Why did I get a divorce?

Your first answer to a question like this—or any other question, such as Why did you choose not to have kids? Why do you have four of them? Why are you moving so much? Why? Why? Why?—should be:

None of your business.

No, you shouldn’t say that to a person’s face. Be polite. We were raised in a society with manners, after all.

But internally, I want to remind you, and assure you, that what you do with your life is, in fact, none of anybody else’s business.

Nobody will ever understand all the reasons why you chose one path over another. What appears like a mistake to somebody else might turn out to be a winning lottery ticket for you. What looks like a wrongdoing or a detour to someone else might finally be the narrow path of truth you’ve allowed yourself to walk.

And that is precisely why I’m writing this article. Not to explain myself, but to show you that living your own truth can and should be done, despite what others might say, and despite what your own negative beliefs and thoughts might tell you about yourself.

Although there was a time when I felt like I had to explain myself. As if my life were a long list of checks and balances of what Viktoriya did right and wrong. Whether she’s good or bad. Whether she deserves happiness, friendship, her children’s love—or any man on this planet, for that matter, to consider her good and sane enough to be with.

All those were my questions.

My path to divorce was my path to self-discovery.

I had to walk through internal fire, and sometimes external bombs, in order to finally give myself permission to leave.

This post is meant to show you the internal workings of that process. Just in case you find yourself in my shoes. Or in case you know someone else who might be, and perhaps this will help you support them better, rather than coming from a place of judgment.

Oh, if only we could allow each other, and ourselves, to do what we feel is right for us.

After careful examination, of course!

If only we didn’t have to swing between two extremes: overcommitment and endurance at all costs, or the belief that the only way to freedom and happiness is to villainize those who supposedly kept us stuck and break free into a life of irresponsibility.

If only we felt we had the authority and the genuine right to simply do what’s right for us.

Without having to justify every decision. Without having to prove that someone else was wrong. Without having to turn our lives into courtroom dramas in which someone must be found guilty before we are allowed to leave.

How wonderful would this world be!

So Why Did I Divorce?

So, why did I divorce after a 20-year marriage—a marriage for which I fought, cried, protested, endured, smiled, begged, pleaded, accommodated, and at some point, eventually gave up?

As a child of a tumultuous divorce myself, there was not a single cell in my body willing to consider putting my children through one of the most traumatic experiences of my own life.

I vowed to sacrifice myself. My happiness. My joy. My need to be loved, seen, witnessed. My desire to be touched, hugged, and treated as another human being.

I was happily willing to sacrifice all that in order for my children to have a whole family.

Something I never had.

Something whose absence had haunted me for life, and something I later realized had led me to endure a connection and a marriage at all costs.

Even if it cost me myself.

Subconsciously, I had decided that some connection was better than no connection. That having someone physically around was still better than having nobody. That watching movies together and sharing an occasional laugh was enough.

My fear of being alone, my fear of being a bad mom, my fear of being wrong, of being impulsive, frivolous, crazy—but most importantly, my fear of hurting my children—had kept me in this marriage.

Oddly enough, even my fear of failing as a therapist. Because if I was so good, why couldn’t I fix my own marriage, after all?!

Sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, these fears kept me there for many, many years.

Looking back, after four years of dating, I knew we shouldn’t have married in the first place.

I knew because my reality was always questioned, always protested. Sometimes I became hysterical trying to convince my husband that I, too, was a valid person. I, too, had reasons. I, too, wanted to be understood and seen.

And my hysterical protests, of course, were seen as signs of craziness and instability.

By golly, I most certainly felt that way.

My ability to regulate myself was poor, in part due to my own childhood trauma, and in part because living in a funhouse where every disagreement with your partner results in your reality being dismissed would destabilize and dysregulate even the strongest among us.

When I saw that this had become a pattern, I should have left.

But I couldn’t.

Deep down, I knew my husband was a good person. I knew his own childhood traumas. I knew he was also a product of growing up a white male, raised in a traditional 1950s household.

Deep down, I knew that his selfishness and his inability to hear me were not entirely his fault.

But what I was refusing to admit—in part because of my own naïveté, in part because I’m a psychologist, and in part because I desperately wanted to change this—was that even though this wasn’t his fault, it was absolutely his responsibility.

Understanding why someone behaves the way they do doesn’t mean accepting that behavior. And taking responsibility for my choices doesn’t mean taking responsibility for his.

Just like it was my responsibility to learn to regulate myself.

And no amount of unintentional gaslighting gave me permission to scream and throw things at him in hopes of getting myself seen and heard.

So I buckled down and began doing the work.

I meditated. I went to retreats. I read just about every self-help book there was to read. I uncovered my childhood trauma, my insecure attachment wounds, and I learned to regulate myself.

The unfortunate consequence of that work was that somewhere along the way, I managed to convince myself that I was the entire problem.

That if I could just change, I could finally have a good marriage.

I wanted this connection to work so badly.

I loved my husband. I loved him for a very long time.

And I was terrified of being alone.

Growing up without a father impacted me more than I was willing to admit. When I met my husband, who was good on paper—tall and handsome, with a PhD, who was not an alcoholic, a drug addict, or a womanizer—I thought I had finally hit the jackpot.

An immigrant from Ukraine, growing up poor without a dad, was finally going to be happy.

And the one thing I know about myself is that when I set a goal, I achieve it.

So I decided I was going to make my marriage work, no matter what.

Even if that meant taking all the responsibility onto myself. Even if that meant deciding I was the crazy one and he was the good guy.

All I needed to do was heal my childhood trauma, work on my communication, work on my emotional regulation, and all would be well.

But in addition to all that, what I accidentally did was shrink myself.

I stopped putting myself in situations where he might disagree with me. I stopped putting myself in situations where conflict might occur.

While my mental health improved significantly, and we were finally able to communicate in relatively healthy ways, one of the reasons for that was that I had simply decided to stop fighting for myself.

For my needs.

For my life.

From the outside, it probably looked like progress. We were fighting less. I was calmer. Our marriage appeared more peaceful.

But the absence of conflict is not necessarily the presence of connection.

I decided it wasn’t that big a deal to sleep with the fan on every night, even though I hated it. That it wasn’t that big a deal to travel only to places he was willing to travel to. To watch the shows he wanted to watch. To have the exact lifestyle he was willing to have.

None of it seemed like such a big deal.

I convinced myself that I could pretty much be happy under any circumstances. That I was a survivor. The flexible one. The well-adjusted one.

And that I needed to accommodate him.

While I’d like to think he was controlling and selfish, and maybe even narcissistic, these were also my choices.

He certainly made it difficult for me to be seen, heard, or even to leave (which I did try to do twice throughout the marriage). But I was the one who ended up staying.

And I have to admit that my situation was not the same as what women had endured throughout the centuries.

I had credit cards. I earned money. I was allowed to vote. I had the physical possibility to leave.

Yet my own fears, my own programming, and my own conditioning were not allowing me to.

When Something Began to Wake Up

This went on until the war in Ukraine began.

Something in me started to wake up. Very subtly, and for the longest time, unconsciously.

I began watching my people fight against the oppressor.

(And please, let me be clear. My then-husband, in this case, is not the oppressor. He is simply a symbol of all my fears, core beliefs, and the echoes of patriarchy that kept me small, submissive, and accommodating. That kept me from acknowledging my truth, from allowing myself to be free, to grow, to laugh, to live, to love.)

The war in Ukraine shifted something in me.

I saw my people fighting. Fearlessly. Simply so they could be free.

Very easily, they could have shrunk. They could have given up their territory and lived in relative, seeming peace. They could have done what I had lately chosen to do in my marriage.

Accepted a life of accommodation.

But that peace would have come at a price: living under the thumb of an oppressive nation that would command and tell them what language to speak, what food to eat, and what relationships to have with other countries.

And my little, sweet Ukraine chose freedom.

Chose to risk death rather than surrender its freedom.

Chose to fight for itself.

Instead of being oppressed.

Of course, I knew that a country’s fight for survival and my struggle within a marriage were not the same thing. But watching my people defend their right to exist on their own terms awakened a question I had been avoiding in my own life:

What was I willing to sacrifice for the right to be myself?

And watching them, I began to ask myself some very uncomfortable questions.

Why was I choosing false peace and safety?

Was I, in fact, a coward?!

Was there, behind the labels of a good mother and a good wife, a scared little girl afraid of facing her fears? His wrath? Others’ judgments?

And was I willing to trust that my kids might be better off watching their mother be brave and true than watching her sacrifice herself for their happiness?

The Hardest Decision of My Life

Getting a divorce was by far the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

Far scarier than moving from Ukraine to the United States at the age of 18. Far scarier than applying by myself to college and graduate school, defending my dissertation, moving to Charleston, or having kids.

Because all those decisions, however big and scary, went with the grain.

They were considered “good” decisions. Decisions that most people would support, perhaps even celebrate.

I would be applauded and considered brave and good and strong.

But when we initiate a divorce, the verdict isn’t so unanimous.

When we break up a family, we better have a good reason.

We better be leaving a drug addict, an alcoholic, or a womanizer. Someone unstable and crazy, preferably with a personality disorder diagnosis.

So we’re rewarded for creating a villain.

And perhaps this is why we’ve become so quick to reach for labels. Narcissist. Borderline. Abuser. Gaslighter.

Don’t get me wrong. Abuse is real. Manipulation is real. And sometimes these labels describe very real and dangerous patterns of behavior.

But sometimes we’re dealing with two wounded human beings, acting out their unconscious fears, defenses, and conditioning. People who hurt each other without necessarily intending to.

And while that doesn’t excuse the harm or absolve anyone of responsibility, I believe the distinction matters.

Because perhaps we don’t need to prove that someone is a terrible person in order to acknowledge that being with them is terrible for us.

My then-husband wasn’t the monster I would have needed him to be to make my decision socially acceptable. He was a human being with his own wounds, limitations, and blind spots. And I was a human being who could no longer live within the limitations of our marriage.

He simply didn’t see me. He wasn’t willing to allow me to grow. He wasn’t willing to consider me a separate human being with my own valid wants and needs.

He gave me an unspoken choice: shrink and accommodate me, or have a marriage of chaos and constant conflict.

And don’t get me wrong. He is no longer the villain in my story.

(But I probably am in his! 🙂)

I did need anger and fury to finally recognize how oppressed I felt in order to leave.

But it took another layer of self-honesty, courage, and grief to recognize my own participation in the life I had created.

To see that although I had felt trapped, I had also been surrendering my own authority.

It was difficult to see the truth when I was constantly being convinced of how bad I was for wanting to leave. Yet it was still my responsibility to trust myself. To know what was right for me and my children in the end.

While I carry deep wounds from my marriage, I no longer need someone to blame.

And I can hardly blame myself, either, for my choices were largely unconscious, driven by fear and good intentions.

But the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

And in hell, I ended up.

It took me three long years to climb out of that hell.

As my little country of Ukraine continues to fight for its sovereignty, my fight is finally over.

Earlier this year, my divorce was finalized.

And I finally am free for the first time in a very long time.

No, I’m not going to glorify divorce. I’m not going to throw a celebratory party, because hearts were broken, and there was sadness and grief in the process.

But sadness and grief do not automatically mean that something bad has happened.

And if you find yourself in a similar position, whether in a marriage, a career, a friendship, or a living situation in which you no longer feel like you can breathe, relax, or feel valued, seen, and appreciated, please stop evaluating your choices from a third-party perspective.

What might be right for you might be very wrong for someone else.

Whatever you do, give yourself the time, honesty, and courage to discover what is true for you. Not what looks right to others. Not what earns you approval. Not even what you’ve spent your entire life believing you should want.

It’s a worthwhile process.

With patience, perseverance, and courage, you may discover things about yourself that you never knew were true. You may excavate old fears that have been holding you back. And you may discover a more real version of yourself.

And if I learned nothing else from the journey of the past three years, it is this:

The more true and authentic you are to yourself, the greater your chances of living a happy, joyful life.

As Carl Jung wrote:

“Do not compare, do not measure. No other way is like yours. All other ways deceive and tempt you. You must fulfil the way that is in you.”

— C. G. Jung, The Red Book (Liber Novus), p. 308.

You don’t need to prove that someone else is wrong to give yourself permission to live what’s right for you.

And you don’t need a villain to choose your own freedom.