Life After Divorce

7 Tips For Adjusting To Life After Divorce

Details: July 23, 2018

Woman who is happily adjusting to life after divorce.

Life post-divorce is different from married life. By using these tips, your different can be great.

The dress. The guests. The honeymoon. Newlyweds walk down the aisle planning a life of home and happiness, not adjusting to life after divorce.

But statistics speak to the glaring frequency of divorce:

41 percent of first marriages end in divorce.
60 percent of second marriages end in divorce.
73 percent of third marriages end in divorce.

Every divorce is different, of course -- as unique as the individuals going through it. The age at which the two people married; the length of the marriage; the presence or lack of children. Countless factors chime in to make this painful journey as personal as the feelings each person experiences. Adjusting to life after divorce, therefore, is also a personal journey.

There are, however, many tips for helping those on the road to singlehood make that adjustment and come out the other side whole and happy. Let’s look at 7 of the biggies:

Let yourself mourn.

Divorce is a loss, plain and simple. It really doesn’t matter who initiated the split, or who owns what responsibility for what actions leading to it. It’s a loss -- a death of the dreams that…

How To Have A Better Life After Divorce Than When You Were Married

Details: June 11, 2018

Man who has figured out how to have a better life after divorce.

You’ll need to be proactive, but living a great life post-divorce is totally worth it.

You might not believe it now, but that doesn’t make it any less true. You can have a better life after divorce than you had when you were married. It probably won’t happen for you right away, but it will happen – if that’s what you truly want.

You’ll have to really want it because you’ll have to work for it. A great life post-divorce won’t be handed to you on a silver platter no matter how much you wish it would be.

A few of the things you’ll need to be proactive about to have a better life after divorce include:

Grieve what was and what will never be.

When you divorce, you say goodbye to a lot – your marriage, your lifestyle, seeing your children every day, and your dreams of happily ever after with your spouse to name just a few. You need to mourn all of it before you can fully move on.
Let go of feelings of failure, blame, regret and guilt through compassion and forgiveness.

Letting go of the painful feelings means that you work through them – not ignore them or stuff them down.…

What Life After Divorce With A Baby Is REALLY Like

Details: June 14, 2017

Life after divorce with a baby is difficult for everyone – including the baby.

5 tips to help you make a tough situation more manageable (and help your baby get through it too).

Divorce is difficult no matter what the circumstances. But when your divorce happens while you have an infant life gets really tough.

Tough, but not unmanageable.

Life after divorce with a baby has a unique set of challenges not only for you and your ex, but for your baby too.

Let’s start with some of the “life after divorce with a baby” challenges you and your former spouse face.

You will never feel like a “normal” family. No matter how your lives evolve, you’ll never feel like the “normal” nuclear family because you’re not. And that’s perfectly OK. In fact, you might call it the new normal because less than 50% of U.S. kids grow up in a “normal” nuclear family.

You will feel frustrated by the lack of control. When your ex has the baby, you’ll hate that they get to spend time with the baby and you’ll worry about your ex’s parenting skills. The only way to deal with your frustration is by learning to trust your ex with your precious child and that can be really difficult when you’re still healing from your divorce.…

The Reality Of Life After Divorce May Not Be What You Think

Details: July 31, 2017

Man thinking about the reality of life after divorce.

Life after divorce isn’t all good or all bad. There’s a lot of life that’s between these extremes.

Divorce is complicated. And because it’s so complicated, people tend to focus on the worst-case and best-case scenarios when they think about the reality of life after divorce.

At one extreme, some assume that the truth of life post-divorce is misery and constant struggle. And there are ample examples of both men and women who struggle profoundly during and after their divorces.

Others assume that their reality of life after divorce will be immediate happiness and joy because they’ll be able to move on with their lives without their ex. There are also plenty of stories of men who quickly move on to new, happier relationships and women who feel liberated upon divorcing.

Like most things in life, I believe that the reality of life after divorce will be what you make of it.

When I look back at my own divorce, I first believed that my divorce was the best thing that could happen. I had felt trapped in a marriage that had become loveless and the thought of being free was intoxicating.

However, I also experienced a whole lot of post-divorce misery and struggle – in part because I…

My Life Is Empty After Divorce. Will I Ever Feel Better?

Details: May 8, 2017

My life is empty after divorce is the thought that continues through this man’s head.

You absolutely can feel better. You just have to start doing a few things differently.

The end of your marriage leaves huge holes in your life, in your identity and in your mind. And it’s these huge, gaping, bottomless voids that make you feel that your life is empty after divorce.

From my vantage point of having lived through the misery of a failed marriage and after that over a decade of helping others recover from divorce, I can tell you without any doubt that your life can be better than it is right now.

And the sooner you believe that your life can be better, the more quickly you’ll stop feeling "my life is empty after divorce".

There are basically two different reasons why people get stuck in the pain of divorce. First, their lives are so different from what they were before that they have a very difficult time accepting their new normal. Second, they are still reeling from the pain of their divorce.

If you’re struggling with the differences in your life now when you compare it to then, the best thing you can do is to work on acceptance.

Acceptance doesn’t mean that you have to approve of the way things…