Welcome to The MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my 175th episode. In this episode I want to talk about something very heavy. I want to talk about how to survive a breakup or a divorce. Full disclaimer: I’m going through a divorce right now as I’m recording this podcast. My situation is not reflective of the situations I’m about to discuss. Both my wife and I have decided to end our marriage amicably and with our integrity intact. She didn’t cause this and I didn’t cause it either. She is a wonderful person and this is more like an unfortunate tragedy than anything else. Even so, many of the practical applications I’m about to discuss have been hugely beneficial to me anyway. You should know that I’m doing okay and so is she. We’ve walked through our situation with good pastors and good mentors from the very beginning – and they can testify to the unique nature of it.
The first point we should cover is that not all divorces are equal. Some are heartbreaking. Some are liberating. Some are extremely stressful because of money or children. But in all cases there are some basic temptations and traps you can avoid in order make your experience much less painful. I’m not going to go into detail regarding my own situations here – but trust me when I say I’m speaking from experience on this topic. I’ve had a situation where I made all the wrong mistakes, making my pain worse and prolonging it needlessly. I’ve also had a situation where I avoided these traps and made better decisions – and I can tell you the difference in outcome is hard to describe. It is a universe of difference. It’s so different that I’m convinced a large part of the pain we feel in the aftermath of a breakup or divorce might be self-inflicted.
Let’s be careful here. I’m not suggesting the other person is fully absolved of any responsibility for the pain you feel. It’s certainly the case that many divorces are kicked off by betrayal or infidelity on behalf of one partner. In this case the person who betrayed the marriage owns the lion’s share of the responsibility for the damage that has been caused. But there’s a very good reason why you don’t want to surrender all of the responsibility for your well-being over to someone else – because once you surrender all responsibility you also surrender all power to get better. You become a helpless and hopeless victim. Remaining in this victim mindset for too long will only result in you becoming resentful and bitter. Being resentful and bitter will make you unpleasant to be around and this could sabotage your future relationships. So in every situation which profoundly impacts your well-being, it’s a good rule of thumb to shoulder as much of the responsibility for your condition as you can.
Taking up responsibility for your well-being puts you in the driver’s seat for your future. You might say, maybe I don’t want to be in the driver’s seat for my future. The problem with that way of thinking is that only you and God have enough knowledge of yourself to know precisely what’s good for you. Even if you have a loved one who has all the good will in the world for your well-being, they simply don’t know enough to make all the correct daily decisions for you. Not to mention that placing this measure of responsibility on someone else is an unfair burden which they will grow tired of very rapidly. If you completely outsource your decision making process to another person that person will quickly lose respect for you. Even if you just drift through life on your own impulses or allow the shifting sands of culture to determine your direction you likely won’t end up where you want to be. So much of the subconscious influence in the western world is associated with clever marketing schemes to drive profits and sell goods. If the influence is aimed at driving profits then it’s not prioritizing your well-being. You and God need to be the author of your own story because if you allow others to write it your story might turn out to be a tragedy.
So let’s imagine a situation where your divorce is almost entirely the other person’s fault. Let’s say you did everything you could to keep the marriage happy but your partner was unfaithful anyway. If you couldn’t control whether or not they cheated on you then how can you claim responsibility in the aftermath? The first step is to make sure you’re telling yourself the truth about your partner. You have to kill the fantasy and face reality. The person you thought you were with does not exist. That wonderful girl who you thought loved you was in reality a liar who does not care about you. It sounds harsh to think this way but you’ll never recover from this kind of trauma unless you’re very careful tell yourself the truth. It’s extremely hard to let go of a person who you have idolized in your mind and who you believe is the perfect partner for you. It’s a lot easier to let go of a liar. You must never, ever create a fantasy version of your marriage or your partner in your own mind. To do so sets you up for idolatry and for a disastrous outcome.
The truth is your partner is every bit as flawed as you are and if they betrayed you they are also a liar. Facing the truth of your situation and your person is the first step in taking responsibility when your other half destroys the relationship. Does this mean your marriage is beyond repair if your spouse cheats? Definitely not, so long as the guilty person repents and both partners want to work on the relationship. But if one partner doesn’t want to work on it or is not repentant then you need to face reality and let them go. Another reason why it’s so dangerous to idolize your partner is because in the aftermath of a divorce you’ll feel doomed to never find someone as good as them. After all, how can you find a real person as good as the fantasy you made up in your head? This advice applies to more than just marriages as well. In every human relationship you should constantly guard your heart against creating a fantasy version of the person you’re relating to.
An example of someone who creates a fantasy version of a relationship is the person who obsessively thinks about the few good times they had with their partner while completely ignoring the multiplicity of unhealthy and toxic times. I need to tell you something right now. If you’re creating a fictitious love story in your head while ignoring the truth then you will never find a person who measures up to your fantasy. The person you’re looking for doesn’t exist. But what’s crazy is how people will dig their heels in on an objectively terrible relationship because of self-deception and telling themselves everything is great. You’ll never find a person who measures up to your fantasy, but you CAN actually find someone who gets a lot closer to that mark than the toxic person you’re with now. Stop wasting your time and taking yourself off the market for a person who doesn’t care about you. The longer you do this, the longer you’ll miss out on a wonderful life-partnership with a real person who’s out there waiting for you right now.
The next trap to avoid is the disintegration of your own identity in the wake of a divorce. Avoiding this trap takes the most work while you’re actually in the midst of the marriage. If you’re allowing your partner to become the foundation of your worldview and how you see yourself in the world then you’re doing it wrong. The only One who is fit to rest your identity in is Jesus Christ. The danger with making your partner the center of your world is that when your partner betrays you or leaves you, then not only have you lost your partner but you’ve also lost your worldview. A worldview collapse is much more painful and much harder to recover from than a properly ordered divorce. The reason is because almost all of your positive emotion comes from being able to observe yourself moving in the direction of a desired goal. If all of your desired goals were dependent on your partner then say goodbye to your positive emotion because your partner took away your goals when he or she left you.
If you already made the mistake of allowing your partner to become the center of your world and now they are gone, it’s time for you to begin the worldview reconstruction phase. This is going to require a good community and good mentors. This is one of the reasons the church is so important. If you’ve been around church long enough you’ve probably noticed how common it is for new Christians to be individuals who are trying to bounce back from rock bottom. These are people who have experienced a worldview collapse and are now trying to figure out how to understand their place in the world. You need to be able to understand your place in the world in order to establish goals and proper direction, and you need goals and proper direction in order to unlock positive emotion. That’s actually the best news for you right now – listen to what I said. I said you need goals and proper direction in order to unlock positive emotion. I DIDN’T say you need your partner in order to unlock positive emotion. A good, happy life is waiting for you even after your spouse is gone.
And that leads me into the next trap I want you to avoid. The next trap is feeling guilty for not being sad anymore. This trap is also common after a loved one passes away. Sometimes a person will intentionally prolong their own heartbreak because they think the heartbreak is evidence of how much they loved their partner. This is a lie and you should avoid it at all costs. The pain you feel after losing someone is not evidence of how much you loved them. It might be evidence of how weak you are or it might be evidence of you telling yourself a fiction. I’m not suggesting that you should be completely stoic or in denial of the pain which comes with grief. I’m just saying this pain should not be used as evidence of your love. Let the good works you do in life be evidence of your love – not the train wreck you turn yourself into after your life with the person is over. If you demonstrated your love in your life with the person then trust me when I say they know how much you loved them. They don’t need to see you lose your mind with grief in order to understand your love.
So far the three pillars of my advice for how to survive a divorce include taking up as much responsibility for your own well-being as possible, being extremely careful not to tell yourself lies about your partner or the quality of your relationship, and avoiding making your partner the foundation of your worldview. Now let’s get into some practical application. First let’s talk about the use of substances like alcohol or marijuana. You’ll hear a lot of people tell you to completely avoid these things in the aftermath of a divorce. That’s good advice considering the danger of substance abuse becoming a crutch which then turns into an addiction. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you going out to a bar or club and having a few drinks with friends if your primary aim is community and not intoxication. A good rule of thumb here is never get yourself drunk.
Drunkenness robs you of all the positive elements of alcohol and exposes you to the tremendous dangers of it. Half of all violent crimes involve either the suspect or the victim being drunk. A drunken accident can ruin your life in such a way that your divorce seems easy by comparison. I also believe there is a link between drunkenness and the temptation to view yourself as a victim. No doubt you’ve seen many people drinking away their sorrows at the bar and setting up their future to be victims of this unfair world. Remember, if you view yourself as a victim then that is precisely what you will become and that kind of life is painful. You don’t want to live in that misery.
There’s also the problem of addiction. Countless people have kicked off their alcoholism because of some difficult time in their life like a divorce. The scary thing is that the alcoholism outlasts the pain of the divorce. So now you’ve become addicted even when you no longer need the alcohol to assuage the pain. This means less future partners are going to find you attractive and it’s going to be difficult for you to maintain healthy relationships through your alcoholism. Marijuana carries the same trap. The substance of marijuana is not addictive the same way alcohol is, but the coping mechanism of it is very much addictive. I’ve observed many individuals who use marijuana as a coping mechanism to mask their mental illnesses. This is a bad medium to long-term strategy because sometimes marijuana is not going to be available to you and you’re going to become unattractive to a large part of the population who do not find copious marijuana use appealing.
Using marijuana to cope also stunts your ability to master your own emotions. If you’re always masking your emotions with substances then you won’t know how to deal with highly charged emotional situations. And guess what? All marriages have plenty of highly charged emotional situations you will need to handle skillfully. You can’t handle them skillfully if you’ve allowed your substance abuse to cause your skills to atrophy. If you’re dependent on marijuana to maintain psychological stability then you’re going to have a difficult time navigating the treacherous waters of emotional conflict which exist in any healthy relationship. So if you’re going to use substances use them wisely and beware the dangers associated with them.
The next practical application is getting to the gym and working on your fitness. This one has been repeated to the point of cliche but there are some very good reasons for that. First is the preservation of your fluid IQ. Cognitive decline begins at age 25. Generally speaking IQ can be categorized as fluid or crystallized. Fluid IQ is your ability to learn new concepts and ideas. Crystallized IQ is your accumulation of knowledge – so things like vocabulary. It turns out a combination of cardiovascular exercise and weight training is by far the best way to preserve fluid IQ against normal cognitive decline. So working out regularly will keep you smarter for longer in your life.
There’s also the issue of confidence. You need confidence in order to attract a new partner. Confidence is one of the few traits which are recognized as universally attractive. The lack of confidence is also nearly universally repulsive. If you’re not confident then you’ll be overcome with negative emotions like anxiety when in the presence of a potential partner. Your display of negative emotion will invoke the same negative emotions in the person you’re trying to date. They won’t be able to relax around you and no one enjoys feeling anxious. Often when you go through a divorce your confidence takes a hit and this impact can be especially severe if you’ve been betrayed. Getting to the gym and working on your fitness goes a very long way towards rebuilding your confidence.
Confidence is not the same thing as cockiness or arrogance. Let me provide some examples. A confident fighter will step up to the challenge of any opponent. After winning his match he will graciously accept victory and honor his opponent for being a good sport. A cocky fighter will talk about how he’s the best before the match even begins. If his arrogance doesn’t cause him to lose, the cocky fighter will throw salt in the wound of his opponent and brag about how he knew he’d crush him. In this example the confident fighter and the cocky fighter both have similar levels of ability – but the confident fighter is much more attractive and appealing. It’s important to remember that rare talent or ability never justifies arrogance. Arrogance will never be as attractive as confidence even if you can back it up.
A confident man will ask a girl a lot of questions about herself on their first date because he’s genuinely interested in her. An arrogant man will talk primarily about himself because he really believes he himself is the most appealing topic of conversation. An insecure person will spend a lot of time talking about himself because he feels like he needs to sell himself to the girl or else she won’t like him. A confident man has such a deep trust in his own self-worth that he knows he doesn’t need to flaunt himself. He also knows that if she rejects him it won’t change the fact like most other women won’t. A confident man is calm and relaxed because he knows he’s a high-value male.
Everyone wants to be physically fit and very few people have the discipline it takes to get there. That’s why going to the gym immediately following a breakup or divorce is so good for your confidence. It allows you to prove to yourself that you’re capable of persevering where most others fail. It shows you that you have the mental toughness to remain stable and consistent in the midst of suffering. Strength in leadership is one of the most under-valued character traits in the western world right now. Everyone loves a leader who remains calm and strong in the midst of chaos. If you’re able to become this person you will be like a rock others can cling to during stressful situations. You’ll become a fortress of protection in an uncertain world. If you’re able to inspire these feelings of security and safety in the hearts of those around you you’ll become extremely attractive.
Another reason you need to get moving and get to the gym is so you can avoid negative feedback loops. Many forms of depression emerge as a consequence of negative feedback loops. Often you’ll hear people tell you to take as much time as you need to grieve. The implication is that you have a green light to lay around your house and feel sad as much as you need to. This is terrible advice. It’s terrible advice because your physical body doesn’t react well to this kind of behavior. If you lay around for weeks your body will begin to atrophy and the prospect of getting moving again will become increasingly difficult across time.
If you isolate yourself the same thing will happen in terms of your social skills. Even if you used to be a social butterfly, extended periods in isolation will cause you to develop social anxiety. Social anxiety and a weak physical body will make it much harder for you to get out and get moving again. Then you’ll start to fall behind. Remember that most of your positive emotion comes from observing yourself move towards a desired goal. If you stop moving altogether your positive emotion will evaporate and then all you’ll have is negative emotion. You should consider suffering and negative emotion as a universal constant.
Every person on earth experiences pain and every person on earth is aware of their future death and the death of their loved ones. This in-built existential crisis means each of us has a background noise of negative emotion at all times. The reason some people don’t notice it is because they have enough positive emotion to counteract the negative and transcend it. Your sense of meaning and purpose does this more effectively than any other positive emotion including happiness. That’s why a sense of meaninglessness drives people to suicide even when they seem to have all the things other people want. It’s also why there are a lot of people who are quite happy despite not having much. Meaning and purpose are the keys to mental and emotional well-being. Viktor Frankl said: a man with a why can overcome almost any how.
So you must never allow yourself to stop moving in your desired direction. Not only would I advise against “taking as much time as you need” to get over a loss – but I would say you need to get up and get moving immediately. Take no time at all. I think this is what Jesus meant when He said let the dead bury their dead. He knows about the human condition better than anyone and He knows about the danger of negative feedback loops. The bad news is life is very difficult and full of suffering which you will undoubtedly experience. But the good news is you’re a lot braver and a lot tougher than you think.
The gospel is that Jesus has already overcome this world and His Spirit of power resides in you. You might think you don’t have the strength to carry on in the wake of such a painful thing as divorce. You might not understand how you’re supposed to pick up such a heavy cross and struggle uphill. But the divine secret is that you’re not carrying it alone. Jesus is carrying it with you. When Christ carried His cross to the crucifixion there was a point along the way where a man called Simon of Cyrene helped Him carry it. Jesus is God – surely He could have carried it the entire way without help. But I think He was showing us that even in our worst times we are not alone.
There are Christians all over the world whose heart’s desire is to help you carry your cross just as Simon of Cyrene did with the Lord. Get connected with a local church and see for yourself. And once you see how the Spirit of God lives in you you will be transformed into the kind of person who’s not only strong enough to survive your own tragedies – but also strong enough to help others survive theirs. And in the end when God works all things together for good and you experience divine redemption – the glory, the honor, and the praise will go to Him forevermore.
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