Fresh Start Divorce Recovery

Starting Over – How I Learned to Build Healthy Relationships

by Chris Accardy

In an earlier post I wrote about my journey to wholeness and health after my divorce. Between the time my ex-wife left me in June 1987 and I started dating my wife in October 1991 I had to go through a healing process. That said, most people wouldn’t know I was busted up inside. Outwardly I was productive, happy, and positive. I think I was like most people who have experienced divorce. Outwardly we’re fine but inwardly we’ve got a big healing process to undergo.

One major life issue I discovered was the ability to build healthy relationships. Divorce brings a whole range of emotions and experiences into our lives that undermine our ability to relate to other people. These emotions and experience also can undermine our ability to relate to someone who might be a good future spouse for us.

As I reflect on my experience I realize how indebted I was to a number of people who helped me learn the art of building healthy relationships. I can’t claim credit for these insights. They were shared with me by a number of friends who wanted the best for me.

1. Build relationships that require trust. This is a big thing. Trust is foundational to a healthy relationship. One of the things I learned the hard way was to find trustworthy people to build friendships with.  Trustworthy people are people with boundaries, who do what they say they are going to do, and take minimal risks in life. In other words, they are safe people. After going through my divorce I didn’t need friends who were unpredictable and unstable. I avoided people like that.

2. Learn the art of listening. People empathize with you when you go through a divorce. Friends listen as you vent in anger or as you pour out your heart. The central thing in your life is your divorce and all that it entails. For a while I did the bulk of the talking with my closest friends. They listened. However, after a while I realized that they had stuff going on in their life. It was time for me to start listening to them and being a helpful presence in their lives. After a while I figured out that there is an art to listening. Hearing the words and understanding the logic behind them is not really listening. Listening is hearing the words and understanding them in light of the other person’s point of view and emotional situation. Learning to really hear a person and empathize with them helped me learn to build healthy relationships.

3. Be open and transparent. This was the one thing that took me the longest to learn about building relationships. There is a certain self-disclosure that is necessary to build a healthy relationship. But, as I worked through my woundedness, I didn’t want to talk about myself on certain levels. I wanted to guard myself from further heartbreak and disappointment. But the more I closed myself off to others the harder it was to build a meaningful relationship with them. I realized that the key to openness and transparence  was completing my journey to personal wholeness and health.

4. Defer gratification by keeping the long term in mind. What does this mean? I realized that I had to slow down and wait for the right relationship to come along. I was lonely. Being single again means not having regular sex. The touch that comes with physical intimacy was an intense desire I had. I wanted someone who really loved me and wanted to be with me because they liked me. It was hard to live in this frustrated state of not fulfilling sexual desires while I waited to see if a relationship would develop. I began to realize that it’s quite unhealthy to jump into bed with every woman I found attractive. In the end, I might get a few hours of what I craved but it wouldn’t be lasting. For me, sex without commitment was an empty hope. So once I got my life on track I didn’t have sexual intercourse again until my wedding night. You might think I’m crazy. But, sex with my present wife now is better than it ever was with my former wife. I just don’t buy the “you have to try it before you buy it” approach to marriage. I believe that sexual compatibility happens when two people who love each other come together and find ways to make sex pleasurable. For me, a life-long commitment before having sexual intercourse was an important long-term goal of mine. I can’t say that we didn’t struggle to keep that commitment. In many ways we limped across the finish line. But my present wife was still a virgin on our wedding night.  

5. Help others become better people. One of the biggest lessons in life I’ve learned so far is the importance of giving myself away to other people and seeking their good above my own. As I developed friendships toward the end of my healing process I discovered that when I helped them become better people they turned around and invested themselves in me. In fact, during the two years my wife and I were friends, she would hear positive things about me from mutual friends. I would hear good things about her as well. That just fueled the growing attraction we had for each other. Now, after sixteen years of marriage, I’ve discovered that the ability to sacrifice one’s own desires for the good of the other person is key to a great relationship. I don’t have to demand that my wife meet my needs. She meets them self-sacrificially. In turn, my wife doesn’t have to demand anything of me. I give what she needs self-sacrificially. We both benefit and are happy.

I hope this post is helpful to those of you who are looking to build healthy relationships after your divorce. There is a lot more I could say on the subject. If I could say two things to close: First, the above reflects my own experience. I hope you can learn from it. But don’t think that just doing what I did will enable you to build healthy relationships. Your situation might be more or less similar to mine. If you have real trouble figuring stuff out (I am gifted with a systematic thinking ability) then talk to friends or a counselor. Secondly, there are a lot of bumps along the way. Growth never happens quickly or in expected ways. Growth occurs in the long-term among the many unexpected twists and turns of life.

Other posts in this series:

Starting Over – The Journey to Wholeness and Health