Your divorce experience: how did you regain your glow post divorce? (marriage, love)
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When I was preparing for divorce, my main expectation from it was a sense of freedom, closure, and the feeling of a second chance. Only it proved to be way more painful than expected. In addition to the grief, I also felt like I was left without the vitality that characterized me before. I used to be (and want to believe that deep inside I still am) cheerful, positive, upbeat and always smiling, ready to move mountains. Now I find myself more humble, less confident, and definitely more suspicious of new relationships, wondering in the back of my mind, what if it ends up the same way.. I found myself in need of a personal reinvention and finding. What I used to love during my married life (living in the woods, cooking, organic gardening, planning parties, decorating my house, hiking, developing professionally, etc) now feels so foreign to me, and I can't put myself in a position to want to do that anymore. I partly think I went through some depression. ..
Those of you who divorced and came out better out of it, what helped you find your glow and get back on the horse? what helped you keep the hope that it will get better? It's been eight months for me, and I still feel numb, unable to really rejoice, and without a clear idea of what exactly would make me happy. I go to work every day, go to therapy once a week, and see my friends occasionally, but I still feel like my spirit is limp. Thank you in advance for your stories and suggestions!
Regain my glow? Well, I really didn't. My ex did a lot of damage in the divorce. She's a full blown phsycopath, and had a couple friends helping her, who were worse. One even went so far as to plot to kill me, in front of my son. All I wanted was to be left be, didn't happen for a spell. When the lady I'm with now and I got together, the ex really went off her nut. She didn't want me to be happy in any way, and since they know each other, that really lit her fuse.
She couldn't do a thing about it, in the end, though she did try. Pulled some pretty nasty stunts. That's all in my wake now. I suppose I did regain a lot of my "glow" in my new relationship. We don't care about money and material stuff, keep it nice and simple. I think that's the trick, is keeping it as simple as possible. If your lucky, like I was, you'll find someone who thinks the same way.
When you find that sweet spot, life gets worth living again.
For me it was control of the money. I had say on where the money went. I paid bills on time in full. The tension was gone, there was a peace I had not felt in years.
The relief and freedom and getting out of a bad situation that worked wonders.
For me it was control of the money. I had say on where the money went. I paid bills on time in full. The tension was gone, there was a peace I had not felt in years.
The relief and freedom and getting out of a bad situation that worked wonders.
This sounds like my experience too. Not having his tentacles in my finances allowed me to get out of debt and finally get some sleep when I put my head to pillow. When he was around, I would stare out of my head blankly at the ceiling above, listening to him snore before his head even hit the pillow.
Psychopaths have no guilty conscience, I subsequently learned, so he wasn't about to lose any sleep over the abyss of debt he placed us in.
Serendipitously I left my work shortly before I decided to cut him out of my life so I wasn't mentally exhausted as I had been before, working 12-18 hour days. I was able to invest time in thinking about how I wanted to live my life, and he wasn't part of it.
If you can take a sabbatical, it might do the trick for you too. I'm thinking like Eat, Pray, Love, just maybe a truncated version?
For me it was control of the money. I had say on where the money went. I paid bills on time in full. The tension was gone, there was a peace I had not felt in years.
The relief and freedom and getting out of a bad situation that worked wonders.
I can relate to everything SD says.
I'm sorry you're having such a hard time post-divorce, OP. Things will get better, and you'll emerge stronger. For some of us, what you're feeling post-divorce is what we were feeling throughout our marriages. Divorce, though certainly not easy, was like the light at the end of a very dark tunnel.
When I was preparing for divorce, my main expectation from it was a sense of freedom, closure, and the feeling of a second chance. Only it proved to be way more painful than expected. In addition to the grief, I also felt like I was left without the vitality that characterized me before. I used to be (and want to believe that deep inside I still am) cheerful, positive, upbeat and always smiling, ready to move mountains. Now I find myself more humble, less confident, and definitely more suspicious of new relationships, wondering in the back of my mind, what if it ends up the same way.. I found myself in need of a personal reinvention and finding. What I used to love during my married life (living in the woods, cooking, organic gardening, planning parties, decorating my house, hiking, developing professionally, etc) now feels so foreign to me, and I can't put myself in a position to want to do that anymore. I partly think I went through some depression. ..
Those of you who divorced and came out better out of it, what helped you find your glow and get back on the horse? what helped you keep the hope that it will get better? It's been eight months for me, and I still feel numb, unable to really rejoice, and without a clear idea of what exactly would make me happy. I go to work every day, go to therapy once a week, and see my friends occasionally, but I still feel like my spirit is limp. Thank you in advance for your stories and suggestions!
As soon as I moved into my home, with my son, I felt wonderful. That was it. I was so miserable with my ex, that to be off on my own was pure bliss.
Since I was the one that left, I didn't have a huge struggle with the "why" of it all. I felt the guilt of being "the bad guy", but I also felt like the world had lifted from my shoulders.
He is now married. He has been for several years, so I may have done us both a favor.
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. I'm looking forward to these responses.
