The ending was a new beginning of the person who I was supposed to be, Emmy Award winner Tamsen Fadal tells Vicki Salemi, and adds for good measure, ‘happily single comes before ever after’
When Tamsen Fadal got divorced in 2012, she felt she had hit rock bottom.
From the outside looking in, the Emmy Award winner appeared to be on top of the world: a successful news anchor in New York and the host and executive producer of Broadway Profiles on the Broadway Channel. Behind the scenes, though, her marriage had ended, and she was picking up the pieces.
“I had really lost myself in the divorce,” Fadal says. “I felt like I had lost my confidence. I felt broken; I felt like a failure, financially broken. I wasn’t sure who I was.”
Uncoupled, Fadal, 44, didn’t exactly want to “walk out there” alone, but she remembers responding to an event invitation and receiving an abrasive text from the person who extended the invite: “Just one?”
She recalls thinking at the time, “Yeah, ‘Just one!’ And that’s OK.”
That’s the back story of her upcoming new book, The New Single: Finding, Fixing and Falling Back in Love With Yourself After a Break-up or Divorce (St. Martin’s Griffin, due out June 2 but available for preorder).
It tackles topics such as unplugging from technology, decluttering, taking stock of friendships, cooking healthfully, managing finances and careers, and falling head over heels for yourself. The book is for those reclaiming their lives, especially women.
“I could give somebody dating advice, but nobody wants it right now,” Fadal says. “They want to figure out how to get back to centre first, because if you don’t get back to centre, you’re going to make the same mistakes.” Referring to her book as a “reboot of life,” it’s “what we’re seeing with 50 percent of marriages ending in divorce.”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 50.2 percent of Americans are single. The author proclaims to the new single, “It’s going to be OK! Every once in a while I go, ‘Oh, yeah, I already was married.’ I hear myself say it in a lower voice, and I get mad at myself. We didn’t do anything wrong; it didn’t work out. It’s not shameful anymore to be divorced.”
It’s also gone mainstream. Marti Noxon, creator and executive producer of Bravo’s Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce, says there’s awareness around people relating to her show. “Almost everybody is touched by divorce. If it’s not their own life, it’s their mother or their father or their sister.”
Pointing out how volatile and emotional divorces can become, Noxon wanted to make the scripted show optimistic, too. In one episode, Abby, the main character played by Lisa Edelstein, runs into somebody whose marriage is falling apart. “Abby says to him, ‘Everybody deserves to be loved.’ Everybody deserves some kind of love and affection in their life. ... If it’s not about love with another person, it might just be about loving yourself,” Noxon said.
For Fadal, that self-love journey included leaning on close friends, practicing self-care with yoga and nutrition, and relying on herself for basic daily tasks. “There were mornings where I would write my to-do list: get out of bed, walk the dog, get dressed, go to work.”
Then she started reserving Friday nights to decompress with her Chihuahua, Matsen, and having a pizza for supper. “I would look forward to it,” Fadal says. “That was my time to just be OK with myself.”
Fadal recommends alone time before dating again. Toxic patterns typically repeat, she warns, and “that’s why you find the divorce rate for the second time you get married up to 60 percent; you haven’t figured out who you are first.”
Clinical psychologist and relationship coach Kristin M. Davin agrees. When you don’t take the necessary timeout, she says, you may feel you’re “on the relationship merry-go-round.” Davin suggests carving time and space to gain clarity.
“We must reconnect and reboot before we jump back into a relationship,” Davin says. “If we don’t, we’ll find ourselves in the same situation.”
After her divorce five years ago, Noxon entered a relationship. “The whole time I was like, ‘I’m cheating. I’m not (going through) the part where I mourn what I lost and face the fear of being alone,’” she admits.
After that relationship ended, she took a year hiatus from dating and says she felt like an adolescent again. “All of a sudden I was taking midnight walks!” For the first time in her life, at 50, she says, she’s “just dating.”
“I’m realising it takes a little more time to get to know somebody. I’ve never done that before,” Noxon says. “I was so afraid I would wind up alone. Now that’s not my primary fear. I know I’ve survived that.”
Davin says many women may find introspection challenging and painful, but it’s necessary for forward movement. Fadal learned as much by rekindling her passion for traveling, an interest that remained dormant during her marriage. By packing her bags to destinations as diverse as Italy, Dubai and countryside, she says, she discovered that not only could she do anything, but also, “I can do it alone, and that’s OK.” She began viewing the world through this new lens and parlaying the same curiosity to staycations.
Of course, mourning and healing become more complicated when children are involved, which was Noxon’s experience with a son and daughter, or when a couple work together: Fadal co-owned a matchmaking business with her ex-husband, relationship coach Matt Titus. (The couple also starred in a 2008 reality show, Matched in Manhattan, and co-wrote two books on relationships.)
For those on a limited budget, Fadal suggests a quick fix: Change your environment. After tossing a big, brown wooden bed “that wasn’t me, and something I had shared with somebody else,” she redecorated her bedroom from mahogany brown to white and now sleeps in a queen-size bed “that I feel like I fit in. It’s mine! I needed to do small things, take small steps. And that was the way I healed myself.”
Healing, Davin says, is critical to rediscovering oneself. Grieving is required “in our own way and in our own time, so that we come out on the other side stronger, empowered, smarter and centred.”
This message is precisely what Noxon sends viewers: “There’s life after divorce.”
In turn, Fadal relays this same bulletin to readers. While she says she is still “a work in progress” and “absolutely believes in love,” she aims to rally women to power through the other side, too.
“The ending was a new beginning of the person who I was supposed to be,” Fadal says. “Happily single comes before ever after.” —Chicago Tribune/TNS
QUICK FIX: Tamsen Fadal suggests a change in environment for those on limited budget.
