Posts by Dr. Karen Finn
5 Tips For A Happier Life After Divorce
When you’re over your grief, these tips will help you find happiness again.
Regardless of whether you chose to end your marriage or your spouse did, divorce hurts. The pain is the result of all the losses – lost love, lost dreams for the future together, lost family, lost identity, and a myriad of others.
Each of these losses bury you deeper and deeper into pain and sadness. You sink lower and lower wondering if you can ever truly be happy again.
Although it may not quite seem possible now, you can have a happier life after divorce than you can imagine.
The happiness won’t just happen automagically though. You’ve got to help it along by changing your mindset from one that expects more hurt and misery to one that begins to expect that you will have a happier life after divorce than the one you’re living right now.
Changing your mindset may sound like a daunting task given everything else you’ve got going on, but it’s actually pretty simple if you’re willing to make a small commitment to doing so and following some straight-forward advice.
5 tips for creating a happier life after divorce:
- Be thankful for what you have.Divorce forces you to take stock of what you don’t have any longer. It’s normal to grieve the losses and feel sadness. And you need to experience the grief.However, sometimes the grief and sadness of divorce can become a habit. You continue focusing on all that you don’t have instead of being thankful for what you still do have.When you start making a shift of focus from what you lost to what you’ve got or even gained, you start emerging from the depths of divorce despair and prime yourself for a better life after divorce. The best part is that the more time you spend time contemplating what you do have the more and more momentum you’re gaining toward making your happiness a reality.
- Look at the past with appreciation – not blame or regret.
Powerful emotions tend to tie us to whatever creates them. If you are still angry with and/or blame your ex for what happened in your marriage, you’re still tied to your ex. Being connected to him/her by these strong emotions will keep you connected to your ex which isn’t the best situation for you to move on and create a happier life after divorce.Similarly if you’re looking at the past and blaming yourself or feeling unexpressed regret, you’re stuck. You’re beating yourself up and staying trapped. You must do what you need to do to clear your conscience.
Once you clear the powerful negative feelings that are keeping you mired in the past, you’ll be able to shift your emotions to more appreciative ones. Then you’ll realize that the only way you’ve become the person you are today (and who you will become in the future) is because of what you’ve experienced in the past. And this will help you to thankfully leave the past in the past.
- Create a plan for your future.
Divorce changes everything – including all the plans you had for the future with ex.It’s time to start dreaming again about what you want from your life now that you’re getting a fresh start. As you begin imagining what you want, it’s OK to start small. What you’ll discover is that as you continue to dream that you’ll be able to fill in more of the details until your plan is incredibly vibrant and compelling.
- Look forward with anticipation instead of fear.
Once you start imagining how you will create a happier life after divorce, you’ll start doing what you need to do to make it a reality. And any time you start doing new things it’s natural to feel a bit of fear creep in.However, if you can wake up every day, anticipating great things to happen – no matter how small, you’ll find that your fear will begin to melt away. Identify at least one great thing that happens every day and you’ll have a difficult time continuing to feel sad and hurt about your divorce.
- Choose happiness.
As cliché as it sounds, happiness is a choice. You can choose to remain miserable by continuing to think the same thoughts day in and day out. Or you can choose to start thinking and doing things differently. Making this second choice again and again and again will put you squarely on the path of creating a happier life after divorce.
These five pieces of advice will seem trite and too simplistic if you’re still in the depths of divorce despair. If that’s how they seem to you, you’re not quite done grieving the end of your marriage yet. And that’s 100% OK. Everyone grieves at their own pace.
When you’re ready, you’ll begin seeing these tips as the keys to creating a happier life after divorce than you can begin to imagine right now. That doesn’t mean that they’ll be easy to implement or that you’ll do them perfectly every day, it just means that you’ll recognize them as the way you’ll push through all of the pain and sadness of your divorce, rise up and create an incredible life for yourself regardless of how your marriage ended.
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce coach and advisor helping people just like you who want support in dealing with the pain divorce and creating a post-divorce life you’re happy with. You can join my newsletter list for free weekly advice. If you’re interested in taking the first step toward working with me as your personal coach, you can schedule an introductory private coaching session.
Looking for more ideas about thriving after divorce? You’ll find what you’re looking for in Life After Divorce.
7 Tips For Getting Through Your Divorce In One Piece
Even if your divorce is tearing you apart, you can come out of it in one piece.
When you’re going through a divorce, it feels like you’re running a marathon or two every single day. You’re spent. You’re running on fumes. And there’s no finish line in sight.
At times you wonder if you’ll survive because the grueling pace of making sense of your new life (not to mention all the legal aspects you’re dealing with) is killing you.
But, you can catch your breath. The pace seems relentless and it is – mostly because everything is new. Yet, just like the athletes who train to run marathons, there are things you can do to help you get through your divorce in one piece.
These 7 tips will help you get started taking care of you in the midst of your marathons.
- Read some fiction. Reading fiction is a great escape from your current confusing and frustrating reality, but it has other amazing benefits. It will help you improve your ability to focus on everything you’re juggling right now. It amplifies your creativity which is critical to solving all the problems you’re facing. And it can help you to both find and calm yourself. (Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for zoning out in front of the television.)
- Talk with people who have successfully made it through divorce. Doing this will tap into your belief in yourself. After all, if they can make it through divorce, then you can too.
- Don’t blindly trust the experts. Divorce is tough. You’re faced with a legal system you know very little about. So you hire an attorney and maybe a financial expert and maybe a therapist or divorce coach to help Sherpa your butt through this whole thing. It’s really easy to just let them handle it. But you can’t do that because nobody cares about you and what happens to you more than you do. You’ve got to become familiar with the basics and remember that these people all work for you.
- Journal and/or blog. Catharsis. That’s what getting all the thoughts and emotions out of your head feels like. You’ll come away from putting pen to paper or pixels to screen feeling so much lighter and more focused than when you started.
- Identify both your end goal and your daily priorities for getting there. This isn’t a suggestion that you have to know what the next 10 years of your life is going to be like, so don’t worry. It’s just that it’s time to start figuring out what you want. Heck, your daily priority for the next month (or more) may just be to spend 10 minutes thinking about what you want.
- Restore yourself physically. This means getting enough sleep (or figuring out how you can get more), drinking enough water every day, eating healthful meals (and if all you can manage right now is to just eat something, then that’s enough), and exercising to feel refreshed and clear your mind.
- Keep calm. This may seem impossible, but you can find pockets of time where you can focus on finding calm. And you know, if you can find even little bitty pockets of time for calm every day you’ll be amazed at what a difference that can make in how you get through your divorce.
These 7 tips are really just the jumping off point. They are meant to get you started with shifting your attention – just a tiny bit – to yourself and what you need to recuperate from the chaos swirling around you. If you can take the time to support yourself every day, you’ll be well on your way to making it through the grueling grind of divorce in one piece.
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce coach and life coach helping people just like you who are struggling with getting through their divorce. You can join my newsletter list for free weekly advice. And, if you’re ready, you can take the first step toward working with me as your personal coach by scheduling a private consultation.
Looking for more help getting through your divorce? Read more advice in Healing After Divorce.
This article originally appeared on DivorceForce.
How To Make An Unhappy Marriage Happy Again
These four tips will help you make your marriage much, much happier!
Living in an unhappy marriage impacts your entire life. The sadness that pervade your home life isn’t something you leave behind when you go off to work in the morning. It’s something you carry with you 24/7/365.
The weight of your misery saps your energy. It decreases your creativity and sucks the joy right out of your life. It can cause you to start wondering, “Is my marriage over?” And your unhappiness can even make you more vulnerable to having an affair.
Allowing yourself to continue just existing in an unhappy marriage is heartbreaking. It’s not what you truly want, much less deserve. You deserve to have an incredible marriage – one that brings you tremendous joy just like yours did in the beginning.
All marriages have rough spots. Rough spots don’t have to mean you’re doomed to spending a miserable lifetime together or that you’re headed for a divorce. The rough spots are just warnings that the two of you don’t pull together as much as necessary to more easily manage them. And because you don’t turn strongly enough toward each other to resolve the challenges you face; the result is that you’re unhappily married.
The path forward to learning how to make an unhappy marriage happy again isn’t necessarily a short one.
It will require that you and your spouse make a daily commitment to changing things – for the rest of your lives. But isn’t that why you got married in the first place – to live together happily ever after?
Changing your despondent marriage into a more joyful one will require that you each embrace and practice these 4 tips:
1. Practice compassion.
Compassion may not be the first emotion you’re able to adopt when you’ve been so unhappy, but it’s a critical one.
Being compassionate for yourself and your spouse means that you’re able to accept that you’ve both been doing your absolute best given your knowledge and the circumstances at the time. This doesn’t mean that either of you have been perfect. It just means that you’re now willing to start increasing your knowledge and becoming more conscious of the circumstances.
Practicing compassion also makes it easier to forgive past hurts. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that you have to approve of the past hurts or that it was OK that it happened. Forgiveness means that you’re not going to continue stewing on the pain and perpetuating the misery that’s contributing to your unhappy marriage.
Once you’re regularly able to feel compassion for your spouse (and yourself), you’ll find that it’s much easier to pull together to resolve the rough spots. And when the rough spots aren’t quite so bad, your marriage will start feeling a whole lot happier.
2. Take care of yourself.
Feeling a bit depressed is a pretty natural response to an unhappy marriage. The depression can create an inertia that’s difficult to overcome and that prevents you from putting in the effort to care for yourself. But it’s time to change that now.
Beyond the obvious of taking care of your health and appearance, taking care of yourself also means doing things that make you happy. It’s much, much easier to have the energy and drive to work on making your marriage more satisfying if you’re feeling better in general.
3. Invest in honest conversations with your spouse.
Regularly spend time together to honestly, compassionately and responsibly talk about how you’re each feeling. Ask each other what you would like to have more of in your relationship and then work together to make it easy to achieve. Also, spend time talking about what isn’t working so well and be committed to fixing those things.
Having these conversations might be difficult at times. If you can amp up the compassion during the difficulties, then you’ll have an easier time with them. But sometimes things are a bit too difficult to do on your own…
4. Ask for help.
Talk about your situation with people you trust.
You probably know a happily married couple who seems to weather the storms in their marriage easily. Ask them how they do it. Be a sponge and soak up all the wisdom you can. Then, use their best suggestions in your marriage.
If your marriage needs a little more support, you might consider talking with a helping professional – either on your own or with your spouse. The helping professional can assist you in gaining insight into what’s at the root of the unhappiness you’re experiencing together. And once you understand the source of the discontent and discomfort, you’ll be able to focus more intently on what you can each do to fix it.
These 4 tips are pretty straight-forward, but that doesn’t mean that they’re easy to follow or that your spouse will immediately agree to start working on them. But all that’s OK.
If you have difficulty with actually implementing any of these tips, it’s just because they’re new to you. Be compassionate with yourself (yes, that is the first tip) as you learn how to make your unhappy marriage happier. The more calm and easy you are about the process, the more quickly you’ll be able to shift your marriage to a happier place.
And if your spouse isn’t immediately on board with these suggestions for how to make an unhappy marriage happy again, don’t worry. There’s plenty of evidence to show that people who have started to repair their marriage on their own are successful because as they put in the effort and change, their spouse naturally did too.
Choosing to make a daily commitment to make your marriage happier will change your entire life. As your marriage becomes happier, you’ll find that you’ve got more energy, creativity, and joy which will spill over into all areas of your life. After all, joy is a whole lot easier to carry around with you than sadness is when you leave the house in the morning.
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce and personal life coach. I help people just like you who want support in making an unhappy marriage happy again. You can join my newsletter list for free weekly advice. And, if you’re ready, you can take the first step toward working with me as your personal coach by scheduling a private consultation.
Looking for more tips for navigating your marriage challenges? You’ll find what you’re looking for in Unhappy Marriage.
How To End A Miserable Marriage (Without Feeling Guilty At All)
It’s time to stop bullying yourself into staying…
One of the reasons making the decision to divorce is so painful – even when you know that leaving your marriage is absolutely the right thing to do – is that you believe doing so is wrong or bad.
So instead of sitting down with your spouse and having an honest discussion about ending your marriage, you remain stuck in your head (and your unhappy marriage) wondering how to divorce without feeling guilty.
Guilt is an emotional anchor and can prevent you from taking the actions you need to take care of yourself.
It’s tremendously difficult to shed because it’s based on the expectations you have of yourself. Expectations like being an amazing parent to your kids, being true to your spiritual and religious beliefs, keeping the promises you make to your spouse and yourself, and the family and friends who love and respect you.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with these expectations – until you use them against yourself as a reason to feel guilty about even considering getting divorced, despite knowing the only way for you to feel true happiness is to leave your marriage.
So here you are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Paralyzed and unable to move. Out of guilt.
But you can move forward, work through your guilt and gain the clarity and peace of mind you yearn for.
The first step is to work on your thoughts.
As you continue to adjust your thoughts by allowing yourself to gather and consider more information, your emotions will shift away from the guilt. You can then begin your divorce journey from a place of respect for your spouse – and for yourself – rather than from a place of guilt, shame and blame.
Here are five tips for how to divorce without feeling guilty – for anything.
1. Feeling guilty about what divorce would do to your kids?
- First, it is extremely important to understand that the commonly accepted “fact” that divorce destroys children is a lie.
What makes divorce so hard for kids is how their parents react to and deal with it. If you and their other parent treat your children as messengers or spies, stop spending quality time with them because you’re too wrapped up in your life, stop showing them the love they deserve, cease giving them the structure and security they need, or talk poorly about their other parent when they are within earshot, your kids will certainly suffer.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t suffering because of your divorce. It means they are suffering because of your poor behavior and role modeling.
If you commit to being the best parent you can be and get the support you need to move past your divorce as completely as possible, you have nothing to feel guilty about.
2. Feeling guilty about betraying your spiritual and/or religious beliefs?
This type of guilt is usually based on fear of reprisal from On High. And this was something I really struggled with when I got divorced.
In virtually all religious traditions The Deity is forgiving and teaches love. If this is true of your religious/spiritual view, then you know that others can be and are forgiven for their mistakes.
And you’re no different from any other person, you make mistakes and you can be forgiven without the requirement to continue to feel guilty once you’ve asked for forgiveness. Even better, you take the time to learn the lessons from your experiences so you can move forward with enriching your spiritual and religious life.
And, seriously, if God can forgive you, who are you to not forgive yourself?
3. Feeling guilty about breaking your promise to your spouse?
The fact is that people grow and change over time. You and your spouse are both different from the people who promised to live together for the rest of your lives.
And chances are you’ve both neglected your marriage over the years.
The best thing you can do now is acknowledge to yourself and to your spouse your own part in the demise of your marriage and apologize for it. And since this is the best you can do, there’s no reason to continue to beat yourself up for it, since castigating yourself won’t change anything.
This is another opportunity for you to learn and change how you’ll do things in the future.
4. Feeling guilty about breaking your promise to yourself?
Again, you’ve changed over the years and so has your spouse.
The truth is that you’ve always done your best given the circumstances you were in and the knowledge you had at that time. That doesn’t mean you were perfect or the ideal mate for your spouse, and that’s OK.
The promises we make to ourselves are the best we know how to make at the time to provide us with as much joy, as little pain, and as solid a sense of integrity as possible. As we mature, what makes us feel good about our lives changes – sometimes dramatically.
Sometimes the only way to maintain personal integrity is to break a promise you made to yourself when you were a different person and to then let the guilt of having to break the promise dissipate.
5. Feeling guilty because of how your family and friends might react (or are reacting)?
You’ve probably heard the adage “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”
This sentiment is an important one to remember as you continue your divorce journey.
The people who truly love you want the best for you and sometimes their expectations and biases can get in the way. And when that happens they begin their efforts to induce guilt in you.
When family or friends attempt to send you off on a guilt trip, their words and behavior say much more about them than about you.
And that sometimes they turn out to be people who don’t matter in your life (at least in the moment).
These tips regarding how to divorce without feeling guilty all focus on how YOU think about and interpret things.
That’s because you need to change your thoughts and perspectives before you can start releasing the emotional anchor of guilt.
As you continue to remind yourself of these ideas, you’ll start feeling more compassionate toward yourself and your soon-to-be-ex.
As your compassion grows, your guilt will diminish and you’ll be able to move forward and end your marriage with respect and love for everyone concerned – including yourself.
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce and personal life coach. I help people just like you who are looking for support advice about dealing with an unhappy marriage. You can join my newsletter list for free weekly advice. And, if you’re ready, you can take the first step toward working with me as your personal coach by scheduling a private consultation.
Looking for more tips on dealing with a miserable marriage? You’ll find what you’re looking for in Unhappy Marriage.
This article first appeared on YourTango.
3 Steps For How To Start Healing After A Divorce
It won’t be easy, but these 3 steps will give you the best start for getting over your divorce.
The fact that you’re searching for help on how to start healing after a divorce sucks. It means that your marriage is over and that you’re feeling miserable, lost, alone and afraid.
You know that attorneys and mediators are there to help you get through all the legalities of the divorce, but they don’t begin to help you deal with the misery, the hurt and pain of divorce. So here you are reading article after article on the web hoping that you’ll find the answer you’re looking for.
There are 3 steps you need to take to learn how to start healing after a divorce.
These are the answers you’re looking for:
- Be kind and compassionate with yourself. Getting divorced isn’t anything that you planned on happening. Realizing that your marriage is over is a horrible shock to absorb. This shock will naturally cause your thoughts and emotions to go into a spin as you try to make sense of the new reality you’re facing.Becoming impatient with yourself is the worst thing you can do right now. You’re experiencing one of life’s most difficult challenges and you must take care of you in order to make it through your divorce as easily as possible.So remember that you’re doing the best you can. Some days will be better than others. Heck, some minutes will be better than others. Getting divorced is hard and it’s OK to not feel 100% like yourself as you start (and continue) your healing process.
- Build your self-esteem. Feeling that you’re a failure or even that you must not be lovable because you’re getting divorced? As horrible as it is to feel this way, it’s also really normal.One of the casualties of divorce is your self-esteem. So the sooner you can start doing things to help you feel good about you again, the more energy and drive you’ll have to figure out how to start healing.
- Ask for help. Healing from divorce is incredibly difficult. You deserve to have support as you navigate this painful time in your life.Asking for the help you want and deserve is one of the smartest things you can do. It’s so much easier to get through your divorce as quickly and thoroughly as possible when you’ve got someone on your side who genuinely cares about you and isn’t impacted by your divorce.Seek out help from someone who really knows what getting divorced is like – they’ve been through it themselves and have successfully put their own divorce behind them. It’s these people who will be best able to empathize with you and offer real suggestions to you for how to start healing after a divorce.
Learning how to start getting over the end of a marriage is vitally important. But, it’s just the beginning of your healing process.
Getting over a divorce is a long and uncertain road. But by taking care of you, you will be starting off on the right foot. And the good news is that by learning to take care of your now you’ll have this vital skill in place to help you truly get over your divorce so things will stop sucking as much as they do right now. You will start moving out of feeling so miserable, lost, alone and afraid and into feeling really good about you and your life again.
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce coach and life coach helping people just like you who want support in learning how to start healing after a divorce. You can join my newsletter list for free weekly advice. And, if you’re ready, you can take the first step toward working with me as your personal coach by scheduling a private consultation.
Looking for more tips about getting over your divorce? You’ll find what you’re looking for in Healing After Divorce.
How To Set Boundaries When Co Parenting With A Narcissist
Implementing these boundaries when co parenting will make parenting with your narcissistic ex easier.
One of the reasons your marriage ended in divorce was because living with a narcissist just wasn’t worth it any longer.
You hoped that by getting divorced your life would be infinitely better. You’d do your work to overcome the PTSD and low self-esteem and depression and whatever else you were suffering with in your marriage and things would be better for you and for your kids.
And now that you’re divorced, some things are better.
But when it comes to co parenting with your ex, the torture you experience is the same as (or worse than) it was when you were married.
You chose co parenting for your children because “experts” promote it as the best way to parent post-divorce. You followed their advice that the key to being successful is to set boundaries when co parenting. Well, you’ve tried and tried to establish boundaries to make co parenting with a narcissist work, but life is still a living hell whenever you interact with your ex.
The crux of the problem is that co parenting with a narcissist doesn’t work any better than marriage with a narcissist does.
But there is hope.
You must set entirely different boundaries when co parenting with a narcissist than you would if your ex wasn’t so self-absorbed.
- Ditch the idea of co parenting. It may work for people who have a sane ex, but it won’t work for you. Since co parenting is impossible with a narcissist, you’ll want to switch your model to parallel parenting. (This might mean modifying your current parenting plan to make things black and white.)
- Set firm boundaries for your children. Because life with their other parent is so unpredictable, you’re the one who will need to provide stability for your kids.
- Limit your children’s contact with the off-parent. Limiting your ex’s time to interact with your children when it’s your time is a pretty obvious boundary to implement. But limiting your kids’ contact with you while they’re with their other parent is important too. Unless there’s an emergency, your kids shouldn’t be contacting you because it sets them up to hear what your ex thinks of you and perhaps puts them in jeopardy for the anger to spill over to them.
- Remove yourself from the reign of terror. Part of moving on from a narcissist’s control is by being assertive (not aggressive) and unemotional when dealing with them. When they start berating you, fight your instinct to defend yourself and hang up the phone, block their number when your kids are with you, close the door in their face, or leave their presence.
- Establish boundaries around your home. Your home is your (and your children’s) sanctuary. Don’t let your ex into your home because they’ll bring all their hatred with them.
- Teach and model both social and emotional intelligence for your children. You’re the only parent who can do this in a healthy way. Make sure you’re doing your best to help you children learn how to productively interact with others.
- Keep records of everything that happens between you and your ex. Your ex will use everything they can think of to win and make your life miserable. And this definitely includes taking you back to court. So follow the Boy Scout’s motto and Be Prepared!
- Be brief, informative, friendly, firm and NEVER admit to making a mistake when you communicate with your ex. If you deviate from this communication style, all you’re doing is giving your ex ammunition for hurling insults and abuse your direction. (A great book about this communication method is BIFF: Quick Responses to High Conflict People, Their Personal Attacks, Hostile Email and Social Media Meltdowns by Bill Eddy.)
- Nurture your children’s individualism and independence. Your ex, the narcissist, sees your children as extensions of themselves who need to be controlled – not nurtured. So fostering individualism and independence in your kids falls squarely on your shoulders.
After reading this list of boundaries when co parenting with a narcissist you’ve probably noticed that all of them deal with you eliminating contact with your ex and taking the lion’s share of responsibility for raising happy, healthy children. These new rules for your life might even seem exhausting. But making these changes and putting in the effort will be totally worth it because the reward is the better life you were hoping for when you got divorced.
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce coach and advisor helping people just like you who want support in figuring out how to parent post-divorce. You can join my newsletter list for free weekly advice. If you’re interested in taking the first step toward working with me, you can schedule an introductory private coaching session.
Looking for more tips about parenting with your ex? You’ll find what you’re looking for in Coparenting.
How To Be In A Relationship After Divorce Broke Your Heart
You’ve worked hard to get over your divorce. Don’t let it get in the way of your future happiness.
Living through the tumultuous end of your marriage is one of the most difficult things you’ll ever do. And the repercussions of it echo through your life in often surprising ways – and sometimes for a long time after your divorce is a done deal.
One of the most common ways to experience the fallout of divorce long after it’s final is in your new relationships.
So, when you meet someone you really like, it’s natural to wonder how to be in a relationship with them or if you even want to be in a relationship again.
This pause to question whether you want another relationship usually driven by fear. When your heart has been broken by divorce, it’s very difficult to believe that you could ever have a good relationship.
Your struggle with how to be in a relationship again could quite simply be a fear of the past repeating itself. But here’s the thing, the ONLY way this fear is real is if these two things are true:
- You’re exactly the same person you were.
- Your new love interest is just like your ex.
Now, if you’ve done your work – really done your work – to heal from your divorce, one of the things you now understand is your part in the failure of your marriage.
And because you’re smart and determined, you’ve taken the steps necessary to make sure you no longer behave in that way and you know how to spot it quickly when you do. This alone guarantees that you’re NOT exactly the same person you were.
Another benefit of doing your work to get over your divorce is that there’s very little chance you’re attracted to the same type of person you divorced. (Remember that the person you divorced is seldom the person you thought you married.)
So, if you’ve done all the hard work to heal, your fear of not being able to have a good relationship isn’t based on facts. It’s just a fear of the past that’s holding you back from exploring your new life – the life you’ve been working so hard on making great.
Now when you really take a step back to look at it, it’s your ex and the memory of your marriage that’s keeping you from exploring the connection you have with your new love interest. And you sure don’t want your ex controlling your future!
Another reality is that the connection you have doesn’t guarantee that a relationship with this new person will work out or that you should enter it without caution. It just means that you’re attracted enough to want to explore how to be in a relationship with them.
Taking a chance to learn how to be in a relationship again with someone you genuinely care about can be extremely fun – especially after all the effort you’ve put into moving on with your life. And if this new relationship has the potential to contribute to your happiness, you deserve to explore it without fear.
So silence the echoes of your divorce and don’t let them get in the way of your pursuit of happiness.
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce coach and advisor helping people just like you who want support in moving on with their life after divorce. You can join my newsletter list for free weekly advice. If you’re interested in taking the first step toward working with me as your personal coach, you can schedule an introductory private coaching session.
Looking for more tips for moving on with your life after divorce? You’ll find what you’re looking for in Life After Divorce.
4 Secrets To Putting Your Divorce Behind You
By consistently using these 4 secrets, you’ll avoid getting stuck as you heal from divorce.
Many people naively assume that moving on after divorce happens naturally. They believe that somehow after either the decision to divorce is reached or the divorce agreement has been signed you are suddenly free from the past and should be over your divorce.
The truth is the people who think like this have rarely been through divorce themselves. They don’t know the agony of a failed marriage. They also don’t know how difficult it is to be able to honestly say that your divorce is just part of your past and not a constant presence in your life.
Despite the difficulty, you can truly get over your divorce and enjoy your new, unmarried life. But it will take more than just time passing or ink drying on some legal documents.
To put your divorce behind you, you’ll need to regularly use these 4 secrets:
- Have a vision for your life. Once you know what you want, it’s a whole lot easier to start doing what you must to have that life.But this isn’t quite as simple or easy as it seems at first. That’s because people who are struggling with getting over their divorce often make two mistakes when they create their vision.First, they want things the way they were when they were married. This doesn’t necessarily that they want everything like it was, but they want their finances or their time with their children or the help around the house like it was before their divorce.
The second mistake they make is focusing more on what they don’t want instead of what they do. Now there is some value in being clear about what won’t work for your life, but if that’s what you focus on that’s all you’re going to see.
You can avoid both errors. All it takes is a willingness to try out new ideas so you can decide what you do want. Doing so will be incredibly helpful to you putting your divorce behind you.
- Be honest. What this means is that you can see past the hurt of your divorce, set aside the blaming and fault-finding and know your part in the end of your marriage. Spending the time to understand your part will make your life easier.With this knowledge, you’ll know what you need to modify to make your next relationship better. (This knowledge will also help you be a better co-parent.)Another benefit of being honest with yourself is that you’ll be able to let go of your emotions baggage.
- Show gratitude. It’s amazing how your view of the world can shift dramatically when you start to view the world through the lens of thankfulness instead of lack, criticism and judgment.Showing gratitude doesn’t mean that you should be thankful for struggling financially or for missing out on being able to kiss your children goodnight every night or your ex’s poor behavior. What is does mean is that you focus on the positives – that your children are healthy, that you have a place to call home, etc.Wayne Dyer put it best, “when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” And by showing gratitude, you’ll start seeing the good that’s all around you which will help you put your divorce into your past.
- Be adaptive. Divorce introduces HUGE changes that impact nearly every facet of your life. The only way to survive the changes and thrive after your divorce is by being willing to adapt to them. Adapting to your new situation will require you to accept what has happened and may still be happening, but not to let any of that define you.Being adaptive means that you’re willing to look for alternative ways to achieve your vision for your future instead of getting (or staying) stuck.
Although using these four secrets will help you put your divorce behind you, you’ll probably discover that you have a difficult time consistently embracing them.
That’s because these are new ways of thinking and behaving when you compare them to what you’ve been doing to simply get through your divorce.
And because they’re new you may need some practice to master them. So be easy with yourself as you’re learning how to move on from your divorce.
You’ll find that as you master these secrets that you’ll naturally be more engaged with your life now and your divorce will become just a part of your past.
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce coach and personal life coach helping people just like you who are looking for support advice about healing from divorce. You can join my newsletter list for free weekly advice. And, if you’re ready, you can take the first step toward working with me as your personal coach by scheduling a private consultation.
Looking for more tips on getting over your divorce? You’ll find what you’re looking for in Healing After Divorce.
This article originally appeared on The Good Men Project.
How To Deal With Loneliness When You Divorce
These 11 tips will help you escape from the isolation of loneliness after divorce.
Divorce catapults you into a stormy sea of emotions. Anger, disbelief and loneliness are just a few of the overpowering emotions you experience as you deal with the end of your marriage. Learning to deal with each of them is critical to your ability to move on, but learning how to deal with loneliness is one of the most difficult.
Dealing with loneliness is especially challenging because it’s a self-perpetuating emotion. It’s not energizing like anger so you can just work it out of your system by constructively expressing it. And it’s not like disbelief that you can conquer by consistently being presented with facts to the contrary.
Loneliness feeds upon itself. The more you experience it, the greater it becomes and the more difficultly you’ll have conquering it.
Loneliness grows deeper and more profound the more you experience it.
But feeling lonely as you deal with divorce is normal. You’re not really destined to be alone and lonely for the rest of your life – no matter how you feel right now.
“Feel” is a key word here because loneliness is a feeling. It isn’t a fact. And since it’s a feeling, you can change your feeling by working through it instead of being trapped by it.
Here are 11 tips for how to deal with loneliness so you can move on from your divorce:
- Connect with others who know what you’re going through. Despite how unique your circumstances or how different you feel, there are plenty of people who can easily empathize with your situation – everyone who is going through divorce gets what you’re dealing with. And the quickest ways to find these people are in online divorce communities and in divorce support groups.
- Get clear about what’s missing. You probably spent time alone when you were married and didn’t feel the same sense of overwhelming loneliness you feel right now. That’s because you’re feeling like there are things missing from your life now that weren’t before. By coming face-to-face with exactly what’s missing, you’ll be able to start grieving the losses instead of staying stuck in them. And once you start the grieving process, you’ll be gain clarity about how you want to either replace or eliminate what’s missing.
- Be compassionate with yourself. Getting through divorce is tough. Have patience as you find your way through yours. Do little things to pamper yourself every day and be sure to reward yourself for achieving the goals you set.
- Create a new routine for yourself. Mourning the loss of a shared routine (like talking about the day’s events with your spouse over dinner) can trigger loneliness. So instead of focusing on the old routine, create a new one for yourself.
- Disconnect a bit from social media. You don’t have to go ghost on your friends, but it wouldn’t hurt you to stop using their lives (or your ex’s life) as reasons to feel lonely.
- Let go of your toxic relationship. Letting go of your marriage (and what it represented to you) is a process. But the truth is that if it ended, it wasn’t a good relationship for you. And the longer you hold on to it, the more toxic is becomes to you.
- Practice gratitude. It is incredibly hard to feel grateful when divorce has ripped (or is ripping) your entire life away from you. But the thing is that as you start to appreciate what you still have and look at the obstacles ahead of you as challenges to overcome, you’ll have conquered one of the keys for learning how to deal with loneliness.
- Focus on your kids and what they need to deal with the divorce. Taking care of them will automatically force you to stop ruminating about how lonely you feel because taking care of your kids is a whole lot of work. And as you work to help them, you’ll naturally experience other emotions than loneliness.
- Choose to learn something (just like you’re doing for how to deal with loneliness). Learning is a great way to shift your emotions from loneliness to curiosity. You might choose to go back to school to improve your earning potential, or to use your divorce as a reason to pursue personal growth, or even to learn new skills to make your new life easier. (You’ll be surprised at the joy you can feel when you learn how to do things on your own!)
- Avoid inactivity. Being inactive or feeling bored is like putting out the welcome mat for loneliness. Instead, make a list of things you can do for fun or to just finally get done. So, the next time inactivity contributes to your loneliness pick an activity and get busy.
- Talk with someone about your feelings. Sharing your emotions with a friend or caring professional is great because they’ll often have insight into how to deal with loneliness that you don’t.
These 11 tips are just the beginning of things you can do as you learn how to deal with loneliness when you divorce. So, experiment with them. One may work better for you today than tomorrow. And try new ideas for breaking through feeling lonely as you discover them.
The more often you can acknowledge your loneliness as an emotion and then choose to do something to shift that emotion, the quicker you’ll conquer it and move on from your divorce.
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce and personal life coach helping people just like you who are struggling with the loss of their marriage. You can join my newsletter list for free weekly advice. And if you’re interested in taking the first step toward working with me, you can schedule an introductory private coaching session.
Looking for more tips on getting through the pain of your divorce? You’ll find what you’re looking for in Dealing With Grief.
Is Your Bad Marriage Bad Enough To Leave?
Guidance for answering one of the most difficult questions you’ll ever face.
No marriage is perfect – no matter how things may look from the outside. Every couple has struggles and for some the struggles are so great that the only way to describe their union is as a bad marriage.
But there are a couple of curious things about bad marriages.
Some aren’t bad all the time or even most of the time. These are marriages that are situationally unhealthy and are reactions to something specific that happens.
The other curious thing about unhealthy marriages is that bad isn’t the same for everyone. What one couple (or one spouse) calls bad another couple easily accepts as normal.
So what causes a bad marriage?
There’s no single or simple answer here. People who are in unhealthy marriages have all kinds of ways to describe what is the root problem of their relationship woes.
- Betrayals – sexual and emotional
- Too much fighting
- Regularly receiving the silent treatment
- Not talking about problems
- Not cooperating or working together
- Not listening to understand
- Finding blame instead of problem-solving
- Being taken for granted
- Not meeting sexual needs
- Not meeting needs for intimacy
- Keeping secrets
- Passive/aggressive behavior
- Resentment
- Apathy
- Prolonged or repeated absences
- Infidelity
- Stinginess
- Wastefulness
- Anger issues
- Selfishness
- Lying repeatedly
- Improper parenting behavior
- Putting other family first
- Abuse
- Untreated addictions
- Irresponsibility
- Contempt
- Rudeness
- Scorn
- Bad example of marriage for children
- Gaslighting
- Name calling
This is a long list and by no means is it complete. But what is interesting about this list is that it only contains three definite signs of divorce: abuse, refusal to treat addictions, and setting a dismal example of marriage for your children.
There is no doubt the rest of the stuff on this list describes a bad marriage. But even if one or more of these descriptions nails what’s wrong with yours, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s time to leave your marriage.
Identifying that you have a bad marriage is just one piece of the puzzle to knowing if it’s bad enough to leave. (Unless you’re dealing with one of the definite signs you should get divorced.)
Knowing that you have a bad marriage should trigger you to start asking other questions. Questions like:
- Am I OK living like this?
- Do I still love my spouse enough to want to work on things?
- What have I already done to make my bad marriage better?
- What am I willing to do to make it better?
- Do I have hope things can be better?
It’s only by asking tough questions like this and answering them with brutal honesty that you’ll ever know if your bad marriage is bad enough to leave or only bad enough to make better.
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce and personal life coach. I help people just like you who are struggling with a bad marriage. You can join my newsletter list for free weekly advice. And, if you’re ready, you can take the first step toward working with me as your personal coach by scheduling a private consultation.