Jeff Zimmerman | My Divorce Recovery

Questions to Ask Yourself After Your Marriage Ends: Whose Needs are They Anyway?

When a marriage ends, all parties grieve differently. The healing process for the divorcing couple often looks and feels very different from the children’s process. The myriad changes following divorce really impact the children. Parents who have been in painful relationships can be very eager to form a new relationship, and for their children to meet the new significant other in their lives. They may feel that their children need to see them in a healthy and happy relationship that they didn’t see during the marriage. Parents may also feel that they don’t have enough time with their new partner and with their children, and seek to maximize the time by spending time altogether. Unfortunately, many parents have a hard time seeing this experience through the eyes of their children and its impact on them.

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Questions to Ask Yourself After Your Marriage Ends: When Are You Mailing Your Love Letter to Yourself?

In a previous blog, I shared the poem Love After Love by Derek Walcott — a beautiful poem about learning to love the stranger that was yourself prior to the ending of your marriage or love relationship. After a relationship ends in divorce, it is not uncommon to yearn for a new relationship, especially if the marriage was devoid of emotional and physical intimacy. It is a human need to seek validation, especially by knowing that somebody else feels that you’re attractive and lovable — an experience that you may have missed for years.

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What’s In a Name?

A beautiful poem by Israeli poet Zelda called “Each of Us Has a Name” begins:

Each of us has a name

given by God

and given by our parents

Each of us has a name

given by our stature and our smile

and given by what we wear.

What does your name mean to you? Is it part of your identity? For many women who divorce, the divorce process precipitates identity choices — and a post-divorce name, and how that relates to a women’s identity, is often one of those choices.

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Questions to Ask Yourself After Your Marriage Ends: Who am I Sharing My Bed With?

In his beautiful ballad, Percy Sledge sang to us, “Take time to know her, it’s not an overnight thing.”

Getting to know someone takes a long time. For many divorced people, there is a strong pull to find a new life partner, a new forever relationship, a new soul mate. Initial excitement during the honeymoon phase of a new relationship can mask problematic aspects of someone’s individual character. We may fall in love with the feeling of being in love or fall in love with our fantasy of who the other person is.

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Strategies for Your Divorce ToolBox: Mindful Movement

The stress of divorce is felt through our emotions–and experienced in our bodies. It’s natural to feel tight and tense in response to common feelings of divorce, including fear, anger, and sadness.

The experience of these emotions can be so powerful and overwhelming that many detach from their bodies. In other words, people separate from these somatic experiences as a defense, especially as a marriage unravels and physical intimacy becomes emotionally painful.

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Strategies for Your Divorce Toolbox: Journaling

It is not uncommon for our thoughts to get stuck in the mud — spinning like a wheel over and over again in our minds. These thoughts often replay the what and the why of the divorce. Over time, they become what we call “stories” or “narratives.” Unfortunately, these explanations usually do not help. They actually can perpetuate hurtful feelings, especially if they are harsh and critical.

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The Importance of Recovering from Divorce

Divorce is difficult to recover from, yet critically important for your own physical and emotional health and that of your children for you to make a full recovery.

Considered akin to the death of a marriage, divorce ranks among the most powerful stressors in adult life because it creates uncertainty in every important aspect of life that was once stable, i.e. work, finances, children, etc. Relationships with friends and family are often affected—and you may wonder about future relationships and if you will ever find love again.

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