No, it’s not what you’re thinking. I’m not talking about financial loss. Anyone who has been through divorce realizes that money is just a tool that misdirected people use to control or punish someone in divorce. There’s a far greater cost.

I always say, “It’s great if I like you – better if I respect you.”

I never aspired to be liked by everyone. It’s not realistic. It’s impossible that every single human being we meet will like us.

Instead, I have lived by a personal mantra, “To treat every human being the same, with kindness and respect.”

My feeling has always been that we aren’t going to bond with every single person, but I hope I at least earn their respect. How? Simply by the way I live my life. The value system, the sense of responsibility and honesty, living outside of my four walls with a bigger sense of community and need.

I’m not really sure why a sense of respect diminishes in divorce.

I think it can partially be attributed to the lack of self-respect we develop by putting up with too much or being mistreated badly in a relationship.

I think it can also come from trying to pretend for so long – trying to keep everything together so it looks okay to the outside world that eventually we can’t hold it in. And then, boom the flood gates unleash the waters that wipe us out.

I think it may also come from the archaic stigma that society and many married couples (ironically even unhappily married couples) still insinuate in divorce.

Attempting to keep a marriage together to the point of losing your dignity and self-respect isn’t well intentioned. It isn’t worth it.

And attaching someone else’s bad behavior to your own identity and self-respect is even worse.

It’s stupid! It’s costly!

Sadly, it exhausted my personal worth.

Nonetheless, I am ready to re-build my emotional net worth. I am excited at the gains to be had by simply, once again, being myself.

Not the person I allowed another human being to create – at my own expense.

(Photo courtesy of Pexels)

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