Unapologetic: I Stopped Abandoning Myself (Without Turning My Ex Into the Enemy)
My divorce lawyer looked at the document we had drawn up together, Karim and I sitting at our kitchen table, mapping out the end of our marriage in a way that did not resemble what she was used to seeing, and she paused, read it again, then looked up at me and said, “Can you give classes on how to do this? It would make my life so much easier,” and there was something in the way she said it that made it clear this was not about admiration, it was about how uncommon it is for two people to sit in the same room at the end of something and not try to win.
That was over fifteen years ago, and what surprises people is not the separation itself but what followed, because Karim is still my best friend, and last Christmas we were all together, his birthday, mine, the children’s, sitting around the same table without tension, without performance, without the invisible lines that so often divide families after a breakup, and our children grew up knowing that love did not leave when the marriage did, it simply changed its role, its expression, and the way it moved between us.
I know what you are thinking, because I hear it every week, and it usually sounds like this: good for you, but my situation is different, and I understand why that thought comes up, because it is easier to place this kind of story in a category that feels separate from your own reality than to consider that something about it might actually be available to you.
Right now, I am supporting five women through separation, all of them ambitious, all of them visible, all of them building something in the world that requires them to show up with clarity and strength, and every one of them has asked me the same question in their own way, which is not about logistics or legal process but about something much more confronting, which is how did you do it without the hatred, how did you move through something that carries so much potential for resentment without letting it define the relationship that followed.
The answer is not as composed as people might expect, because I did not arrive at that place through a single decision or a moment of emotional maturity, and I did not wake up one day feeling spacious and generous about the ending of my marriage, because there were things in me that I had not yet understood, and those things were already present long before the separation itself.
I had spent years working with women who were carrying sexual trauma in their bodies, holding space for experiences that had never been given language, witnessing what happens when the body closes in response to something it cannot safely process, and I knew this work deeply through the women I supported, but what I had not fully acknowledged was that I was carrying my own version of that experience.
I know what it is to lie next to someone you love and feel your body shut down without being able to explain it, to feel a distance that does not match your intentions, to question yourself quietly while everything on the outside appears intact, and to live inside that confusion without the words to make sense of it, because when there is no language for what is happening inside you, it does not disappear, it shows up in the way you respond, in the way you withdraw, in the way tension builds in moments that should feel simple.
What it costs to not understand your own internal experience is not just personal, it becomes relational, because without awareness, reactions take over, and once reactions take over, the space between two people becomes charged in ways that are difficult to repair.
So when people ask me how Karim and I did not end up in conflict, I am very clear that it was not because we were exceptionally kind or endlessly patient, because there were moments where neither of those things were available, but what held us was something far more reliable than intention alone.
It was structure.
Something defined, something agreed, something we could return to when emotions were not steady and clarity was not accessible.
One prompt.
Three responses.
That is the entire practice.
The prompt is simple and direct: tell me what you need me to know right now, and what matters here is not the wording itself but the agreement that one person speaks while the other listens without interruption, without correction, and without turning it into a dialogue before the expression has fully landed.
The responses are limited, and they are limited on purpose, because it is the limitation that creates safety.
The first response is thank you, which is not agreement and not validation, but simple acknowledgment, receiving what has been said without reacting to it or reshaping it.
The second response is clarify that, which is only used when something has not been fully understood, not as a way to challenge but as a way to genuinely understand what is being communicated.
The third response is summarise that, which requires you to reflect back what you heard so the other person knows they have been received, not interpreted, not analysed, but heard.
There is no defending, no fixing, no redirecting, no adding your own experience into the moment, no “but what about me,” because the moment you step outside of the structure, the conversation returns to the patterns that created the disconnection in the first place.
This practice did not appear overnight, it comes from twenty-seven years of work, beginning with my role as a SENCO, supporting children on the autism spectrum to recognise and name their emotions, to understand what was happening inside them and find ways to communicate it without becoming overwhelmed, and over time I refined this work across hundreds of couples and women, watching the same dynamics repeat when there is no container strong enough to hold what people are feeling.
“When emotions take over, intention is not enough. Structure is what holds what feelings alone cannot.”
When my own relationship reached the point where it could not continue in the same way, this was the structure I returned to, not because I felt calm or clear, but because I knew that without it, we would default to reaction, and reaction would take us somewhere neither of us wanted to go, especially with children watching how we handled something that would shape their understanding of relationships for years to come.
What I am seeing more and more now is a pattern that is not being named openly, women whose lives have expanded, whose visibility has grown, whose internal world has shifted in ways that the relationship they are in was not built to hold, and this is not about blame or failure, it is about change that has not yet been understood.
The men in these situations are not villains, and it does not serve anyone to turn them into that, because many of them are willing, present, and trying, but they are often facing a version of their partner that no longer fits the structure they created together, and without the language or tools to navigate that shift, confusion becomes tension.
At the same time, the woman herself may not have full clarity either, she simply knows that something no longer feels aligned, that the way she has been existing is no longer sustainable, and without understanding that this is an internal shift, it can easily be projected outward as something the other person has done wrong.
This is where the idea of being unapologetic becomes real, because it is often misunderstood as something loud or confrontational, when in reality it is something much quieter and much more demanding, which is the refusal to abandon yourself while still choosing to treat the other person with respect, especially when there are children involved who are learning from everything they see.
“The unapologetic move is not the leaving. The unapologetic move is refusing to abandon yourself while staying kind.”
Because they are always learning, not just from what is said but from how it is said, from how conflict is handled, from how two people can move through something difficult without turning against each other, and that becomes part of how they understand love, separation, and connection.
If you want to try this, sit across from your ex, your partner, or even your child, use the prompt, tell me what you need me to know right now, set a timer for three minutes each, and commit to using only the three responses, even when it feels uncomfortable, even when there is something in you that wants to step outside of it, and watch what happens when the structure holds what emotions alone cannot.
Because what most people rely on in these moments is intention, and intention is not enough when emotions are high, structure is what carries you when intention is not accessible.
I stopped abandoning myself a long time ago, not through one decision but through repeated choices to stay present with what was true for me, even when it was uncomfortable, even when it required change, and I did not have to destroy my family to do it.
Neither do you.
If you cannot find your way through it on your own, reach out, because I have been in the places that feel impossible to navigate, and I know that with the right support, it is possible to move through this without losing yourself or the relationships that still matter.
BIO: Juliette Karaman is a touch, intimacy, and relationship expert who helps ambitious women and the men who love them come back to themselves and each other. Through 27+ years of practice across 20 countries, she has supported 750+ women and 650+ couples through the places that feel impossible.
Website www.feelfullyyou.com
IG @juliettekaraman
