Do you feel like it’s taking way too long to get better after your divorce? Take a look at why you feel that way.
My first counselor told me that the trending opinion of therapists about divorce recovery was that it usually takes about one year of recovery for every five to seven years of marriage. I shot back, “I don’t have that long. I might be dead by then!”
Other divorce recovery experts said to expect one month of recovery for every year you were together. That would have put me at about three years of recovery. I shook my head. Still too long.
The grief work of breakups – especially midlife divorce – is difficult, complicated and long.
The unique grief of heartache is hard work. You feel like crap. You wonder if you’ll ever be happy again. Nothing tastes good. You can’t sleep. Concentration is almost impossible. You sigh a lot.
Here’s the deal: Recovery from divorce after a long marriage, always takes longer than we want it to and longer than we think it will. And according to our friends and family, longer than it should. People who care about us (who haven’t been through divorce) just want us to hurry up and feel better.
Family and friends often just don’t get it
People who have no experience with a divorce after a long-term marriage say dumb things like, “Just get over it. You’re better off without him (or her.)” Or they give advice like, “You need to move on!” “You should be over this by now!” Or the worst: “You need to start dating.”
Here’s a tip: If the person who is advising you has never been in your shoes, where the person you have invested your life energy and time and love into for 10 or 20 or 33 years like me, they simply don’t get the devastation and loss you feel.
They don’t understand your despair that your partner didn’t think you were worth being faithful to. Or that you weren’t fun enough or sexy enough or attentive enough or smart enough to stay married to. And not only that, by the time you find this out, your ex has usually already hooked up with someone who fits their new definition of who they want.
Our culture is unrealistic about divorce and recovery
Another roadblock to divorce recovery is that our culture doesn’t get it either. In the movies, you seldom see the children having to shuffle back and forth between Mom’s house and Dad’s house and wonder “where is my house?” Our screens seldom show the dysfunction that is the norm with many divorces. There is rarely the mortgage that can’t be paid, or the second job you have to take or dealing with how complicated every single holiday or family function becomes.
Celebrities show up together holding hands and do “Conscious Uncoupling” as Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband did …. and who are now “better friends than we’ve ever been.” Really?!
Plus, there are no cultural rituals to get closure. There is acceptance, but as you’ve probably heard, there is no closure like there would eventually be if your partner had died. With divorce you have to keep seeing the body over and over again and your ex is usually beaming because he or she is finally with, “the love of my life,” while you’re still in the fetal-position-stage of grief.
If your spouse had just been hit by a truck, there wouldn’t be all the doubts about yourself or your worthiness or your faults. You wouldn’t have to realize that they wanted to be in someone else’s bed instead of yours. You wouldn’t keep second-guessing yourself and obsessing about what you could have done differently or what they are doing together now.
On top of that, our culture doesn’t give us time off for divorce grief. We’re expected to be able to move on from the end of our marriage with no trouble at all. If your spouse dies, you get some time to deal with that. Not so with divorce. No one’s dead even though it feels like you are, even though you’re still breathing.
There is no straight line of recovery
Grief work means you have to go through those aggravating “Steps of Grief” on that little card your therapist gives you. It looks so neat and tidy, but in reality it is all tornado and desperation. Those five little steps look like they should take a week, maybe, to get through. In reality it can take years, and even then, one day in the future you find yourself back at the anger stage all over again.
The (not so simple) Steps of Grief:
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Letting Go
- Acceptance.
Divorce grief doesn’t mean you do a Step of Grief one day and cross it off the list and move on. Steps you’ve already crossed off sneak back in when you hear a favorite song or see a couple laughing and kidding around. Or something out of the blue slaps you down just before an important meeting, and you find yourself trying to pull yourself together in the bathroom at work.
The despair and rage and exhaustion you feel after divorce is hard enough, but then you start feeling incompetent that you’re not dealing with this more quickly. Just remember: you’re lamenting the loss of not just your partner, but the loss of your dreams, the loss of what you thought your future was going to look like, the loss of relationships and connections that went along with your marriage. Those are losses that change almost everything about your life.
Deciding to get better
So, now that we’ve explained how difficult it is to get over midlife divorce, let’s face the fact that we have to get better, or else we condemn ourselves (and people who love us) to a life of heartache and self-pity, which isn’t a pretty picture. In fact, setting up your tent in “Camp Misery” forever would be a tragedy. Sadly, some people end up there.
10 Practical steps that will help you grieve and move forward
- Take care of yourself physically: (Good things you know, but need to do!) Keep your diet simple and clean, dink healthy liquids, get outside every day and walk briskly for 20 minutes.
- Smile, even though you don’t feel like it.
- Move forward at your own pace.
- Simplify your life as much as possible.
- Hit the pause button on some of your obligations.
- Hit the pause button on relationships that are not helping you move forward.
- Avoid numbing yourself with drugs, alcohol, shopping, constant activity.
- Find supportive people who will let you be yourself through the process.
- Set boundaries on your grieving. Set a timer.
- Give yourself a Wallow Weekend.
- Go to church. It can provide everything you need:
- A place to belong
- Inspiration
- Great music
- A place to serve
- A purpose bigger than yourself
Bonus Advice:
Decide you’re not going to let one dumb person destroy your life and then get help to make that decision a reality. I heard this comment from someone in one of my 10-Week RADiCAL divorce recovery classes: “If our partner is dumb enough to leave, we have to be smart enough to let him go.” We can help with that process.
I divorced 4 years ago, I’ve been in divorce recovery but I still don’t seem to be moving forward, I feel stuck, lonely and tired. I need help.
Kim, how long were you married and who is it that wanted the divorce? What were your circumstances? Are you in counseling/Therapy? If not, then you really have to be in order to recover and care for/love yourself again. That’s number 1. You have to find yourself again and that takes a long time. I’m still not fully recovered, but I am trying so hard!
My husband of 31 years walked out of the house a year ago in March. He never intended to return, but lies to me and said he had a 6 month lease. He didn’t. He’s gone. I’m the one who has had to figure out the taxes, financial support and even file for divorce. It’s since been pure hell for me. I’m 65 years old and am on disability for fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. He’s 60. Since he left, I’ve discovered so much about the secret life he’s led behind my back: prostitutes, hookups, and several “girlfriends” he’s dumped, then found another, all in heir early 20s. He’s a pretty mentally sick guy even though he wears several masks that make him look like he’s that “great guy”. He physically assaulted me twice, threatened again twice. Yeah, no one needs to be abused in any way, whether it’s emotionally, verbally, sexually (including sexual abandonment), and/or physically.
If any of those above abuses happened to you, you need to look inside yourself and ask why you’d want to stay with a man who repeatedly abused you? I tell people this: “Why would I want to stay married to my own murderer?” Get some help, Kim! Please. Before your depression gets worse. You were a codependent just like I was. Read about codependency. Learn about his behavior. You can google just about everything these days, so please do it and research the heck out of who and what he is and what how he created that codependency in you. YOU were the high-value woman he chose to marry because HE valued himself less, was more lower in value. HE wanted to learn how to become YOU. So you see? YOU were the better person in the relationship. You need to realize your self-worth, learn about yourself, become self-aware, and start enjoying life again. You might require an antidepressant to help you. Do it. Live life to the fullest! We only have this one life on this huge planet. Take advantage of it and break out of that bubble.
We can all help you, Kim, but you have to want that help. You have to want that change and put some work into yourself. Can you do that for all of us and for yourself? Please?
That was helpful to read, thank you
That was a good article that reflects a lot about how I feel. I was disappointed though that it is once again another article about women facing difficulty with divorce. Our cultural Society seems to think that it only affects women and men are the bad guys. Before we divorced she would tell me about all her friends cheating on their husbands and her other friends who were already divorced scamming their exhusbands out of more child support than they need. Now my ex-wife has jumped on the bandwagon using child support money to pay for her own emotional spending.. meanwhile I have to get a second job to pay for it as well as my own expenses. The system favors the custodial parent. The system says kids need to be showered with money and there does not have to be any accountability where that money goes. Whether it goes to them or the custodial parents entertainment. I don’t want to talk about my personal situation any more than I already have but it was she who was unfaithful and sounded a lot like the person written about in this article
Together for 17 yrs. It’s been 2 1/2 years.
Hi J,
Thank you for your comment. Our blog is written from our experiences so we can only address this from our point of view. I understand what you are saying about accountability, and our courts are frustrating. I feel the more we all talk about it and bring the inequities out in the open, the more the system will be forced to change. Good luck.
As a guy I can tell you the system definitely favors the custodial mothers over the fathers. I was married for 23 years. Loved my wife dearly. I gave up everything and did everything for her. Moved where her parents lived, gave up my family half way around the country for hers to become mine, gave up career choices, jobs, changed my degree, got out of the military, let her decide when to have our kids, literally allowed her to make almost every major decision in our life. Well long story short, she had a thing for black men. She cheated on me with one just 3 years into our marriage right after our first child. I remained faithful and then it happened again 3 years ago. I tried everything to win her effecting and heart back knowing all these years she had an attraction to a different race over me. Plastic Surgery, fitness, changed my body for her anything I could but it failed. I even attempted to open up our marriage so she could live out her fantasy. Absolute worst mistake I ever made. She fell in lust with another black guy all the while we had 4 kids one of our daughters had stage 4 cancer fighting for 10 years. She divorced me with no warning. She manipulated, lied to her friends and family. Told them I was controlling, a narcissist, a sexual abuser because I wanted to have sex with her a couple times over 23 years and I wouldn’t leave her alone by asking repeatedly so she slept on the couch (I’m not kidding she called me a sexual abuser because of this),I lost everything. My church friends, her family disowned me because they believed her lies, she took me to court, sued me, I lost my children. Now she has another live in black guy who gets to play father to my white children 26 nights out of every month while I get them only 4 nights for visitation. All for what? Because I was born with the wrong color skin? There was no attempt at reconciliation nothing. I lost almost everything. I was kicked out of the house and she stopped paying all joint bills, I lost the house to foreclosure, several bills put into collections because she refused to pay her portion. I ended up remarrying a wonderful women shortly after but the pain is tremendous still. My oldest son will not even talk to her because of the damage she has caused both him and I. And today she wants to be friends believe it or not and calls me a racist for not wanting to meet and treat her new boyfriend with respect. Her parents which were also mine for 23 years have abandoned me and sent me only 3-4 texts in over 2 years. I used to see them and spend time with every week. I’ve been Devastated.
I have a question. Me and my girlfriend of 2.5 years have had a wonderful relationship. She has 2 kids, 15 & 12, and we get along great. We have talked about marriage, moving her and the kids out of the ex husbands and hers house. I was married 23 years and she was married 20 years. Both of our divorces were cause of mental abuse and she had a lot of physical abuse. We went to elementary school together and I moved away in the 7th grade. Fast forward 34 years, we are reunited and it been great. Now the problem, her ex husband just died a few weeks ago. She has asked me to stay away for sometime so the kids can heal, I get that. But now she says she loves me but we need space cause neither one of us got to grief our divorces. I feel we have, I haven’t lived close to her the whole time we have dated, maybe half of the time. I am completely over my ex, and love my girlfriend with all my heart. I just don’t know what to do. Is it the death that is the cause of the distance. Do I just do that and give her space. No calls or texts?
Excellent article. As always Suzy , your words are inspiring and empowering. My most valuable support came from those friends who have gone through this. Validation through lived experience will be of great value in my work as I move into the next step of this recovery process . Thank you
I was dating a woman that I cared for very much. The most special woman I had ever met in my life. She had been divorced for 4 years and was still not over her husband Dusty. She left me to take time to try to heal herself. I pray for her healing everyday and hope she heals and is ok after. A wonderful and amazing woman like her is a great catch. I don’t see how he would have ever left her. I just hope she is ok.
I found out this past December my husband had a couple month affair. He came back after living with her for eight days, he is sorry, remorseful, has a mentor and is doing counseling. But I am hurting. Now, I am trying to decide if I should leave. The infidelity hurts more than I have ever hurt before, and when I think of divorce my pain lessons. But I wonder, am I just trading one pain for another? We have been unhappily married for 20 years and have six kids together. I am just loss at what to do. I never thought he loved me through our whole marriage and I thought I didn’t love him. But when he left I felt like I was being torn in two. My pastor says that if I didn’t love him I wouldn’t be feeling so much hurt. I really know nothing anymore.
My divorce has been final for a year, we were married 21 years and one morning while I was working I received a text message from my husband that simply said “I moved out”. When I got home everything was gone, the house was empty, our bank accounts emptied. Shocked and devastated does not begin to describe my new normal. Over the next several months that followed I was learning so many things about my husband that I did not know or perhaps I did not want to know.
I am 60 years old now and he is 45 years old. He was my world. I could not believe that someone as handsome and kind as my husband wanted me, I mean truly wanted me. To realize it was all a lie has been unimaginable.
My husband had not worked in about 10 years (bad back) so, I worked two jobs and supported us, I made wonderful meals and kept a spotless home. I thought that is what a good wife does. Now, I work from home so that I almost never leave my house, I can’t see people I am terrified that people will see me as being so stupid. I have not talked with anyone about what he did but seems like others know and he lives in the same town. I have grown children from a previous marriage that I raised alone, they completely do not like my ex husband and a few months before he left me I was not feeling good, but being a hard working person who never gave in to being sick. I kept saying I was fine and my husband was making coffee every morning for me which he had never done.. I now know that my ex husband was putting drain cleaner in my coffee and discovered other things he did to me.
I am not sure that learning to live again is even possible after all these years and being 60 years old, all my retirement is gone, and I had to start completely over buying furniture and things I needed.
Vicki- I am so sorry to hear your story. That’s absolutely horrific. What he did to you is devastating. It seems you were married to a narsassist (monster). I hope you’re able to heal!
Reading some of your stories are sad. I am now 31 yrs and was married for 5 years but was with my husband for 8 yrs. We found each other in school, fell in love, graduated and got married. We had a few fights because pictures and text I found in his phone and over the course of our marriage he left me a few times (fla few days). We would go to counseling, then we had a fight and he left when I was 5 mths pregnant. I cried everyday couldn’t eat or sleep. He told me he wanted space and for a whole year I prayed and was good wife so he would come back to me and now our son. We got carried away once and I got pregnant and he came back but I had a miscarriage with was devastating. He later left me again after it was revealed that he was cheating. He also admitted to having feelings for someone else. Although our divorce isn’t final he has been seen openly with someone. I am still in shock and I am dying a little each day. I try to pray and talk to my friends but I still feel like trash and have realized he never loved me. I see him almost everyday when he come to pick up our son and he looks like he is happy. Why do they lie… I thought he loved me and I was living in hope ….
I’m so tired of people demonizing the person who leaves or moves on or finds the love of their life afterwards. Why should we be called “dumb” for staying in a relationship that wasn’t working for us? It doesn’t mean we think the other person isn’t good enough for us. Not everyone is suited for one another and when you are young and stupid you don’t know who you are enough to always make the right decisions about who to marry. You aren’t old enough or wise enough to know what makes a relationship work. Enough of demonizing people for their decisions just because you can’t handle that for whatever reason you weren’t right for them.
Sounds like you are the one who regrets the hurt and pain you caused your ex-husband. Maybe you cheated on him, maybe you left him for selfish reasons? Who knows… but marriage is the most serious decision you will ever make in your life. And if a person divorces and abandons their spouse without a very very serious reason, I.e. repeated adultery without reconciliation then their is absolutely no excuse for a divorce. It absolutely destroys people, children, relationships and it is an affront to God Himself who created marriage as a symbolic reference to Christ’s unbreakable relationship to the His bride the church. There is almost no excuse for divorce ever. Learn to work on your problems period.
Ana- “so tired of demonizing the person” The person has choices and made vows to the other. If the person decides to have an affair, abruptly end the relationship, poison the other- these are all wrong and unkind ways of handling it. That is why they are “demonized”. There is a more humane way of handling this. The victim in the marriage deserves that courteous and respect. Some choose no to..so they can have their cake and eat it too, some for financial reasons, and some simply don’t have any care or consideration.
Divorce is so much easier for women than men. The world is filled with a surplus of men to women (gender ratio imbalance). Men are all too eager to financially look after and take care of a woman. Men do all of the work in starting the relationship; initial approach, planning dates, facing rejection, etc. Women just have to show up. It’s innate biological survival of the species but it’s time to recognize divorce is much more difficult for men. Perhaps that is why 70% of divorces are initiated by women.
Can you show some data for that? That is not what we see here so I can only gauge the numbers by our actual correspondence.
Great advice except for the bit about joining a church. That’s where I discovered that divorce isn’t acceptable, even when you had no control over your partner ending your marriage, and that divorced women are (apparently) only on the prowl for someone else’s husband…
Women are far more likely to initiate divorce then men. 70% I have my own opinions as to why and they are Biblically based, but here is the study. FYI… my wife cheated on me twice during a 23 year marriage and in the end left me for another guy. You mentioned here that you guys don’t have the same experience but you do realize that this is a forum for women and you help women which is not anywhere close to an accurate sample of relationships US wide.
https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Rosenfeld_gender_of_breakup.pdf
Shoshanna, YOU need help. Reading your comment makes me feel it is hopeless to try and move on. YOU are hung up on your counseling … which is just a crutch that helps no one! Stop relying on counselors, who have most likely been divorced 5 or 6 times themselves. Why would you want to go to someone who can’t stay married or find a decent spouse themselves? You sound like the quintessential counselor who believes EVERY woman was “mentally” abused. BS! That is the first crutch every counselor reaches for. “You were mentally abused”. What a lie! Stop feeding this crap to people. Stop telling people “you are codependent” In many cases the other person was too. Suzy had good advice and explains it well. The only thing I may disagree with is that some people just don’t get through it. Unfortunately, they just can’t. As much as people want to say “it’s YOUR choice to move on”. Sure people fake it, but that’s no good either. Divorce is a nightmare … that sometimes just won’t go away … until perhaps you run in to someone who can help lift you out of it. Even then it can haunt you in the back of your mind, but that is the best chance you have. Hopefully. Find someone to take the other person’s place. PREACHING counselor drivel does no one any good. The men on here are correct. I was married for 30 years. My wife cheated on me with many other men and women. She loved to drink and sleep with anyone that bought her 2 drinks and said she was pretty. Her counselors tried to say it was her evil mentally abusive husband … who hadn’t raised his voice to her or spoke nasty to her in 15 – 20 years! But she sure did to me. One counselor told me I was mentally abusive within 2 minutes of me walking through her door. I hadn’t even said, but hello . My wife didn’t even say I was abusive to her, but the counselors ALL kept saying it. It’s a female counselor crutch. To date, everyone I have spoken with about divorce over the last 5 years, was cheated on by their wife and their wife is the one that left them. But according to women counselors, it is always the poor women that are cheated on and mentally abused by their husbands. You are doing a disservice to the men that come in … and the women. It’s wrong.
I don’t see the correlation between years married and years getting over the divorce. I was married for 2 years and over a decade later (and lots of decent therapy) I still feel extreme pangs if heartbreak for what once was. Remarried with children, my husband is overall a great man. I consider myself lucky. Yet I think of the ex everyday and at least a few times a year get extremely depressed wondering what could have been. We stayed close friends until I decided I could not keep hanging on to something that wasn’t truly healthy or fair to the people we were with. I still feel guilty that I am unable to wish for certain things we had in that first marriage. The best I can soothe myself is by saying it’s meant to be a constant test throughout my life now. I must be faithful to my current husband (who didn’t ask for divorce). I feel I gave in too early the first time but now I must be a better wife. I just don’t seem able to completely let go- and it hurts.
I was married at 19 and in an abusive marriage for 22 years. I’ve been divorced for 20 years and still have pain and disillusion and even dreams and some times night mares. I went through the divorce recovery and what I’ve come to realize, this isn’t an easy process if you loved someone and were committed to them and it takes a long while to redevelop oneself. I listen to the “experts”, I see people remarry and divorce two, three and four times and I don’t see real healing or people developing relationship skills. I think the experts are wrong. And I think that once someone has been married and committed to another human being, to dismiss the mental and physical attachments and say one is healed is misleading and deceptive. No, I didn’t choose to still have unresolved feelings or pain, but a wound has scars and a scar remains…
I can totally relate to expecting to recover faster than is possible. After 30 years of marriage I became aware that my husband was having an affair with a younger (by 15 years) woman he was kayaking with. Once I knew, I confronted him and understandably he denied it. Even once he had no choice but to admit it (I had the text messages between the two of them staring me in the face) he stayed and I foolishly thought he might be coming around. A year later he left me on Christmas Eve to spend it with her. So I filed. Things progressed and compared to the two years when he was having an affair the divorce part was less stressful – I felt I had some control. So I set out to “recover.” Because I am a firm believer in Parkinson’s Law (the task at hand expands to fill the timeline set) I chose one year from the day I filed. Sadly I was wrong – this is a task that seems to have no timeline. And so I feel like I have failed in my quest to recover. The set backs have been emotionally difficult. I hate to think it will take me another year and a half or longer to recover. Sometimes it just seems easier to accept the fact that I may never recover. Been a tough couple of months. Thankfully I’m still seeing a counselor – because just as the article says, your friends want you to recover – they want you to be happy. So I plaster a smile on my face and fake it often. Seems the easiest way to make people happy – then I spill my guts to my counselor. Hoping things improve very soon. Maybe spring will help.
I got Divorced over 10 years ago, I still can’t drive on the streets that I used to go with him. I was the one who wanted the divorce. I was married for almost3/5 years and almost 1 year after I filed for divorce. I still struggle for things like having a house which I think is a big security and he had it at that time. I still have not met anyone that I can have my future with. I have no hope either at 43, but I want to be ok and recover from the pain and scares.