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.
Related: Learn what to say to a friend who is divorcing.
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.
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… Read more »
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.
* I found my girlfriend at a bar in Ill back then you find someone through a newspaper dating service and I had a great time and I think she did to. When we started to get close more the dating I moved into her apartment we had wonderful conversations and as we were getting closer and she had mention about the guys she met through the paper and they were a holes she’s on the heavy side but we were friends for ten and married the other ten. It really matter at this point but I think we fell out of love now I’m a recovering drug and alcoholic for 19 years and any divorce and we were done my higher power and i didn’t drink/drugs/cigarettes’ I love her very much and I always will but she couldn’t take my sobriety. Stay safe
Thanks for telling me that trying to recover from divorce might be difficult, complicated, and too long for me. However, it might still be incomparable to the pain I felt when I knew that my husband was committing infidelity behind my back. It would probably be better for my mental health and our entire family if we were to consult an attorney for a divorce.
My husband left me almost 5 years ago. He won’t Co operate to get a divorce or nothing.
Sitting here 5 years later in a new relationship with a wonderful man who treats me so good, but is so different than my husband.
I miss my husband every day and I seem stuck, angry , alone and pissed off I’m in the situation I’m in cause of him.
It hurts to know he is so happy and has moved on so good and doesn’t struggle with anything. I belive she was in the picture before he left .
I still put myself down and wish things were different.
He never gave me any reasons so I think that’s why I can’t get closure.
I meet to mend, I need to be happy, I don’t know what else to do.
I’ve done 4 yrs of councillor it helped so much. I just find when the holidays are creaping up its hard. Escpecially Christmas….. my new man isn’t into it.
I just miss the gold old days and my old husband.
Any advice on how to move forward and not have bad crying days when stuff comes up to end u of him and your marriage that you thought was perfect. The day before he even told me he loved me and if he did anything right in his life it was marrying me. He wish he met me sooner.
I love the line “If our partner is dumb enough to leave, we have to be smart enough to let him go.” In my case the “letting go” applies to my wife who filed for divorce. We have been separated for a year, waiting for the lawyers to battle it out, after 20 years of marriage and three kids. In divorce it seems that one person (my wife in my case) is often ready to leave and planning things way before the other (me). It’s hard to be one the being left, and I’m sure it is hard for the leaver as well, after a long marriage. The hardest thing for me is overcoming many years of conditioning in which I assumed the role of trying to make peace and make things work out. Everyone tells you divorce settlements are just a business transaction and to leave emotion out of it. But on an emotional level it has been very hard for me to accept that my wife has no desire to compromise, be fair, or treat me with respect in the divorce proceedings even though I feel I behave that way towards her. My head knows the love in our relationship died (at least for her) years ago; there is no resuscitating it, and we are both better off divorced. But my heart needs time to catch up. I don’t know when that will be. However I agree with the general advice of taking care of oneself (and the kids, if there are kids) and focusing on one’s own mental and physical health. Hard to go wrong with that. Thanks for listening … and best of luck to everyone else going through this stressful process.
I have been separated from my husband for 17 months now and it’s really hurting me how the effect it’s had on myself and the children. We are settled but very happy we miss the family life we had