Divorce

From Bluetruth

Divorce Overview

For many of us, we see divorce as a negative terrible situation. Some people feel betrayed, others feel angry, others want revenge. This article suggests an alternate perspective on divorce. A positive approach and some great resources to help you get through your divorce.

We are taught to believe that when we get married it is for life. No-one ever prepares us for the end of marriage. When we get married, we shut our eyes and kiss our partner, never believing that divorce could happen to us. Perhaps it would be much more helpful if as a society we saw relationships and marriage as having a finite timespan. After all the relationship will end at some point either through a breakup or through death. We make promises to our partner like "I will Love you forever" and traditionally in marriage "till death do us part". Perhaps it is healthier to see relationships as having their own healthy timeframe which may be a year or may be 30 years. If a marriage ends in divorce after 12 years, perhaps those two people have learnt what they needed to learn from each other and grown wiser from the experience.

Divorce Yourself from the Conflict

What is actually gained by fighting with an ex? By taking them to court? By blaming them for the divorce? There is an old chinese proverb: "In revenge, it would be best to dig two graves". Seeking revenge is condemning yourself to even more suffering. Haven't you suffered enough? And if there are children involved is it worth condemning them to more suffering? What if you could see a positive slant on this divorce? Maybe it all ended at exactly the right time. Instead of fighting with your ex, end the conflict now as quickly as possible. Refuse to fight so that there will be no more suffering. If only one person is fighting, eventually they will get bored with fighting with themselves. Your anger is probably coming up now and you are thinking "but what they did was terrible I cannot forgive...".

Perhaps it would be best to talk to a counsellor or psychologist and look at what happened together. Extra support is definitely good right now, and if you cannot afford it, perhaps look at some cheaper or free services that offer telephone support and other such services. Whether you do this work yourself or work with a counsellor, you will probably need to face your anger and your feelings of betrayal. If you can do this away from your ex, then moving on from them will not be ignited into conflict and cause any more damage then has already been caused. From my own experience I discovered that whenever I met with my ex, if I expected that we would agree to disagree on everything and not reach any agreements then we were able to communicate without fighting. Everytime a topic came up that there was no agreement on, I would say "lets agree to disagree on that topic and find a solution later". At first I couldn't do this and we ended up verbally abusing each other, but eventually when I started to do this, things did start to get resolved, and the divorce became easier to cope with.

The Phoenix Rises From The Ashes

You have a choice at this point in your life. You could limp through your life from now on pretending your wings are broken and you are defeated by divorce. Or you could see yourself as the phoenix and rise from the ashes. Who are you? Why are you on the planet? This is the perfect opportunity to re-create and rediscover yourself. What do you Love doing? What touches your heart? Sometimes its hard to see ourselves as individuals when we have been defined by the marriage. And now after the divorce, who are you? This is the time to find out.

This may be very hard right now and you may feel like you want to curl up into a ball and hide from the world. What got me through the divorce was simply doing something different every weekend. Every weekend I would take a trip at some point in the weekend to somewhere I had never been before. Or perhaps taking up a new hobby or interest. Doing things differently to how you have done them in the past opens up a whole new range of possibilities in your life.