 Hello there, my beautiful, lovely internet friends. As I sit down to record this video, I keep telling myself, don't do a joke, don't be dumb, don't say the word divorce. So over the past six months, I have been going through the process of ending a almost decade-long relationship and ending a marriage. The word that we like to use for that is divorce. Now, that's a word that I have avoided using with all of the power in me, because it feels dirty and wrong and super shameful and like failure. Understandably, our culture often sees divorce that way, but also coming from an evangelical Christian background. I grew up with a very ingrained belief that divorce was never the answer, but it is something that I am going through now. And I've avoided talking about anything regarding that subject for, you know, personal reasons for the people around me, but also because the amount of judgment and icky feelings that are tied up in that word for me and a lot of people are extensive. However, on this channel, I've always made a point of trying to say the things that I'm feeling, because I'm guessing I'm not the only one who's feeling them. Here are a few things I wish someone would have told me about getting divorced before I started this process. Would it have changed anything? Logistically, no. Would it have been good to be mentally prepared for the absolute disaster zone of a life that it leaves in its wake? It would have been good. Okay, so before we dive into my list, I am very excited to introduce you to our new sponsor today, Helix. Getting really good rest is very important to me for a variety of reasons, primarily so I can function, which is why I'm very excited to introduce you to Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes premium mattresses and bedding that are customized to your needs and shift right to your door. And anything that can save me a trip to the store already a big fan of. 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And we are all about comfort here. I absolutely love having a Helix sleep mattress and I think you will too. So if you're in the market for a new bed, check them out. Also, if you use the link in my description or go to helixsleep.com slash Footless Joe, you can get up to $200 off your mattress and you also get two free pillows. One can never have enough. Make sure you check out the link. Thank you again to Helix for sponsoring today's video and let's jump back into it. Shall we? Mwah, we shall. So as I go into my list of things that no one tells you about of course, I even made a list so I wouldn't get scared and forget things. I wanna make it really clear that I'm not gonna talk about any details of our relationship. It's simply not important to put on the internet. I wish all the best for him. He wishes all the best for me. When I made the decision to end this decade, almost long relationship, I wasn't thinking about every aspect of my life and every relationship in my life. I was thinking about what was gonna be the best and healthiest thing for me and for us. So I made the decision first and then I was like, I'll deal with the fallout. I'll deal with the consequences. You know, it's funny. When you like have trouble at work, you lose a job or your boss is being a jerk or there's difficulties, your work life sucks, but you can still come home or if a hobby you participate in, you know, is having a fallout, ah, it's a bummer that sucks, that's a loss, but at least you still have work or you still have your relationship or your home life. When you end a relationship as significant as something long-term or marriage, there's literally no peace of you and there's no peace of your life that it does not touch. So when I entered into this relationship, I was barely 21 and now I'm 31. So one could argue that the majority of my adult life has been developed within the framework of this partnership, going through significant life changes and developmental stages. Whether it was rocky or stable or whatever, everything came from this base of this marriage. And I did so much growing throughout the past decade, right? Like, we all do. Specifically when it came to my mental health, developing coping skills and coping tools and, you know, getting through trauma, getting through pretty massive life changes, like losing my leg and all that came along with that. And I thought in my brain, if I walk away from this relationship, those tools I have still developed and while that is absolutely accurate, it was shocking to me how every little piece of how I knew how to take care of myself, take care of my brain, take care of my body, move about the world and life, came from the foundation of that relationship. When it was no longer there, my entire identity and the way that I viewed the world was absolutely shook. And while a lot of like the same pieces, you know, I still had a job, I still knew that it was good for me to like journal and move my body for my mental health. Like some of the basic tools were still there, but the nuance of all of it, I felt like I was starting over from scratch as a human being, as an adult, as a woman. You don't really think about how many pieces of who you are become not entwined with but very influenced by the person you spend the majority of your life with. Though it was my choice, a massive piece of who I was was suddenly gone and I had no idea what to put in that place. And while on the one hand, there were moments of happiness or excitement of like, oh, I get to choose this, I get to build this part of me. A lot of it was just pure terror because every like knee-jerk reaction that I had to a situation involved my partner and that no longer existed. And so I felt lost and spinning and confused for a very long time. And I'm kind of assembling some of those pieces, but gosh darn, they aren't all there yet and I'm still working on it. The biggest thing that came as an absolute shock to me was the way that people respond to you telling them that you are ending your relationship, one that they are not in the middle of, right? When you're with someone, you two are the only people who actually are in that relationship and know it. The amount of judgment, strong opinions, or just straight up being thought of as a horrible person and a villain was really surprising to me. Relationships that I had that existed before I even met him got really affected by me saying that I was getting divorced, especially if people around you come from religious backgrounds. Understandably, the word divorce carries a pretty heavy punch because it's something that really isn't super acceptable in many of those circles. And I knew that, but it didn't really make it any easier to have people thinking of me so differently, like as a person, because I decided that getting divorced was what needed to happen for me. I had to learn really quickly to be okay, being seen however people were gonna see me because I didn't have the energy to try to like manage everybody's perception. That was very difficult because I spent so much of my life developing survival skills in the world in part by people liking me, by keeping relationships good, by trying to communicate and be there for people. It's always been important to me to make people happy. That's something I'm working through in therapy and have been for a while, but as all this occurred, I realized really quickly that there was no possible way that I could make sure everyone was good with this decision because they weren't going to be. The only person who had to be good with it was me. And also realizing that I was gonna make mistakes throughout the process. There was no way that I could handle every conversation, every relationship perfectly. I did not have the bandwidth for that. And so I tried my very best and also understood that there were probably situations or things or words that I said that I might have to revisit and have a conversation with someone about or apologize. Something that I wish people would have told me was that everyone will have an opinion and most of those people will let you know one way or the other what that opinion is. At the end of the day, I think it is vital to ask the people you trust who are around you for input on major decisions. But when that input is coming from everywhere, all you gotta do is be good with your choice. That's really it. If you're solid in that, you can choose to handle people's opinions and advice any way that you want at a certain point. Once I had like talked to the major people in my life, I kind of just tuned it out because I knew what I needed to do. And if someone agreed or disagreed, that was on them. So like I said, we were together for a long period of time, meaning that we made a lot of friends as a couple. We had a number of really good couple friends who like the four of us or the six of us or whatever would hang out and do stuff. It was great. Love those people. You know, many of those people didn't pick sides. Staying friends with couple friends when you are no longer a part of a couple is uncomfortable. What I mean by that is the entire dynamic shifts because you're used to being paired with someone. It's really weird to go to events without your person there. It's really weird to like sit down with the three of you doing something instead of the four of you doing something. You kind of have to just completely explore that friendship all over again. And that one can still be pretty uncomfortable for me. I've had to make very conscious choices to be like, no, go do the thing. Go see the people you love because they matter to you and you matter to them. This is absolutely worth maintaining. Everybody wants to be here, but there have been moments when I'm like, I just want to cut ties with absolutely anyone who knew me as a part of this couple just because it's weird and uncomfortable to like reestablish a new normal. And that is kind of true across the board when you're building this new life for yourself. And I guess it's kind of obvious looking back, but that is another thing I didn't really expect was like the awkwardness of going out with friends who used to be couple friends with it, it just shifts. Even like family relationships, right? My parents, my brother, my sister-in-law, these are my people, right? Like they are 100% my people and it still feels so weird being there without the person I've always been there with. Worth going to, absolutely. But being prepared for that sense of like loss and loneliness and discomfort and just figuring out who you are again in that dynamic, that's challenging. Okay, so another thing that is mostly just really annoying is habits. Not all of them, but pretty much every habit that you have is gonna shift a little bit if you are ending a long-term relationship. I cannot tell you the amount of times that something would happen. I'd reach for my phone to text the person who was my person for years before being like, no, that's not what I'm doing now. But it was just a knee-jerk reaction. It was just sort of out of something I'd done so many times or driving home. I drove home to my old house multiple times before realizing, oh yeah, that's right. Everything has changed. I don't live there anymore. But you have all of these habits and all these kind of pre-programmed things. And if you end a relationship, you're gonna be reaching for your phone to text that person or call that person when major things happen. Something else that feels kind of like taboo to say, I shouldn't be saying this because I'm the person that ended it. There is so much grieving when you are going through divorce. And when you're the person who made the decision, it can kind of feel like you shouldn't have the right to feel those things. At least that's what I felt like for me. I was like, you know, this is my choice. It is and has been the best thing for me. That does not detract from the immense amount of loss and grief ending a long-term relationship is. It is intensely painful, regardless of the circumstances or how cordial or fine or not it goes. And if you ever face something like this, I hope you at least have a couple people around you who will remind you that it's okay to feel everything you're feeling. I've had a couple of those people in my life and I'm really grateful for them because it's just this weird, bizarre roller coaster of anger and hurt and loss and grief and missing the person who knew you so well and sobbing in the car, then screaming in the car, then being totally fine. Everything's fine and then being a wreck again. Like it is a, whoo, it comes in big waves but as time goes on, those waves kind of even out and I'm like in like this stage now. You know, it was like this over here now and maybe we'll get there eventually. I don't know, but grieving that, like feeling those things, it was really important to being able, you know, to move through your life and get to where you want to be going. It's really hard to lose the person who knew you the best. Though my platform, my social media presence is often about vulnerability and saying things honestly. I really have trouble and I always have in real life with that. Like actually letting people into who I am when they're sitting next to me, that's hard, that's scary, that's a real challenge for me and having spent so much time with someone where in many ways I allowed them in. I allowed them to be that person though there were certainly issues, they still knew me better than anyone else did at that point in my life, except for me. So losing that, losing the person who you share so many memories with who knows so many aspects of you who has seen you in many different situations, again, whether or not it was always healthy or a good thing is really bizarre because it feels like a piece of you is leaving with them and then on the flip side, trying to imagine putting in that much work with anyone else, friendship, relationship, whatever it is, seems too painful and too exhausting and overwhelming sometimes and I think that kind of going back to what I was already talking about, you've gotta grieve that loss. You've gotta grieve the fact that you invested so much of yourself with this person. Of course it's gonna hurt when they go regardless of the circumstances, good or bad. So the last thing I wanna touch on is shame. You know, that lovely little monster that hides in the closet and sucks our souls out. Like I talked about at the beginning of this video, divorce carries certain implications depending on what communities you exist in. Pretty universally though, it's not seen as a good thing and in a lot of cultures and communities, it's actively seen as a bad thing and I would make the argument though, perhaps I am wrong here, that especially being a woman, ending a heterosexual marriage, there's like an extra large amount of judgment and assumptions made about you as a woman because you're doing this and the amount of shame and failure that going through a divorce brings specifically is pretty extensive. It's funny because I haven't questioned my decision since I made it. Have I thought about it a lot? Absolutely, but I mean, I haven't been like shaky on it or wavered from it. Once I knew, I knew, you know, I took a lot of steps in between there but once the decision was made, it was done. But the amount of I suck, I'm a horrible person, I've ruined everyone in my life and everything, just shame and messages of how horrible you are. Still in some moments are pretty heavy, are pretty loud and the feeling of failure because in our minds, marriage is supposed to be forever. That's certainly what I believed when I got married that is what I was entirely dedicated to and then things changed. When I'm thinking about it logically and rationally, I don't see this as a failure. I see it as the right choice. Life takes turns, things happen, things happen in relationships and it is absolutely okay to decide that it's not the best thing for you and to move on. Even though I know that rationally, the weight of you failed is still really strong even though I don't see that relationship as a failure but it is really hard to shake kind of the shame and failure paradox and it's something that I am still working through. There are so many more things that I could say about this process but those are some of like that the first thing that come to mind for me, the way that relationships shift, people change sides, you lose your identity, habits change, your entire life shifts, every single aspect of it. So many pieces of that are intensely painful. It's gonna take time. It makes sense that the last few months have been awful. On top of a few other things that have occurred in my life like losing my dogs. Like going through this is gonna be a really rough process in every area of your life and that is something that I wish I had been a little bit better prepared for and understood that like, oh okay, literally everything is gonna shift. I gotta be along for the ride. It's gonna hurt, it's gonna be hard and I'm gonna find my way through it. Kind of six months into this now I feel like I have a better handle on things. There are still aspects that are insanely difficult. It's still ongoing, it's painful, it's weird but I am building this new life for myself. I am figuring out what I want for me and going after it. I'm doing a whole lot of reflecting at the risk of sounding super cliche, working on myself, working on what I actually want, who I actually wanna be and taking steps towards those things. So if you're going through this, it does get better. It's just a process to get there. A huge thank you again to Helix for sponsoring today's video. Check out their link in the description. Helix is a company I would highly recommend. It was so easy to actually get the mattress, get everything set up and to you watching this video right now. Thank you for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today. You could be anywhere else in the world doing anything else. You chose to hang out with me for a few minutes and listen to me talk, listen to my story. Thank you. A big thank you also to my patrons over on Patreon for continuing to support these videos. Your generosity is the reason why I can do what I do. So thank you. I love you guys, I'm thinking about you and I'll see you in the next video. Bye guys.