One of the biggest mistakes that divorcees make when ending their marriages is this: they refuse to accept any of the blame and believe that it was “all their spouse’s fault.” While it very well may be true that one’s spouse did most of the things that led to the divorce, this short-sightedness does more harm than good for the person, who buys in to it.
How, you may be asking?
The short answer: by keeping you subject to past mistakes and heartaches. Now for the long:
1. By projecting all blame to your ex, you make it difficult to move forward.
What keeps us making the same mistakes over and over again is our inability or refusal to look at what actions or thought processes might have played a role into getting us into a certain type of decision in the first place. For example, say your spouse cheated on you before you married them and then later afterward. If you had heeded the warning of that first infidelity, you never would have had to suffer through the second. Of course, that’s just an example, and infidelity doesn’t always telegraph itself that much. But the specificity of the situation isn’t the point. The point is that you need to look at your own actions, your own decisions, and see how they can mold your life into the shape that it’s in, for better and worse.
2. By essentially martyring yourself, you’re giving up on happiness.
Martyrs are people, who are unwilling to back down from their own convictions no matter what. There is a time and a place for this mindset but post-divorce recovery isn’t one of them. When you adhere to the belief that you hold 0% responsibility for the divorce, you’re essentially martyring yourself to the mindset you are currently in. You doom yourself to repeating past mistakes and are essentially putting your fate into the hands of the next person, who comes along. Someone who may be the carbon copy of your ex, ready to commit all the same indiscretions on you that he or she did before.
This can be difficult to hear, but for your own happiness’ sake, you need to hear it and take it to heart. No one’s telling you to assume full responsibility for what happened in the marriage that led to divorce. But how you emerge from a divorce depends wholly on self-improvement. And you can’t improve your self if you can’t see your own weaknesses.
