From Heartbreak To Healing: "I Still Feel Traumatized After My Divorce"

Joe says, from PA here, I have a topic question. Love it, keep it coming. Why is it so easy to ruminate constantly over a wife's affair even though it happened a long time ago and the divorce is finalized? You also realize there's no way you even want a relationship like that anymore. So what you are saying, Mr. Joe, you endured a trauma. Been there, done that. If you don't know, I went through this. Um, that even the toughest dudes in the world— it's so funny, uh, I bet you right now if I polled like the majority of men out there and said, let's play, let's play pretend you just found out your wife cheated on you, what are you gonna do? A lot of men will puff their chest and macho, pseudo-macho bravado things. They— I'd probably take all their shit and throw it out in the driveway and change the locks on the doors and call the divorce attorney that night and be done with her, move on, and I'd be, you know, banging new chicks the next day, that type of thing, you know. You know what most guys do when the reality hits them and that really does happen to them? They go to the wife and go, 'Can we, can we work this out? Do we, you know, can we talk about this? Can we not throw away everything, please? I know you just did something really horrible to hurt me and the family and everything else, but Can we not work on this? Um, relationships, romantic relationships in particular, are extremely addictive. The, uh, I'm no scientist. I've read on the topic quite a bit. A lot of really good books out there on the topic. But basically what happens to your brain is akin to what happens with a drug addict. They get their drug, makes them feel great. Get their drug, makes them feel— eventually it's not such a great feeling. Like the honeymoon stage, you know, when you're first dating somebody and it just feels so amazing and you just can't get enough of them. And you think about it when you go to bed at night and you think about them first thing in the morning and it's hypersexual and it's very validating and everything else. And woohoo, they're my soulmate. And then that just naturally kind of dissipates with time and eventually they just become your new normal. You need them, your drug, just to function. That's where a lot of, like, your narcotics users, they go from intense high to basically, if I don't have this drug, I just feel like I want to die. So I need it in order to feel normal. If I stop taking the drug, I vomit and convulse, and it's not a pretty sight. Well, similar to the— with the relationships, everything's, you know, the, the relationship machine, marriage machine is just running smoothly, and then all of a sudden you're Partner says, uh, I don't want you anymore, go away, I've picked this person over here. Your drug goes away, the relationship stops, and you go through major withdrawals. You're traumatized. I don't care how tough you are. Uh, the irony is also, I don't care what kind of bullshit you're going through in the relationship that is bad at the moment. You know, it could be you've had these people, you have these people that are like, we grew apart for years, we were just very disconnected. Stress and in and out of marriage counseling. And it's obviously the writing was on the wall that we just need to call this quits. And then they discover affair, and instead of saying, "Eh, saw that coming, is what it is," but no, instead it's like, "I feel just as much trauma as if I had just, you know, discovered this 10 years ago before the wheels started falling off the relationship. It's still that traumatic to me." So in other words, Joe, give yourself a break. This is, you say it happened a long time ago, you're divorced, you're finalized, and yet you ruminate constantly over this. So rumination is constant spinning thoughts, presumably negative thoughts on whatever. So a lot of people who are very high in anxiety, which I'm going to say, Joe, you may very well be, Tend to ruminate constantly on things that really, from an outside observer, we just say, "Why bother with that, dude? You're just stressing yourself out over nothing. You know, stop. Just stop thinking about it." Yeah, like it's that easy, right? "Hey, you don't want to be anxious anymore? Then just don't be." It's not that simple. It takes some work to get there. To get over the hump. There seems to be, for a lot of people, this hyper-anxious trauma, trauma, and then they slowly get over the hump and they're like, okay, that's better now. And you haven't quite gotten over that hump yet. Um, these are a multi-layered, multi-faceted thing, and I have a lot of questions for guys in your shoes, such as, are you still in contact with her? You still see her quite often? It always surprises me, some guys are like, yeah, we text pretty regular basis. I'm like, about what? Like kids, stuff like that? Well, yeah, that for sure. But then we'll also talk about, like, friendly conversations about whatever. Um, you can't get over your drug if you continue to take hits off your drug over and over and over again. You have to put the drug down and away as much as humanly possible. I understand some days you're going to be in the same room with said drug, or you're going to walk down the street and somebody else is going to be taking the drugs, and you can't avoid that, but Don't purposely put yourself in a situation where it's just you and the drugs, you and the wife, and because it sets you back in your disconnection. Your journey now is to disconnect, find your own path, put that trauma behind you, and you can't do that if you're consistently in contact with this person. That may not be your case, Joe. You may not be in contact with the person, but if you are, You gotta limit it to just business stuff, kids stuff, done. There should be days that go by with no contact with her. So that's just one thing to explore. Another is, are you just an anxious person that needs to maybe go to therapy, um, and talk about working on your anxiety? Do you have a healthy lifestyle? You know, there are, uh, um, prescription medications for people that suffer from depression, high anxiety, and so forth. Do they work? Yes. And for some, they're a godsend. For some, it's the difference between putting a gun in your mouth or not putting a gun in your mouth. Well, take the damn pill, please, to at least get you over the hump. And, um, but for a big chunk of people, the science seems to show us, uh, there is a series of very normal life prescription things that have just as much, if not more, of a positive effect on an anxious person than the little SSRI pill, for example. And some of those things, nobody likes to say it because it sounds so boilerplate and duh, and it sounds like some rah-rah bullshit, but guys, it's true. Get a good sleep, eat right, move your body, exercise, exert yourself, And be social, interact with other human beings in a meaningful way. You've got to do all those on a regular basis. They need to be part of your daily prescription of life. It keeps you sane. If, you know, if you're the type that's like, uh, I tend to ruminate a lot, blah blah, how's your sleep? Well, I can't sleep because I'm ruminating so much. Well, are you smoking? Or yeah, I'm a chain smoker. Okay, got to stop the smoking. It's not helping anything. How's your diet? Well, I eat like shit. It's time to start eating right, dude. You're a grown man. It's time to stop eating the chicken nuggets and everything else and the milkshakes. Do you drink? Yeah, I drink 2 or 3 a night. Well, then don't drink anymore. Try that out for like 30, 60 days. See how that helps. There's so many little incremental things you can do. And I know you're just asking about ruminating and not being able to get over it, but all this is symptomatic of a person who's high anxiety, Neurotic is a— neuroticism, rather, is a personality trait. You're probably pretty high in neuroticism. An example I often give for how to illustrate a neurotic person— it's a propensity for negative thought— is my favorite often-used description of neuroticism. You give a neurotic person a million dollars that you won in a lottery and say, here's, you know, I won a billion dollars in the lottery, here's 10 million, my neurotic friend. Neurotic friend is going to sit there and just go like, "What do I do with the money? Are you sure you didn't steal this? Is the bank going to take all this? My family is going to try and steal this from me. Somebody's going to rob me." They'll just go on and on about the negatives of an extremely positive thing, which is somebody just handed you millions of dollars. Instead of saying, "Thank you, you've changed my life, this is wonderful," a neurotic person looks at all the negative of how this is just going to ruin his life. You're probably, if you're like a lot of men that I speak to, kind of high in neuroticism, and that doesn't help you in life. So maybe therapy, your daily life prescription, medication if needed, which I would hesitate and say use that as a last resort. But keep busy doing all this daily prescription stuff. Eventually you get to the point where days go by and you don't think about Weeks go by, you don't think about the traumatic thing that you endured. Months go by, years go by, there you are, you finally are over the hump. But there's still a little, a little twinge in there, don't get me wrong. And it will always be there. Such is life, dude. Life is not rainbow and sunshine. There are people in this world who have endured awfulness in their life. They've seen loved ones die in front of them. You know, people that are in war zones and so forth. We're just spoiled in that way. And those people have trauma that they deal with from now until the end of time, for the rest of their life. And this is something that you will have to endure. This burden will, you know, hang heavy on you for a while, and then there will be days, weeks, months where it won't. Just the way it is, man. And Joe says one of the best pills is called exercise. Yeah, absolutely.