'Write Your Feelings'

A decade after divorce, a random phone therapist's advice continues to change my life

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A decade after divorce (and following the advice of a phone therapist) I am still writing my way to the person I want to be.

Things that are the Same:

• My kitchen still needs a radical update.

• I still leave my water glass by the sink. 

• I still don’t call my parents (or anyone) as often as I should.

Things that are NOT the Same:

• My little preschooler is now preparing for his sophomore year of high school. 

• I am now self-employed as a relationship coach. 

• Books with my author name on the spine sit on my shelves (and on bookstore shelves in several countries).

Those are a few things you can see. That I can see. But, per usual, the things that matter most tend to be things we don’t or can’t see.

How this Whole Thing Started

It was April 1, 2013—a Monday—when I came home from work to find my wife packing a suitcase. I don’t remember whether I tried to protest. I tend to go quiet in moments like that.

I stared silently, watching her hands as she put clothes into the luggage. I had noticed the day before that she was no longer wearing her wedding ring. She hadn’t been ready to tell me it was permanent. My wedding band still clung stubbornly to my ring finger. Today, it remains hidden at the bottom of my sock drawer. I don’t really know why.

I was surprised she was leaving, but I shouldn’t have been. We had been sleeping in separate bedrooms for 18 months. There wasn’t much left to hold onto beside the idea of not wanting to be divorced, of not wanting to put our 4-year-old son through whatever was about to happen.

I, too, was a 4-year-old only child when my parents divorced. That was 1983. My mom moved us 500 miles away, and the rest of my childhood would be spent with one of my parents far, far away for months at a time. I didn’t like it.

One of my defining little-kid memories is crying and waving goodbye to one of my parents as they slowly disappeared in the rearview window. On that day 10 years ago I watched my wife and little boy drive away for the final time as a family.

I said a lot of bad words between the sobs as I puked and dry-heaved into my kitchen sink. The next several months were a blur. The only constant in my life was work and trying not to cry at the conference table during meetings or while binge-watching Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead on Netflix.

I no longer cared about living. I didn’t WANT to die necessarily. But for the first time in my 34 years of life I thought that if I didn’t wake up tomorrow, it might be an upgrade: I wouldn’t have to feel this wretchedness any longer.

Sometimes I’d drink to numb the pain. I hadn’t yet discovered the majesty of bourbon or rye, so I was mostly mixing vodka with whatever I had on hand.

One night after one too many drinks, I dialed a 1-800 number from a card that someone from my employer’s HR department had handed me. A phone-a-therapist line.

She wasn’t impressed by me.

But she gave me advice that would change the course of my life. She told me to “write my feelings.” It sounded stupid, but I didn’t care about much anymore, so doing something stupid seemed fine to me. To be clear, the therapist had been encouraging me to write in a private journal like a grownup. Instead, I poured more drinks and decided to blog.

I imagined the blog as dark and sardonically funny. Stories about my mid-life crisis, dating life and being a less-than-stellar single father. Something to get a few laughs from a coworker or two.

I started clicking that publish button. 

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Holy shit. People are actually reading this, I realized. I wasn’t trying to cultivate an audience. But it was happening anyway. And because my mom was a pretty good mom, (thanks, Mom) it occurred to me pretty quickly that if people were going to actually pay attention to the things I was writing or saying, I wanted to make sure I was contributing something meaningful, instead of the sophomoric stories of dysfunctionally divorced debauchery.

There was a deep well of previously undisclosed thoughts and feelings, and because I was something close to fearless for the first time in my life, I wasn’t afraid to publish it.

And some people liked it. I think I understand why. There’s something satisfying about watching or reading about characters that grow and evolve into a person capable of overcoming whatever hardships they’re facing. Maybe that’s how readers had felt about me. I spent several years writing about all of the things I used to think and feel and how those things affected my marriage from my vantage point. And then I wrote all of the new ideas and beliefs and practices I was incorporating in order to try to live in alignment with who I hoped to be moving forward, and to encourage others to do the same while trying not to be a preachy, know-it-all asshole about it.

Where we are Today

The stories of our lives tend not to wrap up neatly just before the credits roll.

I am, and shall remain, a work in progress. 

But one belief I landed on pretty early in my personal-growth journey remains: People are mostly just pursuing happiness to the best of their abilities. Almost everything we choose is either some sacrifice we’re making for our long-term wellbeing (going to work, saving money, paying bills, exercise, chores and errands, learning new knowledge and skills, etc.) or is scratching a more immediate feel-good itch (soaking up sun poolside, having a drink, scrolling through social media feeds, watching TV, and almost anything sexual.)

And I submit that the single greatest influence on whether we experience life positively or negatively is the quality of our closest interpersonal relationships. When our relationships are shit, our lives are miserable. When our relationships are connected and thriving, life is grand.

That’s what my divorce, and the last 10 years of writing and relationship coaching work have gifted me: Perspective. Awareness. Emotional intelligence. A much more evolved ability to empathize.

I don’t have a magic bag of tricks, or any cure-all recipes for healing fractured and broken relationships or fractured and broken people. But I think maybe I’ve grown into someone well-suited to help others learn how to identify behaviors in their own lives that might be adversely affecting their most important relationships. Maybe I’ve become a man that can help someone like my former self.

Do I wish I could go back before the divorce, before that vomit-inducing day 10 years ago, and scream at that younger me to do the damn dishes? You bet. But I also know that following that therapist’s advice for the past decade has gotten me much closer to being the man I want and need to be—for my son, for my partners (past and present), for my readers, and, in the end, for myself.

Time is funny. Looking through the rearview, a decade can somehow seem like both a lifetime and an instant all at once. I remember feelings and events like they happened yesterday, yet I can’t remember myself. I can’t remember what it was like to be me back then, crying and kind of wanting to die; and largely blind to the ways my behavior sometimes unintentionally damaged some of my relationships.

And so we look to tomorrow. More choices. More experiences. More opportunities to walk whatever paths we choose.

Let’s go.

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Matthew Fray is the author of “This is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships”, a relationship coach, and formerly the blogger at Must Be This Tall To Ride.