Some time ago, I read an article in the Washington Post entitled, “My Parents Divorced Yet Continued to Live Together.” The author, Mekita Rivas, whose divorced parents lived together for 10 years post-divorce, wrote about the confusion and complications of their choices and the impact on her as a child.
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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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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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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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After a marriage fails, it is very easy to be emotionally reactive when interacting with a former spouse.
Emotional hurts (both old and new), disappointments, unmet expectations, sensitivity to facial expressions, tones of voice, and even certain words or phrases can take on a lot of meaning — flooding one or both parents with strong feelings and causing lots of emotional reactivity. Read More
January was “National Child-Centered Divorce Month,” and we can take this opportunity to look in the rearview mirror and ask ourselves what type of parents we have been. Are we parents who provide our children with the best we have to offer—including fostering the healthiest relationship possible with the other parent? Read More