A vow to always choose love – Part 1

What if you think you’re happy…but you’re wrong?

What if you were sad and lonely all along,

And the only thing you measured,

Was everyone else’s pleasure,

And one day your heart refused to play along?

Bettina’s story is one of placebo joy, painful awakening, despair, courage, strength, rebirth and finding your wings despite everything that happens in life. 

Childhood trauma, sadness, neglect, loneliness, losing herself in the process of pleasing everyone else, then going through the deepest of depression and having to be hospitalized for six months in a psychiatric clinic… all of which caused complete transformation of absolutely every aspect of her life and allowed her to break open her heart and soul to an authentic world full of magic, true happiness and, yes, deep, deep love with her true soulmate. And that’s only half the story…

Prepare to be very happy, very sad, incredibly thrilled, abruptly shocked and then to take with you one woman’s perspective and prescription on how to allow faith, wisdom, courage and, of course, love, to carry you through all the tragedies that might befall any of us at any time.

Here’s part one of this wonderful story which goes so well with my core belief: To always, always, always choose love. 

(Click here to hear the audio version of this story.)

Names: Bettina & Jean-Pierre

Status: Married

Been together since: 2007

A cocoon of sadness that caught me off-guard.

I was born in Switzerland into a family that was blessed with abundance and this comfortable life had continued to surround me during my marriage to my first husband, Gabriele. From the outside, I was a vibrant forty year old woman who was married to a successful architect and a very loving mother to two wonderful children that I was blessed with. So why was I an in-house patient living in a psychiatric hospital, getting treatment for severe depression for the past six months? 

I felt like I had accidentally fallen into someone else’s nightmare and every day I expected to wake up and breathe a sigh of relief knowing that none of it was real. But to my terror, everyday I continued to wake up to find myself still in this never-ending nightmare! This was not my movie, this was not my trailer! How could someone like me end up in a situation like this? But, wow, it really was happening! 

What I didn’t realize then was that this terrifying predicament I was in was a part of a very painful birthing process that I had to go through to bring forward the real woman that had been deep inside of me, the real me, who had been struggling to be seen and to be heard. I had been so blind to her needs while attending to everyone else’s needs, that she’d started to suffocate. And when your soul starts to suffocate, your body will act accordingly and this is why my whole being was crippled by this terrifying disease. 

The six months I spent at the psychiatric hospital was the peak point of this illness that had started to plague me some time ago. My dance in those murky, scary waters took about 2 years in total and today I can stand here and tell you with absolute certainty that depression was the worst thing, as well the best thing, to have ever happened to me.

Prior to this chapter of my life, my family was my world. 

I’d had met Gabriele in my early twenties. He was a traditional Italian man who wholeheartedly embodied the love of family that is so wonderfully typical of the Italian culture and I was an older version of my sensitive, lonely inner child. I’d never experienced such a deep sense of family bonding, so I loved that. All of this provided me with much grounding and he became my rock. We dated for 5 years and then got married. By the time I’d ended up in hospital, we’d been together for twenty-three years. Now, that’s a whole lifetime! 

We led a very traditional Italian family life. Although I’d had a career prior, I’d happily walked away from it and embraced the role of full-time wife and mother, dutiful and submissive, decorating his arm, being a mascot to this handsome Italian man and supporting him in everything that he did. 

Sadness had started to cocoon me one small piece at a time. And if you asked me why, I wouldn’t be able to tell you because I didn’t know myself. Not then anyway. From the outside, I had ‘everything’ but how could it be everything when my heart was so sad.

I’d been feeling unwell for quite some time and had been to a few doctors trying to figure out what was wrong with me. When my neurologist delivered me the diagnosis of depression, I said, “What?! What do you mean depression?” I was really quite surprised myself and couldn’t comprehend it. I said, “No, it can’t possibly be that!” 

I always assumed that the issues I was having were physical, definitely not psychological, and resisted him when he recommended that I see a psychiatrist. I really couldn’t believe it. 

This might not be accurate medically, but energetically depression is a contagious disease. It affects things and people that are in close proximity and as a result it spilled over to my interactions with my husband who just couldn’t understand what was going on. He simply couldn’t make sense of how or why I could have fallen into such a deep depression. To him everything was ‘fine’ which meant that all the material things anyone could wish for were in place in wild abundance. He just kept asking me what in the world had happened to me. 

I have to say, though, that in the beginning I understood where he was coming from because I never knew what depression was either and how and why and where in the world it had come to plague me like this.

So, although he was trying to be supportive, he just couldn’t understand where I was coming from and was unable to meet me there.

Meanwhile, I was wholeheartedly trying to answer these questions myself and was going through a process of analyzing everything about my life. I had to get out of this blackness that I’d found myself in. I was just searching and searching, knocking on different doors, seeing a lot of people. 

Every cell in my being wanted to heal and I was willing to do whatever it took but unfortunately, most of the professionals and healers were not the right ones for me. And things were only going from bad to worse.

And that’s how I eventually ended up hospitalized. 

During my stay there, I had to see a psychiatrist everyday.

He was a traditional doctor and put me under very heavy medication. It was very hard for me to accept the medication in the beginning but when you feel so terribly bad, all you want to do is to  feel better. You don’t care about the how or the why.

The medication numbed me from the inside out and I was zombified but it did help me to at least climb out of the deepest of the slums. 

Meanwhile, during our therapy sessions, my therapist was very harsh, very pushy. He had no gentleness at all. Only in hindsight can I say that the he did need to push me and it was one of the things that actually did contribute to my healing. 

And when you say ‘healing’ it sounds so sweet and smooth, like a wonderful massage for your soul. But for me it was nothing like that! 

You don’t say, “Oh, wow, I had this one insight and now everything’s fine,” and suddenly find yourself floating into the light. That’s not how it went for me. 

My version of healing was like this: You rip into depths of your whole being, take all the crap out, then look at that overwhelming mountain of trauma and say, “Oh my gosh!” Then you gather up all your courage, which is quite limited in supply at this point, roll up your sleeves and commit to getting it all sorted out. 

And it’s very scary, very difficult and terribly painful. 

You don’t just hop out of that place. You take slow, slippery, terrified steps towards what you pray is the exit, and just keep pushing ahead one small step at a time. You do gain ground, but its only bit by bit. Sometimes you feel like you’re walking on broken glass. 

And that’s what I think of when I think of the word ‘healing’.

Childhood sadness grows when you do.

Of course, the road to figuring it all out led me back to my childhood. I realized that my parents’ way of expressing good parenting was by providing for me financially and showering me with all the material comforts that anyone could wish for. But there was not much in the way of affection and attentive parenting.

Although we could afford almost anything, I intuitively knew that affection was the one basic need that I truly craved, but to them it was the one luxury that they were unable to provide. Looking back, I could see that throughout my childhood, I was in a state of perpetual emotional starvation. 

There was absolutely no space for me to be loud, angry or displeased with anything because there was already so much of that going on between my parents and I saw that the end result of that kind of behavior did not bring you love. I definitely didn’t want to be a part of any of that.

Instead, I felt I always had to be sweet and tiny and quietly blend into the background. I was always very agreeable and on my best behaviour, trying to please my parents just so I could be loved. Those years were very lonely and scary for me as my brother was away at boarding school and I didn’t have anyone else to turn to.

I felt that if I were to pause and state that I also had needs and tell them what they were, I would be met with intense disapproval by my parents, they would start to consider me an unlovable burden and I would be abandoned. Thus, my child mind had always believed that my needs were a threat to me receiving the approval and affection of my parents and so I had instinctively buried my needs deep inside my soul from as far back as I could remember.

I realized that these deeply ingrained thoughts were the energy that had fueled my actions all my life, right up to that point in which I was sitting in that clinic, wondering how in the world I had gotten there.  

If I could speak to my earlier self, I would urge her to really make an effort to be as aware as she could be of her needs and to embrace them. You have to make sure you are okay first. That’s the healthy approach, it’s not selfish. I always put the needs of others in front of mine and didn’t realize that if I took care of myself, I would be able to take care of others even better.

I saw clearly that my childhood beliefs on how to be lovable had automatically shaped my relationship with my first husband in the exact same way. I had never revisited these beliefs even when I grew up because they were buried deep in my subconscious conditioning,

I had never revisited these beliefs that I had, even when I grew up, because they were buried so deep in my subconscious conditioning. 

This is probably why I tried as best as I could to be the subservient, giving wife because subconsciously I believed that anything on the contrary would switch me from being a useful, good person to being a burden and thus would render me unlovable and I would end up being abandoned.

Instinctively, I had stifled any calling I might have within me and not given myself the chance to be anything except a happily accommodating wife and a mother. As a result, I didn’t know who I was as a person! I felt like the real me was invisible, muffled, silenced, and I just wanted to manifest, to exist, to matter, to contribute, to make a difference if I could in this world in this one life that I had to live! If I was lucky enough to have anything within me that was placed there by the universe which could maybe shine through, I had never given it a chance to do so. 

I wanted to bring out my real self in a healthy way, acknowledging my individuality and honoring any talents or abilities I might have hidden away somewhere. I had an intuitive calling which I couldn’t quite describe back then, other than to say that it was an undeniable urge to help people and I knew this had to come to light. But all I had been doing was shining a loving spotlight on my husband and my kids, while I left myself was completely in the dark. I had neglected myself all my life and I really needed to make it up to me. That was quite an important realization for me and I could see how that had contributed to my depression. 

This ties in to the other thing that my deep soul-searching had revealed to me; when you arrive into this world, your soul has a mission, the thing that is also known as your life purpose. And if you don’t know what your life purpose is and you’ve been heading in a totally different direction, you feel lost and deeply discontented because that’s one of the main things that nourishes your soul and gives your life direction and meaning. 

If you are not connected to yourself and your needs, which is very easy to do when you are completely dedicated on taking care of your family like I was, you don’t realize that you have been diverted from that path. Eventually the hole in your soul gets so big that find yourself free-falling into that emptiness that you so tried to ignore. On the upside, that roller-coaster fall actually sets you on the right path of what your true mission is, just like it happened to me.  

But until then, I was not aware or conscious at all of what my soul really needed and I take full responsibility for that.

Et voila! Now I knew how I found myself on the opposite side of what life is.

Those were the reasons that had created this deep depression in me. 

Stepping away from depression and into the light.

All this awareness and inner work slowly allowed me to put the worst behind me. I was finally able to feel better and better and was making deep progress in terms of my depression. 

Another divine gift this episode gave me was this: I had always perceived life through my five senses and had not reached out to something bigger than what we have here on this earth. But there was so much more depth to life than what I was living, so much that only the soul can see and this shift that had happened within me had brought me this connection, this spiritual consciousness that I’d never even known was there before. If I hadn’t gone through all that, I would have never have added this other dimension to my life.

And this shift certainly was not triggered by the conventional therapy I was getting, it had been coming for a while now from somewhere deep within. 

And then one fine day, I was well enough to be discharged from the clinic and come back home. 

On my return, Gabriele thought we could just sweep this unpleasant episode under the carpet and pick up exactly where we’d left off.

“No!” I said. “No, there will have to be some major changes to be made. Otherwise I won’t be able to carry on.” 

We discussed this from all angles and it always ended up with complete befuddlement from his side.

“You still see me as nothing more than someone whose importance lies in being a wife to you, taking care of our home and raising our children. But I am someone too and I also might have things to offer to this world! I feel that strength so deeply!

There’s no way I’m going to go back to that little box you’re trying to squeeze me back into. I’ve grown so much more than that!”

“You’ve changed so much, whenever happened to you?” He kept asking. He just didn’t get it.

Gabriele didn’t understand that while looking for the way out of the darkness, I’d discovered my inner star and that little star had led me into a place of light. 

I’d completely outgrown my old life and nothing fit anymore! I needed a brand new wardrobe.   

Finally he concluded, “They just changed your brain there.” 

I was absolutely shocked.

I said, “What?”

He said, “Yeah, they’ve changed your brain—you’re not the same person anymore.” 

I said, “Of course I’m not! I’ve gone through so much, I am definitely not the same person. I’ve evolved, I’ve grown… I don’t want to just be your accessory anymore.”

I had loved Gabriele very deeply and still did. I was so young when we committed and we were the right people for each other for those decades that we were together. But if he couldn’t understand the reasons behind my depression even a little bit, what chance was there of us to exist in a healthy union? 

The depression had already signaled to me that I was living in a way that was smothering my soul and although he had witnessed this firsthand, he wasn’t able to incorporate this experience into our lives.

Everything was showing me that we had evolved in very different directions and weren’t on the same wavelength anymore. I had no doubt in my mind that I didn’t want to continue like that. 

It was saddening but it was clearer everyday that this love that I had in my heart for him was simply not the kind of love that sets the foundation for a good, healthy marriage anymore. 

My sincere quest for the truth had aligned me with a very deep state of authenticity and when you start to live in perfect accordance to your authentic self, everything feels so perfectly tuned in, so on course that there is nothing that can veer you off that blessed path, nothing! And anything else that is not in alignment with this authenticity simply loses all its color, wilts away, then drops off and is blown away, like a leaf in autumn. There is really no stopping this process. 

By this time I knew that I was feeling much better and had come a really long way, yet I was still not completely out of the woods. I was a warrior in the making, yet still fragile and vulnerable.  

My Jean-Pierre…

This was the state of my soul when Jean Pierre came back into my life. 

I say “back into” because I’d actually met Jean Pierre a very long time before that, but he was always merely a distant acquaintance. 

I do have to say though, when I first saw him, and he saw me, there was something in the air. I felt a certain exchange of energy and a small click, like the sound of two magnets when they click into each other. He was a very charismatic man but I would not call what I felt attraction, it was just a strange feeling and I caught myself acknowledging that I was very intrigued by him. 

Acknowledging this uninvited thought that had entered my mind, finding my mind taking leave of my senses for a second there made me very, very afraid. 

I had to scold myself, “You are very married! You have two small kids! Pull yourself together!” And with that, I pushed away this strange feeling that had tried to break into my psyche. It was not welcome! 

Jean Pierre admitted this to me much later but apparently the very first time he saw me, he’d said to himself, “I would love to be married to this woman.” All this was very strange as not only did we have no connection at all with each other, we were both already married and neither of us was looking at the world through those eyes. 

So although we hardly knew each other when I was in hospital, he’d heard about how severe my situation was and was genuinely concerned. Even then he had somehow felt that connection to me. He apparently kept asking a mutual friend of ours about me to find out everything there was to know.

I meanwhile had no idea about his concern and was quite surprised when out of nowhere he sent me a text message asking me how I was. I thought, “Well, that’s bizarre,” but didn’t even reply to him because I was not quite responding to anyone really. I hardly ever switched on my phone those days because I didn’t feel like talking to anyone.  

It was some time later when I was out of the hospital that he reached out to me again. 

He told me he was very sorry for everything I had to go through and that he would like to meet up and talk. 

This time I did respond and ended up saying okay. 

I didn’t realize this innocent meeting I’d agreed to was going to change my whole world forever. 

I agreed to meet him in Montreux, near a lake. It was a calm day and there were not many people around. I was sitting on some rocks near the lake waiting for him to arrive. Finally I saw him making his way to me. He was wearing a white shirt and khaki trousers. He had a pullover thrown on his shoulders and also had his sunglasses on. 

Even though I was still not fully out of the clutches of depression, I did notice how very attractive he was to me, so dashing, so incredibly handsome and terribly sexy. He approached me with a small smile on his lips. As I got to know him better, I discovered that this smile was always there when he wasn’t quite sure of himself and was wondering how something was going to turn out. It was a very cute and innocent smile but it was also very seductive at the same time.   

Soon he was by my side. He sat right next to me and we were talking about what a strange phase that had been and how nice it was to be just sitting there together talking to each other. 

After a while I did something that still makes me laugh in disbelief even to this day—I kissed him. I kissed him! I just couldn’t stand it anymore and couldn’t stop myself. So I kissed him! 

I had always been a very traditional woman and believed that a woman had to wait for the man to make the first move but this kiss was just coming out of me and was impossible to contain, so I’d just kissed him. 

There are some moments that are pivotal in our lives. They are moments of divine realization and when they come along, you feel it because your soul shifts. You can definitely pinpoint those precise moments when you look back and say, “That was when everything changed.” Those moments are the ones that separate the few chapters of your life into the ‘before’ and ‘after’. If you are lucky, you can count these moments using barely half the fingers of one hand and not more. Those are the moments in life that are worth fighting for.

Of all the things I have been blessed with, if Jean Pierre had come into my life even for only just that moment that we first kissed, I would still be eternally grateful because to me that moment was worth everything in my world. It makes me cry now this tender memory of that one kiss. 

That kiss, it turned out, had altered him just as much as it had me. He also turned to me and said, “Wow…that was the kiss of my life!” 

From that moment on, something absolutely divine befell the both of us and we both knew that our lives would never be the same again. It was just magic. 

We also knew it was going to be a treacherous journey but there was just no turning back or turning away from this feeling that had engulfed us so fully. The moment we shared was so atomic and the love that we felt was so powerful, that it was crystal clear that this was it! Nothing could stand in the way of us being together. But there was so much to be done to achieve this…

~ ~ ~

Jean Pierre was in an incredibly unhappy marriage. 

He had met his wife at the age of fifteen. They were on and off until Jean Pierre turned twenty-two and then he headed to Africa for work. 

Of course, this was when it wasn’t easy to have a long distance relationship—no cell phones, no internet and he was only able to call her perhaps once a month, if that. 

He also wasn’t able to tell her when he would be returning—eight months, one year—so there wasn’t much else to do except say goodbye and hope for the best.

So it was decided that he would go to follow his career and they would see what happened. When he came back, he was shocked to see that she was already married to someone else! They’d been together for all these years and suddenly she was someone else’s wife.

He was not the kind of man to be defeated in anything and his ego took over. He wanted her back and he managed to get her back. When she got pregnant, he did the honorable thing and married her. 

But now decades later, things were very different between them. He was still officially married to her but their differences had made them come to a non-traditional arrangement as he simply couldn’t live with her anymore. He was now based full-time in Lebanon, where he had set up his business after many years in Nigeria, and she was in Switzerland, where she’d always lived. As far as he was concerned, it was not really a marriage in any sense of the word. 

Involved in the oil business while he lived in Africa, Jean Pierre had lived a life full of adventure and adrenaline. It was thrilling to listen to all his crazy recollections of such danger as he would share his the mind-blowing stories with me and I’d listen with my eyes wide open, completely mesmerized. It seemed nothing could faze this man, not even disease—he’d already beat one bout of cancer by the time we got together. 

But everyone’s got that one fight they do not want to get into. Everyone has something that they just cannot afford to lose, something that can steer all their decisions, even if it conflicts with their own sense of happiness and well being. And for him, it was his children. Unfortunately, they lived in Switzerland with his wife and she was thus standing, the guardian to his Achilles heel, with a knife in her hand, ready to strike anytime she pleased. So seeking a divorce from her was the one thing he really didn’t want to do.

And this is why he had lived his life in Lebanon at a safe distance from his wife but close enough so that he could travel to Switzerland once or twice a month and have access to his kids and make sure they were fine and being treated well.

He knew that she would be a vicious opponent in a divorce court and would have no qualms in putting up a very nasty fight. He was also pretty sure her main aim would be to ultimately cut him off from his children. He felt that even after the divorce, the games would never be over and she would also do anything to assure that his life was a living hell thereafter. 

Jean Pierre was very down to earth, a data-driven, practical businessman. Yet, he had this intuitive side which I think scared him a little. It would manifest more in his business dealings. If he met someone, he would comment on how he had a good or bad feeling about this person. He was able to feel the silent language of energy that was spoken by someone. Perhaps his premonition had picked up on the bloody battles and sadness that was yet to come. 

My journey into always choosing love.

Things were different on my side though. My previous existence had almost killed me and although it was a terribly difficult decision to take, I already knew deep in my soul that going back to living exactly as before, just like Gabriele expected, would literally kill me. It was not even a question of choice at that point, it was a question of survival.

Plus, a small instinct had started during my transformation. This was manifesting in a way which, where there was a choice to make, it was making me, by default, always choose the path of love. No matter how difficult it might be or what unknown outcome it might generate.  

Most people have absolutely no desire to step away from their comfort zones. And many people opt to remain in a good-on-paper kind of marriage, one that you just don’t question too deeply, especially when you are a certain age, or if you  have kids and also want to not worry about things like money or a comfortable life but this simply wasn’t an option for me. I simply couldn’t exist in a path that took me away from love. It was a huge undertaking, what others might have well considered a risk for all the reasons I mentioned, but I deliberately and consciously opted for love. 

I didn’t know then how difficult it would be. I didn’t know all that which lay ahead. I didn’t know at what a high cost the future would unfold then. But I do know now. And if I were to choose all over again, I would still choose love, despite everything that was to happen.

The clearer my head, heart and life got, the more I supported them with my actions, the stronger I became. This congruency was changing my life in amazing ways from the inside out and Jean Pierre was proving to be an unstoppable burst of sunshine that blew away all the residue, all the final broken pieces of my depression that I’d been working so hard to chisel away at for so long now. 

There is nothing more powerful than love to heal you on every level and the overpowering force of this love we were feeling for each other even enabled me to get off all the depression medication I’d been taking. 

It made me stop and think sometimes what my connection to Jean Pierre would have been like had he gotten to know the old me. Even though he had felt a connection to me when we first saw each other, he perhaps would not have fallen in love with the old version of myself. I felt so different and I’d changed so much.

He always said what he admired in me was the power and the strength that I had. If he would have gotten to know me fifteen years ago, or even two years ago when the shift had just started to take place, he might have been quite surprised. I was not like that before. Depression had awakened me and changed me completely from the inside out. 

It was almost like the old Bettina had passed into this deep void and then had very painfully been born again into her new self and this wonderful man was there to help deliver her out of that dark womb into her new life and help her breathe again. 

And, voila, here we were. 

Words fail to describe those days. We were both propelled towards each other by the force of this inescapable love and felt our union was simply meant to be. It would have been very difficult to get through the next phase we had to handle if it wasn’t for the power that came with that and our dedication to our commitment to be together. The feeling was so profound, so powerful that it made you think that you could overcome absolutely everything. You are invincible, omnipotent. It gives you faith that you will be carried forward and you will make it through some way.

Gabriele couldn’t fathom how this sweet, subservient little wife of his could not only have her own opinion, one that would be deeply upsetting to him, but also have the courage to follow through with her newfound beliefs and walk away from this marriage. This little girl was going to leave him and walk away?! How dare she? What betrayal! He was quite angry and took this incredibly personally. He accused me of ruining his life. His pride was crushed, his formidable ego wounded. 

I had always admired Gabriele for many reasons. He came from a family of bankers and lawyers but he had a God-given gift when it came to designing and architecture. It really was in his blood. He had stood his ground as a young man and refused to follow in the footsteps of his family and carved his success with his own bare hands from scratch. So he was used to doing things his way, just like he was used to getting his way.  

So this was an unbelievable blow to a very strong, successful Italian man, coming from a very small little fist. But that little fist was propelled with peace, courage and congruency and it was able to knock out anything that wasn’t strong enough to stand for the truth.

Still, I had completely underestimated the ripple effect of this decision. It jumped out at me from all corners like an earthquake and the aftershocks continued to hit my life from all directions like a tsunami. We had many issues, especially with our kids.

And it wasn’t just his wrath that I had to deal with, I also had his whole family to try to explain my point to. They judged me very harshly. 

At the end I got tired of patiently trying to explain myself to people that clearly had no desire to listen to anything that they didn’t want to hear. Ultimately I ran out of words and all I could say was, “Judge me as you wish, I won’t change my mind. I barely managed to survive this sadness and rescued myself from a horrible illness. I will not risk that happening ever again.”

After many very long, difficult discussions, Gabriele finally accepted it and he started looking out for another life. We poured our discussions into action and started the divorce proceedings.

It was around then that I told him about Jean Pierre.  

Understandably, this added an extra layer of fiery aggravation to the whole situation. 

Throughout this whole episode, Gabriele had been desperately looking for anyone to unleash his furious torrent of blame upon, anyone except himself, of course. Hearing that I was with Jean Pierre allowed him start another round of the blame game where he tried to load the cause of this divorce on me running off with another man.

I refused to let him pin the blame of our divorce on Jean Pierre because it simply was not the truth. 

I told him he was not going to be getting out of his role in all of this so easily. Things went so much deeper than that. 

The sadness that I felt had started when I was sharing my life with him. It had continued to overwhelm me, sucking me in deeper and deeper, then had devoured me whole. There was no one else there but myself and Gabriele throughout the whole progression of this situation. 

This depression had forced me to awaken and shift, to change profoundly, yet the life he wanted to live with me was the same life that had been the perfect breeding ground for my depression. He had no desire to live any differently despite all that had happened. I would have walked away from that situation no matter what!

My liaison with Jean Pierre was a result of that internal shift that had happened following that sadness. It was not the cause of our divorce. But, again, Gabriele didn’t pause to reflect on any of this. 

I was quite surprised—how can anyone be so superficial in their analysis of why such a long-standing marriage had crumbled. How can they not have the slightest bit of intuitive curiosity to delve even just a little bit beneath the surface and bravely ask themselves with sincerity, “What might my role in all this have been?” 

This was another huge confirmation for me that I was doing the right thing by walking away from a person that perhaps might hear my words but neither had the desire, capacity nor the humility to try to understand what I was saying.

Somehow we managed to get through it all and we eventually found ourselves side by side in a courtroom where a divorce judge declared that we were henceforth officially divorced.

To this day, Gabriele has never taken ownership of any role he might have played in the dissolution of our marriage. Deeming himself to be faultless for the whole duration of our twenty-three year union was an incredibly easy way for him to carve himself away from any unpleasant responsibility he might have to face. 

To him, everything was all my fault and it was all because of Jean Pierre. How perfect! How untrue… 

I believe this also delayed Gabriele by many years to do any real work on himself and he’s still following the exact same pattern in life. He is now married to a much younger wife who checks all the boxes as I did and is carrying pretty much the same role as I used to.

I always felt like all his focus and passion was poured into being an architect and that was where his heart found fulfillment, which was great for him, but not so great for me as there was never any left over for me.

He still works eighteen hours a day and has recreated that same dynamic in his life without trying to analyze the experience we had and take any wisdom forward.  

I hope he is happy now but to me that was definitely not what I would call love. 

Although my divorce was very painful, it did not have the acrid taste of gleeful viciousness that Jean Pierre’s did when he did finally take the decision to divorce.

A painful divorce.

When Jean Pierre had first gotten married, it was not exactly out of choice. His had married his first wife because she’d gotten pregnant. 

But the love that he felt for me was making his soul yearn to do what he wanted to do when he first saw me—to make me his wife. His desire to unite us in every way, including in marriage, was overpowering his choice of not getting into the bloody war that was sure to follow if he opted for divorce.

He said, “I want to be married to you because I choose to, because I love you.”

And one other thing that definitely contributed to him making up his mind was when his ex-wife told him he wouldn’t dare divorce her. This was definitely the wrong thing to say to a man like Jean Pierre. And so the battle began. 

He had figured it would be very difficult but that we’d be able to overcome everything with the love that we had.

Jean Pierre’s spouse was very much into her possessions and she thought of him as her possession too—the main possession which she was able to derive all her other material possessions from—and she was very afraid to lose that. Thus, her motivation to hold onto him came from a place of material comfort and ego and not from a place of love. She really didn’t want to accept this or let him go.

For Jean Pierre it was a very different kind of struggle because it was the struggle of a father who didn’t want to lose his children.

The divorce was just as he had expected to be, brutal and merciless, but finally it was completed.

Unfortunately though, Jean Pierre’s deepest fear had come to life as his ex wife had managed to take full control of their kids and alienate them from him. Since he was always living far away from them, over the years his ex had managed to secure a bond with them that he ultimately could not penetrate. It was devastating for him when his children cut him out of their lives.

I was always deeply grateful that I never had these kinds of problems with my kids.

Trying to manipulate your children to suit your own agenda and influencing their free will choices, especially when it harms someone else so profoundly, is one of the worst things a parent can do to their children, I believe. 

My approach has always been very different with my children. I always gave them their freedom and told them, “This is your father, you are one half of this man. You are completely free to go and see him anytime and do anything you want. I am here for you and will love you no matter what.” 

I would never say anything bad about their father to them, especially because he wasn’t a bad person. 

When your communication with your children is open, they can sense their parents well, despite anything else they might have heard from the rest of the family. The truth speaks for itself and they just know. 

Young as they were at the time, my children had unavoidably also gone though everything with me and had witnessed how I’d slipped into this dark place then struggled so hard trying to come out of it. 

When they finally saw me smiling and happy with Jean Pierre by my side, they wholeheartedly accepted him and were really very welcoming of him.

Still, when I look back on those days where we were both going through our divorces, the only thing I can think of is that we were both on a kamikaze mission, but we’d somehow managed to survive!  

At first, Jean Pierre was still living in Lebanon. The first two years I would always be traveling there to visit him. Those days will always remain as one of the most magical, wonderful chapters that I have ever experienced in my life.

He would always stand at the same spot in the airport waiting to pick me up. All we needed was our arms around each other and a roof over our heads. Leaving would always be so bittersweet and then the waiting would begin until we fell into each others’ arms once again. Those memories are so very precious to me.

It was only a few short years ago that I was being sucked into the deepest of depression, feeling invisible, unheard, unseen and unloved. But now I was deeply in love with this wonderful man that saw and heard nothing but me and he was also deeply in love with me. We were absolutely crazy about each other.

I felt like all the happiness that we had not been able to feel for so many years had been collected and was now raining down on us. I used to wake up feeling trapped in a horrible nightmare but now I would wake up to a reality that was more beautiful than anything I could have ever dreamed of. Living was such delight. 

I can stand here today and tell you that love really is timeless. The energy of that love that we built up in those days is so potent that I can still feel it energizing me and nourishing my soul to this very day. 

I know that I have been so deeply loved in my life by that man that the effects of the feelings generated back then still are able to reach me give me peace today. I can honestly say that after experiencing a love this strong, when I die, I will die in peace knowing that I experienced the deepest kind of love anyone can experience in a lifetime. What a gift it is to feel that.

Eventually, Jean Pierre wrapped things up and moved from Lebanon to Switzerland for good so we could be together all the time. 

He was still adamant on marrying me. 

“I need to have you in my life, I need to make you my wife.”

“Let’s do it,” I said. 

After about a year of living together, we were husband and wife.

We felt very blessed to continue to build our life together under the same roof. It was a beautiful time. Although our struggles were still continuing, with a love so strong, you feel that is in your capacity to move any mountain.

We had no idea about the severity of the things that lay ahead.

(Interview & write-up by Bianca. Names and details might have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.)

Photo of Bianca by Jeffrey Gullbrand.

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To be continued…

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