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‘Regardless of how your marriage ends, it’s a death.’
‘Regardless of how your marriage ends, it’s a death.’ Illustration: Abigail Goh
‘Regardless of how your marriage ends, it’s a death.’ Illustration: Abigail Goh

Seven things I wish I'd known before my divorce: an optimistic guide to the future

This article is more than 7 years old

The abrupt end of my 18-year relationship left me traumatized. But as I round out the first year, I wish I could hug that poor woman and tell her these truths

Our new series, the divorce survival guide, hosts writers discussing the most bitter cut of all: the end of a marriage

Last November, my husband sat me down on the living room floor and told me he didn’t see a future for us. The abrupt end of my 18-year relationship left me feeling blindsided and disoriented, and my brain parsed the event as a trauma. I was in a surreal fight-or-flight mode for months, unable to sleep or eat normally, disoriented to the degree that I would walk into walls as I tried to cook for my son, or fall down the stairs for no reason.

On top of this personal shock, I also had to face my readers. In my work as a publisher of an online wedding magazine, I spent the winter of my divorce figuring out co-parenting while also co-producing wedding expos nationwide. I juggled meetings with child therapists and wedding vendors. It was rough.

But as I round out the first year since my divorce, things have calmed down. I look back and wish I could wrap my arms around that poor blindsided woman a year ago and whisper these truths into her ear.

1. Trip out on grief – it’s a hallucinogen

Regardless of how your marriage ends, it’s a death. Maybe it’s a loving euthanasia that you both agree on, maybe it’s a violent one-sided decision that only one of you sees coming, but it’s a death regardless. This means both of you will go through grief – a powerful mind-altering substance.

In the darkest of my days, I felt like I was on a low dose of LSD at all times – time was weird, my vision was odd, I threw up for no reason, my emotions were out of control. Even eating was an intellectual exercise (chew, chew … swallow? Is that what you do next?). I generally felt like I was tripping.

This state of mind was profoundly uncomfortable, but also weirdly educational. Never a big crier, I received a crash course in what tear-induced catharsis felt like – and holy wow, it felt good. Like many mind-altering substances, there are lessons there if you want to learn them.

2. Choose healing

In the first weeks of the separation, I desperately tried to hold the space for two parallel realities: on the one hand, I wanted to hold out hope for the salvage of my marriage. On the other, I recognized that I was traumatized and broken – and that I needed to heal.

A month in, I had a panic attack that made it clear to me that it was beyond my capacity to hold both “healing” and “hope”. So abandon hope all ye who enter here. Choose healing, instead.

3. Shift attention away from your former partner

Regardless of how your separation goes down, it’s a waste to expand energy on your ex. This will feel deeply frustrating. You will want to argue over details, assign blame, and defend your actions ... but here’s the cold hard truth: it really doesn’t matter any more.

The longer you keep trying to define yourself in relation to your former partner’s actions or opinions, the longer you keep yourself trapped in the relationship. You don’t want to find yourself “divorced to someone” instead of “divorced from someone”. Resist the urge to rage at your ex or complain about them to other people.

For me, time invested in thinking or talking about my former partner was time away from building my and my son’s new life together. I tried to see my ex as a new person with only one role: a co-parent.

Think of it like martial arts: avoid flailing. Conserve your energy. You’ll need it.

4. Grab reinvention by the balls

This may be the best opportunity you’ve had in years (or even decades) to re-assess where you’re at, who you are, and who you want to be.

My divorce meant a very abrupt disintegration of domestic systems I’d had in place for years – childcare, chores, scheduling, finances. Once I’d gotten over the shock, I realized I had an amazing opportunity to rebuild them on my own terms. Once the domestic systems were reestablished so my son had a stable home, I shifted my attention to my own internal systems: food, exercise, sleep.

My divorce came with a 50/50 custody split, which meant that suddenly I also had a lot of time on my hands. At first it felt oppressive: I grieved losing so much time with my son, and sat alone in my empty house, hours stretching ahead of me into days. Even my self-employment (which gave me the privilege of a stable income and a flexible schedule) started to make me feel adrift in a structureless, empty life.

Then I started to think of rebuilding that empty life as an epic project. Which brings us to ...

5. Try all the things

In part to deal with my own loneliness and anxiety, I started filling my lonely childless days with trying things to see if they’d help me heal.

I tried boxing and firing ranges, sound healing and reiki. I tried jumping jacks to see if they’d help with panic, sprinting to see if it helped with the fear, making an altar to see if it would help with the existential angst. I tried flooding and doing behavior training on myself, intentionally exposing myself to places and situation that deeply upset me to see if I could burn out my emotional receptors.

I tried sleeping pills from my doctor (who diagnosed me with “acute adjustment disorder”) and indica strains from the local legal pot shop (who didn’t care about a diagnosis). I tried three months of sobriety. I tried floor-length sequin gowns and burlesque instruction from a new age stripper who’s a classically trained ballerina. I tried pull-ups and protein. I tried crying until capillaries broke in my eyelids. I tried grief retreats and keening. I tried weird witchy intention-setting and crystals, and then straight-forward systematic mental exercises and meditation practices.

Some things worked better than others, but I learned a lot.

6. Talk to all the people

When you’re partnered, you focus most of your energy on that one person. Out of my partnership, I had an insatiable hunger for new brains. This started with focusing more energy on my closest bonds: I got closer with my parents than I’d been since high school. Then it radiated out to my friends: they held my hands while I lay in bed sobbing, and a year later I’m the one holding hands as they go through their own divorces and illnesses and traumas. There is no longer time for small talk.

From there, I radiated out to strangers: I started complimenting randos on the street, just because I needed to see someone smile.

Then I started inhaling people’s stories: the queer former-cheerleader, the opera singer, the tree climber, the corset-maker, the pin-up model with PTSD, my mountaineering accountant going through her own divorce, on and on and on. As I made more friends, I absorbed all their tales and my circle of beloveds got both wider and deeper. My sense of place in the world broadened.

7. Know that it gets better (even if you absolutely don’t believe it)

One of the hardest parts of my post-divorce depression was dealing with the feeling that the pain was going to last forever. The hopelessness! The darkness! It engulfed everything: you feel bad, and you will feel bad forever. Your brain simply cannot fathom that it is not the case.

You can’t convince yourself of this in the moment, but just let the reality float out there until you eventually feel it: it gets better. Even if all you can do some days is tread water with one nostril above the water, know that there is a shore out there somewhere.

You won’t find it; it’ll find its way to you.

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