would be a natural thing to aspire to. It seemed as if all human beings had access to this possibility of living with inner freedom, and that it would be a travesty to live a long life and miss this opportunity to awaken. I must at least attempt it, as valiantly as I could, in whatever clumsy and ham-handed ways I might.
It would be a shame to miss the import of Gandalf’s wise warning by setting out to fight the demons of the world, because the great battle of our time is fought within, against the Sauron of our own creation.
It is the battle to understand: Who am I?
While Single. On Purpose. takes you on a journey to do just that, it still addresses issues largely at the Doing level. The real journey is deeper, at the Being level, and for that, I found that I needed the wisdom encapsulated in spiritual classics such as The Power of Now, I am That or Naan Yaar.
When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world.
Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks
Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. This is the I Am that is deeper than name and form.”
Or you could start with this wonderful spoken poem: Sukoon ki Talaash Mein.
Featured Image: Photo by Keenan Constance on Unsplash
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