Originally published in Comfort Zone Newsletter: November 2010
Divorce is usually a painful subject–although for some people a divorce is a reason for joy. But if it hurts, it probably hurts more if you are an HSP. No doubt this is why I have avoided writing about it for fourteen years of Comfort Zones. How can I possibly help? Also, each divorce is so different that it is difficult to say anything that is true in general. But I will try.
Divorce may sometimes be worse than the death of a spouse. Maybe by the time you divorce the love is gone, but there is other pain involved. You may feel like a failure at marriage or at least at choosing a good partner. You are disappointed in yourself or the other or both of you. You may be filled with anger, even rage–very distressing for an HSP. You may fear the future in a far different way than after the death of a spouse–mainly that you will never be able to have a successful relationship. Most of all, at times you are probably feeling extremely alone and lonely, so that if you wanted the divorce, it may seem like a big mistake, and if you did not want it, it may seem like an insurmountably tragic loss. Let’s start here.
Know the Difference between Attachment and Love
Because HSPs feel so strongly, we need to understand better what we are feeling and why, so that we can regulate our emotions accordingly. During and after a divorce, you are likely to feel a deep loss, even if you feel it is the best thing for you that the relationship is over. This is because when we live with anyone for long we form an attachment. If some of the shared times were happy, your attachment will be even stronger. Every divorce involves the severing of an attachment to a close other. Such an attachment is a deeply instinctual bond that, when it ends, can cause loneliness, of course–sometimes in the form of a severe, almost primitive pain.
Attachment is NOT the same as love. As I define love, it is an attraction to a particular person, so that you want to be around them, get to know them as fully as possible, and help them as much as you can. Attachment is not so particular. Attachments form with people who have met some of our needs–maybe a need for physical closeness or sex, a home, companionship, a sense of belonging to someone, or a bit of control over someone’s love for you.
Attachment can remain even after the person stops meeting your needs, through simple association of the person with the satisfied need. But this is not love. Maybe your marriage began as love, for one or both of you. By the time of your divorce, however, the love was gone for at least one of you.
You are always attached to someone you love, but you do not always love someone to whom you are attached. Further, if someone is attached to you, he or she may not actually love you as I defined it above. This is important for HSPs to appreciate, as we tend to meet people’s needs as much as we can, which means people get attached to us. We also feel our own needs more strongly, and so become much attached to people who meet or once met even some of them.
When you feel overwhelmed by your emotions around your divorce, try to think as objectively as you can about what was love as I define it and what was attachment. It takes time to relinquish an attachment. It is a very primitive instinct. But if you see the love is gone or was never there–that your intense feelings are due to a waning attachment–it can help you accept the slowness and pain of the process of detaching as not really having much to do with real love.
Face Your Shame and Guilt
Shame and guilt are almost always a part of divorce, and HSPs are especially prone to these emotions. As I like to point out, research finds that, to our brain, shame and rejection hurt as much as physical pain. These emotions accompany feeling terrible about yourself, which is not going to help you during this change in your life. So you need to consider how much shame you are feeling about your divorce and start to do something about it.
Shame can be especially bad if you see yourself as the one who was left, as is often the case for HSPs. But consider whether you wanted the relationship to end just as much as your partner did, who actually did the leaving. The fact is, being an HSP made you less likely to be the one to end it. You would be conscientious about your vows and keep trying.
You also might have been more nervous about your alternatives. The best single predictor of divorce is having a better alternative (either another partner or another lifestyle). HSPs, not being impulsive, are less likely to trust an untried alternative. But if for some reason your unconscious thought it was time for you to be out of the relationship, you may well have done things that made your spouse so miserable (withdrawing or criticizing–we are good at both) that he or she was sure to go. So do not be so certain you were the one left.
Whatever your reason for shame and guilt, try to have some compassion for yourself. There are two ways of looking at any action that has negative consequences. One is the attitude of the law and the courtroom: the person who did the action was responsible and should have known better. The other is more psychological and compassionate: the person could not help it, given everything that has happened to this person and the things he or she could not have known at the time.
A judicial perspective has some values, but not in the case of divorce, when things are so complicated and both persons surely played some role, even if only to put up with the other too long. So stop being your own D.A. and judge. Have some compassion for yourself. Isn’t it true that you did the best you could at the time? Perhaps you can even extend that compassion to your ex-spouse, too.
Who Was at Fault–Set the Shame Ball Down
During a divorce the shame ball gets tossed back and forth between spouses. “We would still be together if it weren’t for you.” “Are you kidding? You’re the one who…” “If only he had…” “Too bad she couldn’t…” Back and forth goes the shame of being the cause of this disaster. So back and forth the shame ball goes. No one wants to be stuck with it.
It is so much better to set the ball down, to let go of that judicial perspective of who should be blamed. Of course, sometimes a person has had an intense, lifelong need to avoid shame in all situations and is very skilled at getting out of any blame and attaching it to others. If your partner is that way, you will have to work especially hard to get him or her to set the shame ball down rather than hurling it back to you. Accepting some of the blame can help. “Maybe we both contributed to this fiasco.” “I know you tried–so did I.” “They say a divorce is always the work of two people, and I can sure see my role in it.” If you are still being blamed too much, certainly try to defend yourself at times, but also try to look beneath to your partner’s desperation and let some of the attacks roll off of you.
The Standard Advice, Adapted to HSPs
If you Google “coping with a divorce” you will find tons of excellent, if repetitive, advice. But this list is adapted for HSPs.
- Grieve deeply and thoroughly. This is easier said than done, obviously. I have written about HSPs and grief (see Comfort Zone May 2006 and August 2009). When you are grieving, you can feel all sorts of emotions besides sadness–anger, fear, shame, guilt, and even joy at times. At times you may feel it mostly in a physical way, often as a deep exhaustion. Hence, as an HSP you will need to take breaks from grieving. Allow yourself some distractions. It’s okay to feel joy or to laugh. The grief is not going anywhere right away. Indeed, there is no standard amount of time for grieving before you “get over it.”
- Take especially good care of yourself. If this is the advice that the “coping with divorce” websites give to everyone, how much more true it has to be for HSPs. Cut down on your work if possible and take good care of yourself in all the other ways–enough sleep, healthy food, outdoor exercise. This can be a challenge when you are upset, but you must do it if you want to avoid falling into a depression that could require medication to control. (There are a number of good websites that give the symptoms of serious depression.) Remember that HSPs respond especially well to being in nature and to being in or near water.
- Make a particular effort to spend time with people who love you and know how to listen to your feelings with acceptance. This may mean long telephone conversations if some of those people are not close by. If possible, include an HSP among those you talk to, or someone who understands your sensitivity. Many of those you know will want to try to “fix” your feelings for you, or after awhile tell you that you need to just get over it. In fact, as with any grief, you will need to talk about your divorce again and again. You may want to join a divorce support group to do this. Perhaps from one of these you can even form a subgroup of HSPs going through a divorce.
- Stay away from your ex. Some people advise three to six months, to let the anger die down and to break the habit of turning to each other, which has to end. If there are children involved, however, that is an entirely different situation. There are many books on how to handle that. This distance may be especially helpful to an HSP, but might be harder to do at first. Use your best judgment as to whether contact makes you feel worse or better.
- Figure out what happened so that it does not happen again. Even more than most people, as an HSP you were probably struggling all along to understand what was going wrong with your marriage. You will still be doing it after your divorce, and possibly for many years to come. That’s okay if you remember that this is not about establishing blame. It is for self-knowledge and avoiding making the same mistakes again. But it can easily lead back to shame and guilt, so you may want to work on this with someone you can trust and who knows something about how relationships in general tend to work. Be sure you have plenty of time to explain what happened, and be sure that the other person has truly listened. My book The Undervalued Self would also help you see what happened–and how to avoid a sense of failure, defeat, and depression.
This is a Turning Point
The divorce-advice people will tell you that time heals all and things are going to get better for you after awhile. As an HSP, I imagine that you are not going to be so easily assured. You probably have surmised what the research on divorce has found, that often the happy ending is true for only one partner. This is usually the one who has more money or the better job, is more attractive and outgoing, and generally has more and better alternatives. As that person pulls out of the divorce and feels better and better because of this miraculous recovery, the other, seeing their former partner’s happiness, may feel even worse.
I am imagining that HSPs would be at risk here, in that we often feel a bit inferior to begin with, and while different things make us happy, we may feel we are less happy if we do not have the things that make most people happy. So after a divorce, you may have to give some deep thought as to how you will write your happy ending, or at least curb your undervalued self and climb out of the one-down position. You may need to give up those external standards of long-term happiness after divorce–standards such as who has remarried, is more financially secure, etcetera. You want to be the one who, eventually, in your own time, uses this new freedom to develop your character, expand your consciousness, express your creativity, and form loving connections of all sorts. This is successful divorce the HSP way.
Thank you so much for this article. My mom picked up your book when I was a teenager and she said it helped her be a much better parent to me. She understood me better, and perhaps also gained a better understanding of herself. She tends to get anxious, like me, but she is able to manage it without medication. She’s learned a lot of coping skills since she got on Facebook, haha.
I married my first boyfriend. We met when I was 19, and I was instantly charmed by him. We met online, in March 2005, through a video game called Final Fantasy XI. By Septmeber 2005 I had moved from California to Utah. We married in 2008, and in 2010 he had a lapse in judgment that resulted in a one-night stand with my only female friend at the time. I gave him a second chance. We went to marriage counseling for 11 months. Things got better. He went back on his ADHD medication, which allowed him to FINALLY hold a job for more than 3 months, and while he was looking for a job, he actually started helping me around the house. I’d give him a list of things he could do to help me while I was at work, and he would try to do some of them while I was gone.
In 2015, I feel like we started to grow apart. I focused more on my schooling because I was getting ready to enter a 4 year university, and I discovered a new found love of birds and nature. I decided I wanted to do online schooling and get a bachelor’s in fisheries & wildlife sciences. For a while, I stopped spending as much time with him and left him to his own devices. But he didn’t make much of an effort to engage with me. Also, in 2015, he started to work night shift. We slept in the same bed, but he would be gone by the time I got home and I would be asleep by the time he got off work. He spent Saturdays at the park, LARPing, and was frequently gone until the evening. I only got 1.5 days with him a week, for almost a year.
We tried to keep the romance alive by leaving notes for each other, which was fun, and exciting, but we got into a fight one weekend when he tried to seduce me, but I just ended up feeling embarrassed for him, and he slept on the couch for 3 months. Hardly talked to me.
It was awkward when he switched back to day shift. It was like we had to reconnect. We weren’t used to living with each other anymore, and it felt awkward and resulted in quite a bit of bickering.
In 2018, near our 10th anniversary, he realized he was no longer happy. But he didn’t want to hurt me. So he kept it from me and tried to “fix himself” because he felt the problem was with him.
In 2019, he started to isolate himself. He pulled away from me, from all of his friends, and then he met this girl on Facebook, in a group for the online video game we both play, Final fantasy XIV. They became attached at the hip. He spent every free moment of his days playing video games with her. He became quiet and secretive. Wouldn’t let me hear what this person was saying.
He stopped wanting to have sex with me after he met her. Given that sex was one of TWO ways that Jesse showed me that he loved me, I became very anxious and concerned. I thought there was something physically wrong with him. Like low T, or something. I told him I was worried he didn’t love me anymore, and that if he didn’t want to have sex, that was fine, but I needed something more from him that let me know he still loved me.
He increased communication with me after that. Started telling me where he was going after LARPing, called out to see if I was OK after he heard me shout or drop something. I felt truly loved for the first time in a long time.
And then in July I cornered him and told him I would rather have the truth than live a lie. So he told me the truth. He hadn’t been happy for more than a year and he felt like he was lying to me every time he was home because he had to hide how he was really feeling. He told me he didn’t “love” me anymore, but that he still cared for me deeply and didn’t want to hurt me. He had tried not to hurt me. (I realized through further questioning of Jesse that he has a very narrow definition of what “love” is, and it means he is sexually attracted to someone; he “cares” about his family; he does not “love” them).
My world fell apart. Jesse isolated even further and cut me out of his life as much as he could, staying in his bedroom (which used to be our office) and voice-chatting with his new female friend. He began to pull completely away from me, to the point where he displayed no compassion for when I cried or was upset. I expressed dismay at his inappropriate attachment to that girl, and he brushed it off because “there’s nothing going on between us, it’s just a bunch of video games, and you and I are getting divorced anyway, so who cares?”
I had to work with my agency’s clinical director to come up with a safety plan for me to use when I had to be in the house with him because it was just so painful and devastating to have him brush me aside like that. After all we had been through and the almost 15 years we had spent together. He ignored me and got really irritated with me when I would knock on his door and interrupt whatever game it was he was playing with her. The look he’d give me was one of true disdain.
Our divorce was finalized at the end of September, and he finally moved out at the end of October. But, then in January he flew across the country to meet this girl, and now they are living together. 1.5 miles from our old home, which is now my home.
Things have been so toxic between us. He accuses me of throwing fits and only caring about my own wants and needs. He seems to hate me now, and I honestly don’t know why. I did everything I could to make the divorce process as painless as possible for both of us, even though I did not want the divorce, and he was causing me extreme distress at nearly every turn.
It’s been 7 months since he moved out, and even though I now know that he had an emotional affair with that girl, and lied to my face about it, I STILL LOVE HIM. I am not in love with him. I do not want him back, and I never want him as a partner again. But I still care deeply about him, and I still want to help him. All I see when he lashes out at me is the actions of someone in pain who is not coping well with the fallout of the divorce. You see, I now believe that I know what limited my ex-husband during the entirety of our time together: Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Even though he has hurt me, I still want to help him. I want him to see what I see when I recall all of his odd behaviors and quirks. But he is just so mad at me right now, I know that if I try he won’t listen to me.
Up until I read this article, I felt as if I didn’t do anything wrong. This is all Jesse, and this is all his mental health crisis. I just got swept along with the destruction. My therapists have told me that I’ve done nothing wrong. But your article said that I have to keep in mind that the divorce was caused by two people. Now I am wondering what I can take responsibility for. What could I have done differently? Anything?
I found your definition of “love” and “attachment” very helpful. I plan to take that concept and make a side-by-side list of what feelings I had that were “love” and which were “attachment”. See if that helps me gain any clarity.
I’ve joked a couple of times that I feel like being a HSP is the polar-opposite of being autistic. I feel things too much, and I read too much into what people say or do, or their motivation for doing something. People with ASD however, don’t read far enough into what people say or what they do. I know now that it is a very bad idea for an HSP and an Aspie to try to create a life with one another. The HSP needs emotional validation and support, and they aren’t going to get that from an Aspie.
I know this is very long, and I apologize, but I wanted to share my story with you. Tell you my experiences as a HSP being married to an undiagnosed Aspie. Thank you for putting a name to this personality trait of mine, and for helping me (and my mother) understand it better.