Vikki Stark, MSW, is an internationally known psychotherapist, family therapist, speaker, author and divorce recovery expert and the director of the Sedona Counselling Centre of Montreal. She is particularly known for her ground breaking work on Wife Abandonment Syndrome due to her book, Runaway Husbands.
Vikki is a familiar face on television and radio and has been a guest on NBC’s The Today Show, CBC, CTV, Global, Oprah radio and written about in USA Today, the New York Daily News and Maclean’s Magazine, among many others. She has had more than 3 million views of her blog on Psychology Today Magazine called “Schlepping Through Heartbreak” which deals with all aspects of relationships.
In 2010, Vikki published Runaway Husbands: The Abandoned Wife’s Guide to Recovery and Renewal, which is based on a study of over 400 women worldwide who believed they were in happy marriages until their husbands bolted out-of-the-blue. The book explores Wife Abandonment Syndrome, a term she coined, and offers heartbroken women strategies for recovery and hope for the future.
As a result of the book and the subsequent website (www.RunawayHusbands.com), she has mentored a worldwide community of women and regularly conducts online therapy groups as well as divorce recovery retreats in Montreal, Canada and Sedona, Arizona.
Her other books include:
— My Sister, My Self: The Surprising Ways that Being an Older, Middle, Younger or Twin Shaped Your Life
— The Divorce Talk: How to Tell the Kids – A Parent’s Guide to Breaking the News without Breaking Their Hearts
— Planet Heartbreak: Abandoned Wives Tell Their Stories, Editor
FWM: You are known internationally as an expert on divorce recovery. Share your background.
I’ve been a psychotherapist, couple counsellor, family therapist and divorce recovery specialist for over 35 years. Originally from New York City, I did my undergraduate degree at Columbia University (Barnard College) and my graduate degree at NYU. I moved to Montreal in ‘85 and started my private practice.
In 2010, I opened the Sedona Counselling Centre of Montreal. Why did I name it Sedona? Sedona is a city in Arizona that is known worldwide as a centre of healing and that’s the reputation I wanted for my counselling centre. We have psychologists, social workers, psychotherapists, life coaches and counsellors providing excellent therapy to our Montreal community. I’m very proud of the Sedona Centre – it’s a vibrant hub for our clients and the therapists who work there.
My reputation as an expert in divorce recovery grew out of the work that I’ve been doing with divorced and abandoned women since the publication of my book, Runaway Husbands, in 2010. I’ve worked with thousands of women from all over the world, including having done a therapy session with a woman in Mongolia! I regularly lead group therapy sessions and it’s not unusual to have a woman from California, someone from Halifax and another from Sydney, Australia on the same call. It’s hilarious when the dog of the woman in Sydney starts barking and is answered by the dog of the woman in California!
FWM: Tell us about Wife Abandonment Syndrome and how you are helping women worldwide.
Wife Abandonment Syndrome is a term I coined to describe a pattern of behavior on the part of a husband who leaves his wife out-of-the-blue without ever having told her that he was unhappy in the marriage or thinking of leaving. He often moves directly in with a girlfriend, leaving his bewildered wife totally devastated. Following his sudden departure, he replaces the caring he’d typically shown her with anger, blaming and aggression. This will undoubtedly be the defining event in her life, and although recovery is a struggle, some women find that it forces them to reinvent themselves in positive and exciting new ways.
The women who experience Wife Abandonment Syndrome are totally unprepared for the sudden and complete change in their lives. They are traumatized and often have never heard that such things happen. They feel crazy and alone. It is very different from the typical end of a marriage, in which the couple has been fighting and perhaps going for marriage counselling.
When women find my book and website, they feel profoundly relieved to know that there’s a definition for what happened to them, they’re not crazy and they are part of a community of other women who have experienced the same thing. It’s not an exaggeration to say that learning about my work and getting the support from the others has literally saved the lives of a number of desperate women.
The Runaway Husbands website (www.runawayhusbands.com) has many ways that women can get help, from simple things, like joining our private Facebook group, to more intensive healing options, like attending my yearly five-day retreat in Sedona, Arizona. I offer workshops and events where they can learn from me directly, but a large part of the healing comes from connecting with other women who really understand what they are going through.
FWM: Your ground-breaking work on Wife Abandonment Syndrome can be found in your book, Runaway Husbands: The Abandoned Wife’s Guide to Recovery and Renewal. Tell us about your book.
I came to this work through my own experience. I thought myself in a happy, secure marriage of 21 years until the moment my husband suddenly said “it’s over”, threw his things in garbage bags and moved out to go live with his girlfriend. Completely devastated, I kept a journal of my struggle to make sense of what had happened and how my loving husband could morph overnight into an angry stranger.
As time went on and I realized that no one had done any work on this topic, I started doing some research and launched the Sudden Wife Abandonment Project – SWAP – in which I interviewed and received completed questionnaires from over 400 women worldwide. I had already published my first book, My Sister, My Self, so writing a book about this phenomenon was a logical next step.
In Runaway Husbands, I explain how a man can make such a dramatic change. I outline the Seven Steps for Moving Forward and describe the Transformational Stages of recovery – 1) Tsunami 2) Tornado 3) Thunderstorm 4) Ice Storm 5) Fog 6) Sun Shower 7) Early Spring and finally 8) Temperate Summer Day. The book provides a structure for the women whose lives feel chaotic and scary and offers them hope.
An important part of the book is that I talk about my own experience and that helps the reader connect with me and understand that if I could recover, so can she. Many women have told me that they really appreciate hearing my own story, as raw as it was.
FWM: Please share a few strategies for recovery and hope for the future.
Some strategies for recovery are:
- To adopt a long view. Try to remember that as miserable as you may feel right now, you are not always going to feel this badly. You are in terrible emotional pain (that you can actually feel physically), but that pain will slowly start to diminish and one day, you’ll wake up and realize that you don’t feel it anymore.
- There’s no way around it – you have to go through it. Please accept that the grieving is normal and don’t try to avoid it by drinking, using drugs or other unhealthy acts. Let yourself sit with the pain. It has a normal shelf-life. If you are feeling very badly and you let yourself feel it, it will lessen in 20 minutes or a half an hour. That which you run away from, chases you. Be confident that you can handle this because you can.
- Learn to challenge limiting belief systems, such as it’s embarrassing to be a middle-aged single woman or no one will ever want a woman with two children. Get some distance from your thinking and ask yourself, is that a belief or a fact? Are there any middle-aged women who are not embarrassed to be single? Has a woman with two children never had a second relationship? Often, it is the erroneous belief that limits us.
- Reach out to friends and family and try to get out of the house and do something, even if you don’t really feel like it. That may not be possible in the first weeks but as time goes on, you have to rebuild your life. Sometimes, even if you didn’t feel like going out, you get into it once you’re there.
- Try to eat and sleep and exercise. Women who are left often lose a lot of weight that contributes to them feeling weak. Get yourself to eat a nutritious meal, even if it tastes like cardboard. You may do well eating several smaller meals a day rather than sitting down for a full lunch or dinner.
- Recognize that you are working on yourself in this to try to not obsess or self-blame or retreat from life and that work that you are doing will stand you in good stead when all this is over.
- Believe it or not, many women find happiness after their husbands leave in ways they never expected. His leaving frees them up from old patterns and allows them to try new things that they may not have attempted when they were married.
FWM: What did you learn during the process of hearing the women’s stories?
Working with women in the Runaway Husbands community has been a gift. I have met amazing women who reach out to others with generosity and kindness. The women in our community are very caring – that’s part of the reason that the husband could leave the way he did. It’s been a privilege for me to walk with them on their journey of healing. There are a lot of tears but also, when we get together, there’s a lot of laughter.
FWM: Tell us about your book, Planet Heartbreak: Abandoned Wives Tell Their Stories. What is your mission for this book?
I was the editor for Planet Heartbreak, which is a compilation of sixty-two spellbinding short stories written by women whose husbands suddenly left what they believed to be stable happy marriages. The stories detail the events around the husbands’ departures and how the wives survived the resulting emotional devastation, making sense of this traumatic event, and often rebuilding their lives in new and meaningful ways. Planet Heartbreak is the companion volume to Runaway Husbands: The Abandoned Wife’s Guide to Recovery and Renewal.
Written by women at varying lengths of time since the husband left, from two months to fifteen years, the storytellers vividly express their shock and heartbreak, but also offer insight, provide strategies for recovery, share their wisdom, and inspire the reader to keep reaching to love life again.
I put the book together because I know how important it is for the women who are struggling to recover to hear the voice of others who are further along. The readers get an insight into the challenges faced by the authors of the stories and how those women resolved those challenges.
Here is an excerpt from one woman’s story in which she describes finding a letter from her husband:
The letter was placed on my vanity and began with the dreaded words, “This is the hardest letter for me to write.” What! He is writing me a LETTER! Devastation and panic sets in. The words just melded together – I don’t even know if I actually read them. But certain phrases stick in my brain:
I have felt like this for a long time.
Our marriage has run its course.
I can’t continue to pretend.
I fell out of love with you some time ago.
There is no one else.
FWM: What can we find on The Runaway Husbands website? What therapy groups are offered?
There’s so much on our website! We have a page about healing in which we explain Wife Abandoment Syndrome and offer suggestions for healing and we list the ten Hallmarks of Wife Abandonment Syndrom.
Here are some of the things we have to offer:
- I write a blog on all different topics re recovery, like how long it takes to recover, looking for closure, the other woman and dealing with anger.
- There’s detailed information about the three retreats – the Sedona Retreat, the Jump Up! and A Course on Happiness.
- We offer three workshops on Resilient Grief, the Adult Child and Meaningful Suffering
- Two creative arts offerings – an 8-session creative writing group called Write from the Heart and a lovely afternoon making Vision Boards.
- I offer an 8-session divorce recovery group called Hearts & Minds
FWM: You have more than 4 million views of your blog on Psychology Today Magazine called “Schlepping Through Heartbreak” which deals with all aspects of relationships. Tell us more.
I started writing a blog on Psychology Today magazine in 2012. I’ve published 88 posts which have been read by over 4 million people. Even though it’s called “Schlepping Through Heartbreak”, I’ve written about all manner of issues having to do with mental health, relationships and recovery. The two articles that have garnered the most attention, with over 700,000 views each are called “Don’t Touch Me – I’m Your Wife” and “I Love You But I’m Not In Love With You”.
FWM: How has mentoring women worldwide changed your life?
When my husband left, I never imagined that on walking out the door, he was leaving me a priceless gift which has been the opportunity to help women pick their own lives back up and open a new chapter. I’ve had to learn so much in order to help them, for example, how to help the suffering woman find self-compassion and learn to love life again, even if she’s on her own. I have adopted an attitude of mindfulness which I teach to others, helping them stop regretting the past and worrying about the future but try to stay in the present moment.
I really love what I do. At the end of each retreat, the women all thank me but it’s me who has them to thank. They give my life meaning. Each one is unique and I’ve learned something from every woman I’ve met. I never tire of meeting new groups and starting on a new journey with them.
