245. Divorce Shock and Facing Reality

You know that feeling when you say "I can't believe this is happening"? That phrase reveals something important: you might be stuck in denial.

Divorce shatters your reality. It forces you to question your past, present, and future all at once. Your brain protects you by avoiding these overwhelming truths. But denial keeps you vulnerable. While you refuse to engage, reality moves forward—often against your interests.

Maybe you discovered infidelity. Maybe your spouse blindsided you with divorce papers. Maybe you chose to leave but still find yourself shocked by what happens next. The confusion stems from the cycle of drama: tension builds, an incident explodes, apologies follow, calm returns—then it starts again. This cycle traps you in a fog where you forget why things felt so bad.

Here's what changed everything for me: I grabbed a notebook and documented my daily experiences for 48 days. Not for court. Not to prove anything to anyone. Just to own my reality. Those pages helped me see the patterns I couldn't recognize in the moment.

Documentation creates consciousness. Consciousness creates choice. Choice creates freedom.

Stop comparing the worst moments of your relationship to the best moments of that same relationship. That comparison keeps you trapped. You deserve to know what healthy looks like.

Your relationship with yourself is the longest one you'll ever have. Back yourself up. Trust yourself. Own your experience.

Ready to move forward? Schedule a dating consultation call with Sade at sadecurry.com/info and start building the life you deserve.

Transcript

Hello everyone, welcome back to Your Extraordinary Life and Dating After Divorce podcast. I believe every divorced woman deserves a romantic relationship where she feels safe, loved, and cherished. You can create the most amazing life after divorce, and I will teach you how. I'm your host, Sade Curry, and I still have that little thing with my voice where it's not quite all the way back from not feeling well over the holidays. But I am plowing ahead with recording these episodes for you because I can't wait to get this information out. There's just so much of it. Over early December, I was really just putting down all of my thoughts and what I wanted to get at. I was thinking, "Yeah, there's a lot." So let's go ahead and get started.

What I want to talk about today was one of those early phases of divorce—when you are either hit with a request for divorce from your ex or you discovered information about infidelity. I worked with a couple of women in 2024 who discovered that their spouses were cheating on them, and that can bring so much shock. The reason this happens is that you're living in a particular definition of existence. You're living in a particular geography, you have a particular routine.

There are things that we have to tell ourselves are true about the world in order for us to function. We can't have every scenario in the world be possibly true, even though every scenario in the world is possibly true at all times. Your brain can't live in a reality where all of the possible scenarios can be true at one time because otherwise you can't make any decisions. You can't count on anything. You can't figure out what you're going to eat for breakfast because you've got to run the calculations of eating a waffle versus eating an egg. You've got to run all that.

Our brains—we can't do anything if we have to run all of those. So to function in our world, which is not a bad thing, we choose a certain definition. We choose a particular identity. We choose particular truths and particular beliefs. Hopefully, we choose true beliefs and ideologies. When I say truth, the general truth is: my spouse loves me, we live together, we get along, and no one is cheating on anybody. Or that's not even a thing, right? So that you can go about your day and go to work and take care of the people that you love.

Now, what happens when you discover something like infidelity is that it shatters everything that was hinging on the belief that that was not happening. Your brain has to enter a new reality to start thinking about, "Oh my gosh, what's been going on? How many times? What are all the possibilities?" It opens up this can of worms of possibilities that your brain then has to process. We don't want to process that, not because we're lazy or silly, but because it's a lot of work. It feels unsafe. It feels uncertain to have to step into this whole—it's going to Mars.

That goes for situations where you're the one who decided to get a divorce, where you're thinking, "You know what? This isn't working for me for all of these reasons." It's still a shock to the system because you've had to say yes or this is true or this is not true about the reality that you subscribed to in the past. Not just the reality of your present or the reality of your past—this is the relationship we've had this whole time. This is what it means. This is who it means that I am. Then you have the reality of your present. This is what I can do today. This is how I can live my life today. There's also the reality of your future. You make certain assumptions about your future based on your assumptions about your past and your assumptions about your present.

Now, divorce is one of those things that just blows all of it wide open. It just messes with everything. Because for some people, depending on your situation, you now have to question the past. Technically, you don't have to question the past, but you're going to. That's just normal. You're going to question all the trips, all the work trips, all the evenings out. You're going to question everything. Then you're going to question the future, which is now what? Your future now just looks like this crazy ball of uncertainty, and you've got to grieve the future that you assumed and that you thought was going to happen.

I was talking to a woman, not a client, in the last couple of weeks, and she just found out, close to 60, that her husband wants a divorce. They have been married for 30 years and he wants a divorce, and he's dating a 25-year-old. This is not a relationship where there was abuse or toxicity or all of those other things that make it, "Oh, this is absolutely necessary." This is just one of those things.

You can imagine for someone in her situation—when she was referred to me, the person who referred her said she's just not able to face up to what's happening. She's not able to engage with it. I get that. That is shock. She is basically in shock and going through this rethinking of her whole life. I don't even know if this person is in that space of even rethinking yet because opening up your—depending on the person that you are and your ability to grapple with some of these larger questions and larger possibilities and what it means for you—relationships are one of those things that are just so different for everyone. She might not even be ready to even face up to the reality, which could put her in a very vulnerable situation when it comes to the divorce.

That's why we avoid reality. That's why denial is often the very first pit stop when it comes to divorce, depending on where you are. Now, even for those who decided to divorce, you've had to go through that journey to get to the point where you're thinking, "Oh yeah, I'm good to go."

One thing I do want to say is that just because you've overcome a certain level of denial to move forward with a divorce doesn't mean that the habitual pattern of denial isn't still there. What I found with several of my clients is they're thinking, "Okay, I'm ready to do this divorce thing," but they will sometimes be in denial about their soon-to-be ex's behavior and what they are likely to do during the divorce. They get blind. They're constantly blindsided because even though they faced one reality, they're not facing the other realities. Or they're not facing the reality of how it impacts their children and putting protective devices in place for the kids or protective devices in place for themselves.

The question I want to ask you is, if you're someone who is contemplating divorce or in the middle of a divorce, or you find yourself constantly blindsided, in shock, wondering what's going on, asking yourself questions like "Why is this happening to me? How could this be happening to me? I can't believe this"—that one phrase that used to go through my mind was "I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe this is happening."

If you find that phrase being a phrase that comes up when you have these chaotic situations happen, you might have a habit of slipping into denial or a habit of not connecting directly with reality when it comes to certain situations in your life. Those are some of the warning signs that you have that. This doesn't mean that you're out of touch. These are just patterns and survival mechanisms that different people will use, that we will all use at different times to protect ourselves from things that our brain thinks is too big for us to handle.

All of us have been through things in life, so you might have moments or situations that trigger parts of you that are still very vulnerable. Parts of your—what psychologists will call your inner child—can get triggered, and then denial can come up as a protective device in that moment. The problem with letting that be your protective device is if you slip into denial and you don't face reality, reality is still going to do what it's going to do.

For the example that I was giving about this person that I was talking to who was talking about her husband wanting to date someone younger—her choice to not engage with the reality or her inability to engage with that reality does not protect her from what is actually happening and does not prevent what is happening from continuing to happen.

The goal of having a therapist or a coach helping you work through that is to say, "Okay, this is really, really hard for me to look at and for me to think about, but there can be—there are consequences if I don't." There are financial consequences, physical consequences. If this person does not lawyer up or try to figure out how to protect her assets or protect herself, she could find herself in a situation where not only does she lose her spouse, she ends up at a loss financially because she did not prepare for that journey. Not only did she not prepare, she gave the other party ample time to prepare. A person who is willing to hurt her in that way potentially could be willing to hurt her in other ways, could be willing to hurt her financially, could want to move their assets in ways that she can't recover if she decides to engage with reality down the line. That's why these considerations are important.

I want to talk about my own cycle. Maybe I should have led with this, but I didn't want to lead with some of the more dire situations because everyone is across the board with these things. I remember I got divorced after 17 years of marriage. By the time the divorce was done, we were looking at 20 years somewhere there. I remember being very confused at different points in the marriage.

There was something that I did at one point. Even though I did decide to stay in the marriage at that time, I had a hard time understanding what was happening. I was thinking, "Well, I mean, it seems like when things are good, things are really, really good and everything is awesome. We've got plenty of money, got a gigantic home, kids seem to be thriving. Then all of a sudden something really bad will happen and everything is crazy and chaotic and whatever." I was thinking, "What is going on?"

I wasn't the person who talked to people necessarily, and I wasn't in therapy. I had just started reading the book Boundaries. I started to figure this is not normal. I had gotten to the point where I was thinking this situation is not normal. But what would happen was I was a stay-at-home mom. I had kids. I was a foster parent. I was a homeschooling mom, so I was really busy. That's one of the challenges that I help my clients with now—making space to figure out what you want. I didn't have space to think about what was going on with me, what was going on with the marriage, what was going on. I was just busy all of the time, which is another way to hide, is another way to escape from reality.

These things would happen—things would be fine, and then all of a sudden this tension would build up, and then my ex would start raging. There was just always the cycle, which I found out later has a name. It's called the cycle of abuse. The word abuse may or may not apply in your situation. When I say abuse, it's not necessarily physical abuse—definitely it applies from there and it came from that angle—but it really just describes a cycle where things are really good all of a sudden, and then everything's really bad, and then you go back and forth from those extremes.

You find yourself living in the really, really good, especially when you're thinking about leaving or you're thinking about "this isn't working for me." Your brain is thinking, "What do you mean? All these times were really, really good."

What you want to do is look at this cycle of abuse, and you can put whatever name you want on it. I like to put the cycle of drama on it, which is different from the Drama Triangle, which is more where you have people playing certain patterns in family drama. This is more the cycle of abuse where if you look it up and you just Google it and look at the images, there are four phases. One is tensions building.

The first step to successful online dating is your dating profile. Now, what if you could create a dating profile that makes all the difference to your online experience? Imagine having a profile so magnetic that quality matches stop mid-scroll to connect with you. The people you want to talk to say, "Oh my God, I've got to talk to her." You want a profile that instantly communicates who you are at your core and attracts people who genuinely align with what matters most to you.

I want to share with you the Captivate Dating Profile System where you'll learn how to create a profile that stops the scroll of the person who's a match for you, captures attention immediately with authentic value-based content, showcases your true self in a way that resonates with the man you want to talk to, and naturally filters out people who are mismatches before they waste your time.

I want you to check out the Captivate Dating Profile System at sadecurry.com/dating. That's S-A-D-E-C-U-R-R-Y/dating. For the price of dinner out, you can create the best dating profile ever. When I say best dating profile, I mean it. It will be uniquely you so that you stop looking like every other woman on the apps. All right, go on over there and check it out.

So tensions increase, breakdown of communication. The people pleaser becomes fearful and feels the need to placate the abuser. It's where a person who's holding it all together is doing their very best to keep the kids quiet and make sure there's food on the table and make sure everything, make sure everybody's good. You guys have heard me talk about that—the smart, strong woman syndrome—where you're thinking, "Yeah, I got this. I can hold everything together."

Then, in spite of all that, because you can't control other people, someone is going to—in a sense, whoever the spouse is that projects their own emotions on the other. In some situations, you have the physical abuser, or you have the narcissistic spouse, or you have the person who's just generally a jerk. Whatever the dynamic is, everyone's situation is different. I can't describe all of the scenarios. The goal of this series is to have you, my listener, think about your scenario and see if any of this applies to you or if you know someone that it does, and you can send this to them.

Then there's the incident. That's where the crazy happens. When things get really crazy and you're thinking, "How is this happening? I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe he got into this road rage. I can't believe he locked me out of the house. I can't believe he went to Vegas and spent all our money"—whatever the thing is. "I can't believe he cheated again," whatever the thing is. Then you have the incident. Then there's all the blaming, anger, whatever it is.

Now this is where typically, as the person who's thinking, "Yeah, you know what? I don't really want to be a part of this anymore," generally you're thinking about leaving. At that point, you're thinking, "Yeah, this isn't working for me. I want to leave." But unfortunately, you will have the other person in the situation be thinking, "Well, I want to be able to have this incident, but I also don't want to leave. I also want you here doing all the things that you do."

Then there's going to be an apology and there will be excuses. Then there might be leveling the playing field where it's, "Well, you contributed to this," and blah, blah, blah and all of those things, and victim blaming—all the things that can happen. Think about your own scenario.

You might start thinking about all the logistics that would go into actually moving forward, and your brain starts to be thinking, "Well, maybe it's not so bad. Things aren't so terrible. It's fine." People start telling you things like "You're overreacting" and "Marriages work" and "You should"—all those things happen. There's a reconciliation. It's, "Okay, things are fine. We'll go to therapy, we'll do this, we'll do that."

After that is the calm because we don't want to dwell in all that. You want to believe that you are fine and that you have a future and things could be okay, which yes, you should. Now you go into the—some of the cycle images you'll find on the internet will call it the honeymoon phase, which is everything's calm, nothing bad is happening. In fact, everybody's happy. Everyone is relieved. There is a relief that comes from, "Oh God, thank God that's over." There's a hope—"Oh my God, thank God none of that is going to happen again."

As time goes on, then the tension starts to build again because when certain people can't handle or don't want to contribute to that relationship or the peace or whatever, there's just going to be that anger building. The abuser is going to be thinking, "Well, this person is doing this and this person is doing that, or they're not doing what I want," or whatever the thing is. Again, this is your situation. Or the person who is unfaithful is already starting to look around again. Whatever the situation is, it just goes around in that cycle. That is what makes it really hard to connect with the reality of the situation.

Now, because it's a cycle, it can go on for years and years and years. Sometimes—I mean, I've talked to people where there would be six months between cycles, and those are almost the worst because then you can go 20 years. What to look out for is that with every cycle, the overall health of the unit or the overall health of the marriage will dip a little bit lower. It seems like things are better, but the relationship never is at a healthy place long term.

One of the things that I think in my situation was tough was that I hadn't had a lot of examples of healthy relationships, so I kept comparing the worst part of the relationship to the best parts of the same relationship, which was already unhealthy in and of itself. This is why reading widely and talking to professionals can be really helpful in saying, "Hey, you know this part of your pattern where you think things are healthy is actually not healthy because if you look at something that's really healthy, it is way, way, way, way above what you're thinking about."

I encourage you to take a look at the cycle and see if anything there applies to what you are going through or what you are thinking about. Now the other thing to think about is what do you do instead of waiting until the cycle hits a rock bottom? What can you do to get there? So back to my story.

I was in that basic cycle I just described. Mine wasn't physical abuse in that sense, but it was more just a lot of emotional, psychological cruelty and raging anger, gigantic anger issues. At a certain point I was thinking, "This isn't normal." But I also noticed that I would forget. I started noticing that between the cycles I couldn't—there was just so much of a brain fog at a certain point that I couldn't remember why were things bad again? What happened that last time?

I started—I decided I got a notebook. I remember when I got this notebook and I was thinking, "Okay." I labeled it—I think I labeled it eight weeks, so eight times seven is 56 days, or 48 days, whatever. I was just going to write everything, just one page. Every day, I was just going to write down my experiences with my spouse every day for 48 days. That was it.

That was what led me to actually connect with the reality of my situation. I wasn't documenting this for court. Honestly, court wasn't even on my mind at that point. I wasn't even thinking about leaving. I was really just trying to own my own mental state and my own reality. What is really happening? What is going on? Why am I always confused?

I'm really glad I did that for myself because I think even back then I had my own back. I trusted myself and I was willing to believe myself, even if other people didn't believe me. That's a whole other podcast episode when you're talking about whether or not other people believe you. Documenting your actual experience can help you see the cycle that you are in and how you are playing into the cycle and how you are participating—not causing necessarily or doing something wrong, but playing into it and not owning that you have choices within the cycle.

Documenting over a two-month or a three-month period can help you become conscious. That is the key—becoming conscious about what your experience is in the relationship. When you're with someone who has narcissistic tendencies, they love to isolate incidents. This incident is one incident and has nothing to do with any other incident that has ever happened. Nothing's contributed to what's going on so that they can keep everything contained to what the narrative is in the moment. That causes a lot of confusion if you're the person who's trying to hold it all together.

What can be helpful is to say, "Okay, well, over this pattern..." And the other person does not have to accept the pattern. That's the other thing. I think often when I've talked to other people about this, once they see the pattern, they're thinking, "Aha, I got it. Now I'm going to go show this to all the other people and they have to see it." No. That is not how human beings work. They do not work like that at all. This is for you.

One of the things that I am constantly redirecting my clients to is to do things for themselves. They're often wanting to do things so that other people can see it and then everything can be exactly how they want it, and not being willing to 100% focus in on their own experience. The documentation is for you, for your own consciousness, for your own self-validation, for your own self-advocacy, for your own ability to be in your own skin and feel, "Okay, I know what's—I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm thinking right." Owning your reality and backing yourself up with your own thinking.

One of the challenges that can come with not wanting to face reality and being in denial is that you don't think that anyone will back you up. It's possible that nobody will back you up, but one thing you want to always have the capacity and the strength to back yourself up, to be thinking, "You know what? My relationship with myself is always going to be—it's going to be the longest relationship I ever have. I will be here for all of my own experiences. It's important that I can live with myself and live in my own mind." That is really, really the very first step.

It's not about what the other person sees or what your friends see or even what the courts see or what your attorney sees. I'm going to talk about all those people as we go on, but this is the first step into being with yourself, knowing your own experience, being conscious about it, embracing your own experience, and then also embracing the reality of what is happening.

When women tell me, "Oh, I feel stuck," this is one of the things that's happening. They're stuck because there are variables and situations and experiences and things that are happening in their lives that they are not willing to engage with at a raw level. They can't move forward because their brain won't let them move forward because it's thinking, "Yeah, I want to go ahead and do this thing," but subconsciously—and maybe not even that deeply subconscious, just at the back of your mind—you know that there are other variables, but you don't know how to verbalize them to yourself. You're afraid that if you verbalize them, then really bad things can happen. But you have to because you do live in a reality, and a lot of your power comes from being able to engage in that reality.

One of the beliefs I had as a young woman was that I didn't have the strength to grapple with reality, that I always needed somebody. I always needed people to help me grapple with reality. That belief was very, very damaging. If you feel, "Oh, I don't want to look at these things because I don't feel like I have the ability to grapple with them or work through them," not thinking about them or working with them doesn't help because how are you going to get the experience? How are you going to get the ability and the skill to grapple with reality if you do not begin to engage with reality?

I hope this was coherent because it was very high level. I tried not to get into too many specifics around it because the principles apply—the principle of grappling with reality, experiencing reality, owning your own thoughts and feelings, becoming conscious. All those things apply, but they apply to everybody. I didn't want to get too deep into particular situations. I hope keeping it at a high level still made it very useful for each and every one of you listening.

If you know someone who is thinking about a divorce or going through a divorce or having a hard time with their divorce, I would love it if you shared this podcast episode with them and let them know that, first of all, they're not alone in that disconnection from reality. This is a very human, normal thing so that they can have permission to give themselves a little self-compassion. You're in shock. This is stressful. Hopefully something in here will help them.

This episode was all about facing reality, documentation, understanding the cycles of drama or cycles of abuse that can happen, and hopefully finding, starting to find a little spot in that cycle where you can jump off and create something new.

All right, everyone, thank you for your time and attention today. I always appreciate you. If you love this, please rate the podcast, give us some stars on whatever platform you're on, write a review. I would love it, even if it's an anonymous review. Just let other people find the podcast so that they can get the help and information that they need. Thank you all. I will see you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening today. If you are ready to get married after divorce, I want to invite you to download my free eight-video training specifically designed to help divorced women date with ease and get married again. Head over to sadecurry.com to get started. That's S-A-D-E-C-U-R-R-Y.com. I'll see you inside.