Divorce is like The X Files

Trusting to a fault; something that described one facet of my personality – until I had to change my mindset when my husband of nearly 23 years filed for divorce. Once I was in the throes of the divorce process, I felt like everyone was against me and there wasn’t anyone I could fully trust.

Right after my ex-husband filed the papers with the court, he told me he was going to do everything he could to make sure my future was safe and secure. Since I was still in “The Trusting Phase,” I believed him. I even let him drive me around some of the neighborhoods near where I worked to help me look for a new place to live. Who does that? Who goes house hunting with the man who is about to desert her? Someone who thought the man she trusted to take care of things all those years was still thinking of her, that’s who. He told me he would help me and I believed him – I trusted him.

Going through a divorce reminded me of one of my favorite TV shows from the 90s – The X Files. Except my divorce was scarier, with a lot more drama!

In each episode of The X Files, FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully reinforced two key hypotheses: The truth is out there; and trust no one.

Like my favorite FBI agents, I also discovered that the truth was out there. I just had to hire a lot of people to help me find it. Lawyers, financial advisers and my therapist. Each of these teams, along with my support network, helped me search for the truth and eventually, find it. Sometimes it was a whole lot of stuff I didn’t want to know, but uncovering the details made the court process easier for me. I had the truth on my side, which wasn’t always the case with my ex.

I started to lose trust, which I never thought I could do. Sometimes I had a difficult time trusting the teams I hired to help me search for the truth. Even my family and closest friends – could I trust them to be truthful, or were they telling me what I wanted to hear to help stop the hurt? The worst was not being able to trust the man who had promised to love and protect me – until death do us part. Apparently, our wedding vows should have included the words – until I don’t feel like it anymore.

Even after I found out about my ex-husband’s affair, I was reluctant to leave “The Trusting Phase.” He refused to go to therapy even when I told him it would help us communicate and help me make sense of why he wanted to leave. I don’t think he wanted us to communicate, as that might have given me the opportunity to discover what was really going on behind the scenes. Things I talk about in Becoming Unmarried. Unreported money and marital assets my lawyer and I had to uncover, and the fact that he filed the paperwork so fast I didn’t have time to think about it, much less respond through the proper legal channels. I signed the Divorce Summons well before I had hired a lawyer.  My ex-husband told me to sign the papers right away, so I did because – I still trusted him.

But the more I uncovered the truth, the faster that trust broke down.

Mulder and Scully, in their search to find the truth, overcame odds that always seemed to be stacked against them. Every episode brought new challenges, but also brought them closer to a resolution.

Divorce is like that, too. Each step through the process has its own set of challenges, and many times you will feel like everyone is against you. As you overcome each challenge in your divorce journey, you’ll also be just a little closer to resolution – closer to finding the truth… out there.

Just try to avoid all the drama!