In terms of the strength of feelings, divorce is compared to the death of a loved one. After the breakup of a long-term relationship, you have to not only experience complex and contradictory emotions, but also rebuild your entire life. Together with psychologist Maria Novikova, we figure out how to survive a divorce and maintain a normal relationship with your ex-spouse.
Why Some People Go Through Divorce Harder Than Others
Divorce is the loss of a loved one, so the reaction to it can be compared to the process of experiencing grief. In the book “Life After Loss”, American psychiatrist Vamik Volkan says that each person’s grief is individual, like fingerprints. Everyone goes through divorce differently, and this is normal. The reaction depends on:
– from the experience of living through losses in the past;
— style of relationships with a partner;
— reasons for divorce;
— the presence or absence of children;
– financial independence;
— the characteristics of your emotional system.
The initiator of the divorce and the one who was confronted with the fact react differently to it. Most likely, the initiator weighed all the pros and cons for a long time, tried to improve the relationship before breaking it off. When he tells his partner about his decision, he has already gone through some stages of grief, lived through the pain of losing his family.
The person who is confronted with the fact is in the most acute stage of loss. He needs time to comprehend what has happened. This difference is especially noticeable during therapy. The psychologist may observe that the initiator of the divorce is calmer and more collected than his or her spouse. But it is not that he or she valued the relationship less. It is just that at the moment the partners are at different stages of experiencing grief.
How to Help Yourself Get Through the First Time After Divorce
Take a break
Don’t make decisions rashly. Often, during the first, most acute wave of emotions, people do things that they later regret. Therefore, it is better to take a break, give yourself a chance to come to your senses and think about further actions. This is especially important if the initiator of the divorce was your partner or you yourself came to this decision suddenly – for example, after learning about your spouse’s infidelity or other unacceptable behavior.
Use short-term planning
Make to-do lists for literally two or three days. Let these be the simplest tasks: cook lunch, go for a walk, do morning exercises. Planning will help you regain a sense of control over the situation. There are things you cannot influence, but feeding yourself a delicious meal or arriving to work on time is still within your power.
Don’t be afraid to express emotions
Emotions can be different, and it is necessary to give them an outlet . Anger and rage can be expressed physically: screaming, stamping your feet, throwing a pillow at the wall. Another way is to write “angry letters.” Take a piece of paper and write a letter to the person you are angry with. Pour out your anger on paper, without holding back in your expressions and description of feelings. Then destroy the letter: tear it into small pieces or burn it.
Master self-regulation techniques
Especially at first, you will be overcome with difficult emotions, this is normal. To cope with them, master calming breathing techniques . Mindfulness and grounding exercises, such as “Five, four, three, two, one,” also help well. Look around and find five objects of different colors: a red sofa, a green diary, blue jeans. Then hear four sounds: the noise of cars outside the window, the clicking of a colleague’s keys, or the gurgle of the dishwasher. Find three sensations: a cold floor, a soft strand of hair on your shoulder, the smooth leather of the sofa. Smell two smells and experience one taste. You can take a sip of water or put chewing gum in your mouth. By the end of this exercise, you will have calmed down and feel yourself in the moment.
Make time to worry
You can use the diary technique. Choose a suitable time of day, set a timer for 30 minutes and write down everything you feel in your diary. Take your time and remind yourself that all your feelings and experiences are normal. Stop as soon as the timer rings. Wash your face and try to return from worrying about the past to the present moment.
Take care of yourself
Try to get enough sleep , eat regularly , and stay physically active. Not only does exercise help you stay healthy, it can also lift your mood. If running or vigorous gym workouts aren’t your thing, try brisk walking . A half-hour walk is enough to relieve stress hormones and make you feel better.
How to Know When You Need Help
Since divorce is a loss, you can focus on the standard phases of grieving. The acute stage can last from several hours to several days. During this time, a person is in a state of shock, disoriented, does not understand what is happening. This is followed by the phases of denial, bargaining, anger, depression and acceptance. They can take different amounts of time. Normally, fully experiencing and accepting a divorce takes from one and a half to two years.
After a divorce, it is possible to get stuck in one of the stages. This happens if you consider your emotions to be wrong and block them. For example, you think that anger is unacceptable and do not express it. The second option: you have an imaginary picture of the “correct” way to live through a breakup. If you yourself do not correspond to it, then it seems that you are grieving incorrectly. As a result, you do not allow yourself to move at your own pace through the stages of grieving and get stuck. This can happen at any of the stages of living through a breakup.
Stuck in the denial stage. You want to forget about the divorce and live as before. The need to discuss the future, divide property and draw up documents causes internal protest.
Getting stuck at the bargaining stage. It seems that everything can still be fixed. You want to find options that will suit your partner and help bring your family back. Even a ban on communication with children can become a tool for pressuring your partner.
Stuck at the anger stage. Any mention of the ex-spouse causes anger and irritation. Not only is it impossible to communicate calmly, but it is impossible to even think about him.
Getting stuck in the depression stage. Sadness covers you for a long time, which does not allow you to live a full life. It seems that all the good things are in the past.
How to cope with everyday difficulties and learn to live independently
There are four important tasks in coping with loss.
— Acknowledge the fact of losing your partner, your usual way of life and the overall picture of the future.
— To survive the pain of loss.
— Restructure your way of life taking into account the changes that have occurred.
— Feel ready to build new relationships with the world and other people.
The third stage is restructuring your everyday life. This is difficult and takes time. There is no universal advice here. Everything depends on how life was organized in a couple and what functions the spouse performed. You can try to make a list of what your partner did and what you lost. And think about how to reorganize your life to meet these needs. For example, before your husband did minor repairs around the house, and now you will ask friends for help or hire specialists for money. If before the divorce you went to the market on Saturdays for groceries, now you will order delivery, and spend the weekend morning on a walk in the park. Or you are used to falling asleep hugging your partner, and after the breakup you will buy a large soft toy to make the bed more comfortable.
You need to think not only about household chores, but also about ways to spend your free time. Remember how you lived before the wedding, what you liked to do. Maybe you have long wanted to try a new hobby, but denied yourself this. Try to listen to yourself and find what makes you happy.
If you have children together, you need to take care of family traditions. Some can be preserved. For example, continue to celebrate children’s birthdays together. To replace others, you will have to invent new ones. So, instead of one vacation with the whole family, you can spend the first part of the vacation with the children, and for the second part, entrust the care of them to the father and plan a vacation for yourself.
How to build a normal relationship with your ex-spouse and is it necessary to do it
Before doing anything, you need to understand why. If you felt bad in your marriage, faced physical violence, abuse , hypercontrol, you should not maintain a relationship with your partner. It is better to break off all contact with the person with whom you felt uncomfortable.
If you were friends before marriage, there were a lot of good things on your way and you want to remain close, it is possible. But first you need to go through all the stages of grief, part with the picture of “we are a couple” and create a new one “we are friends”.
It is necessary to build new relationships if you have children. But these will not be relationships between spouses, but between parents. If you feel that children are becoming a tool for blackmailing your partner and that you cannot act in their interests, you should contact a psychologist. He will become a mediator and help build communication with children in new conditions.
The most difficult situation is when there was aggression in a family with children and towards the children too. In such a case, it is necessary to assess the risks and decide how important and safe it is for the children to maintain relationships with both parents.