Your Post-Divorce Journey Back to Yourself (For Men)

Did you make the decision or did your spouse? There is always an initiator, and then there is the other party, who has to figure out how to deal with the other’s decision. I find that in the longer term marriages, it is more often the woman who initiates, but certainly not always. In these marriages, it seems that the women have been feeling more and more detached from their husbands over a long period of time and the more they try to re-connect with their husbands, the more frustrated they get. In many cases, the husbands are oblivious to their wives’ unhappiness, or if they are aware, they choose to bury their heads in the sand and hope that it will blow over with time. They certainly don’t want to talk about it, open up or share feelings about it – that is something she can go do with her women friends. By the time she starts asking that they go to counseling, there has usually been a long period of despair and there is probably very little hope left in the marriage. If he refuses to go, or goes begrudgingly and doesn’t really participate, the marriage is over. Some men will say that they only initiated the divorce because they caught their wife cheating on them. But if she was cheating, was the marriage very strong to begin with? The reason that women (and men) cheat is because there is something lacking in their marriage relationship. The respectful way to handle this, of course, would be to try to address the problem at home first, try to resolve it, and if it can’t be resolved, end the relationship before moving on to the next one. However, many people are too selfish to go that route. They want to test the waters first, see if they are still desirable and if there is someone else that may be out there before they leave their current relationship. They also may want to try to balance both – they like the family scene that that they have at home with their spouse, but they enjoy everything they are getting from the new relationship on the side – not only the sex, but the newness, the excitement, the attention, the compliments they haven’t heard in a long time, etc. If you initiated the divorce, how long did it take you to make that decision? If it was a long marriage and there was no one “triggering event” that caused you to make the decision, I would guess that it took you a long time to make the decision. After years of spiraling unhappiness, frustration, and loneliness, you finally made the decision and found a way to tell her. There is definitely some relief that comes along with that. Debating it in your head, going through all of the pros and cons, considering all of the possible outcomes (custody of children, financial positions, etc.) and then resolving to go the route of divorce is a huge decision. Even though it is a difficult and sad decision, once it is made, it is somewhat relieving to at least have made the decision one way or another. How many times did you consider it and then say, “No, I’ll find a way to make this work?” only to be frustrated yet again? Regardless of who actually initiates the divorce, some of the feelings are the same across the board: Feelings of failure, loss, rejection, abandonment, and fear. No one walks into a marriage thinking that it will end. Spouses talk about their futures together, growing old together, where they may want to retire, places they want to visit someday, their hopes and dreams and goals for themselves and for each other. When the marriage ends, there is generally a feeling of failure that goes along with it. A marriage is supposed to be a partnership, and we all know that we have to work at it to keep it together. If it ends, does that mean we didn’t work hard enough? Didn’t try hard enough? Didn’t do enough to keep our spouse happy? What went wrong? Why couldn’t I make it work? Why couldn’t I fix the problems? These feelings are really common, especially among all of the over-achievers out there who believe they can accomplish anything and they can fix anything, if they just try hard enough. With all of the plans you had in your head for your future together with your wife now shattered, there will definitely be feelings of loss. Many professionals compare a divorce to a death, and some consider it harder because there is no true finality, especially if the parties have children together and have to continue to deal with each other. You will go through the same stages of grieving your divorce as you would through the death of someone close to you: Denial, depression, anger, grief and then acceptance. There are no set time lines for how and when you will go through these phases and you will move in and out of each phase several times, but the average seems to be about a 2 to 3 year process. If you were the initiator of the break-up, you may have moved through some if not all of these phases even before you announced your decision to your spouse. I see many clients who come in to hire me to initiate divorce proceedings in the “acceptance” phase already. What is actually hard for them to understand is that their spouse, who may have just learned about the decision recently, is probably starting the process from the beginning, which means starting in the “denial” phase. If so, it will be a while before they will be ready to even start talking about the details of the divorce because they haven’t begun to process the concept of a divorce yet and are having a hard time even saying the ugly “D” word out loud. When the parties are in very different phases and on very different time lines, it makes it really difficult to amicably finalize a divorce. In addition to the loss of the marriage and your spouse, there is the loss of the life that you had when you were a married couple. If you are invited on couples’ outings now, you’ll be the third or fifth wheel. Your friends will change, your neighbors will view you differently, you may end up moving to a new home and neighborhood, your financial situation and therefore your lifestyle are likely to change. There is a lot of loss associated with divorce. It’s normal and natural to feel that loss, and it is okay to be sad about it. Grieve it, but then move on. You have a new life now and you need to find a way to embrace and enjoy it. Your life isn’t any worse, you are just on a different path. Reinvent yourself.