Confessions of a Divorcee

Going through a divorce can be one of the most difficult times of your life, but there is light at the end, so if you’ve given up on your marriage, make sure you don’t give up on yourself.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

A divorce will literally consume your life and thoughts, and any mental clarity you had goes out the window. Anyone who’s been through a divorce can tell you how it completely takes over your life, and it’s easy to feel like there’s not much else going for you.

Having been through a divorce myself, I can honestly tell you that I didn’t think my life would get any better, let alone find someone that I could spend the rest of my life with. Every divorce is different and unique to each person, and because of this, there’s no handbook that exists to help anyone fix this situation.

Divorce is something you have to go through alone, and I emphasize alone because there is no one who can make the process any easier for you. Even though I had the support of my family, which I will forever cherish, it has to be the one time in my life I felt the most alone. There’s nothing that can prepare you for the loneliness that you feel during a divorce, and as mentioned earlier, unfortunately, no handbook exists to help you through the process and the struggles.

One thing I can promise you that you will achieve through a divorce is a better understanding of yourself. You become stronger, you learn how to rely on yourself, and most of all, you figure out what you are willing to accept and not accept in a relationship. You start to set standards for yourself, and these standards will become unbreakable. You will be unafraid of being vocal about your high standards, and this itself will liberate you. It may sound cliché, but you almost feel reborn. Again, this all depends on the type of divorce you went through and what the reasons were for the divorce. In my instance, it was infidelity, not on my part. Let’s just say another skill I took away from my divorce was knowing I’d be a great detective.

When I was going through my divorce, I threw myself into my career. It’s the only thing that kept my mind occupied and stopped me from spiraling into a black hole of loneliness and depression. Even though I had the support of my family, I remember feeling like a failure. I’m the eldest in our family, and at that time I was the only sibling married, so you can imagine the pressure I was putting on myself thinking about how I must have let them down. When I think back to this time, I feel like I didn’t help how I felt by expecting judgment from others. If all you think about is being judged, then ultimately, you’re going to make yourself feel judged.

Even though it was a very low time in my life, I wouldn’t change it for the world. It’s made me who I am today, and it made me very careful when it came to choosing my next partner. When I finally decided to start dating again, I realized that the dating world had changed drastically, and I didn’t like it. I dipped my toe in the water and realized it was too hot, so I threw myself back into my career, which was the only place I felt comfortable at the time.

Fast forward to when I met my current husband (which was online, and I’ll share this story another time), and my approach was completely different from when I met my first husband. It felt so good to be in control of myself and what I wanted in life and in a partner. I had no qualms about being straight up with him by telling him things that I would not accept in a life partner. I remember reading out a list I had prepared in my mind of things I would not accept in a life partner or relationship and finishing by saying that if you don’t agree to these things, then there’s no point in continuing to talk. Thankfully, he had more or less the same list as me, and he was absolutely nothing like my first husband.

I remember feeling like I had hit the jackpot. I had never been made to feel like a priority or so important to someone. He made me feel like I was his life, and I can honestly say he’s the best thing that has ever happened to me. Aside from all of the things I learned about myself while going through the divorce, my husband has taught me so much more about myself.

If I had to sum up how I now look at my past marriage in comparison to now, it would be that I had to go through so much pain in order to achieve so much joy in my life. If I had to go through all of that pain again just to get to the man that I’m married to today, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Ultimately, no matter what you’re going through in life that may feel like there is darkness all around and no light in sight, I really do hope you stay strong and see it through so that you can get to everything good that is waiting for you on the other side.