Divorce Emotions

A very wise coach told me when I was first starting out to always remember that divorce decisions are based on emotions for the people going through when all decisions should be based on logic. The difference between a logical decision and an emotional decision is that without emotions clouding decision making the best outcome can be reached quickly and reasonably. This is one of the main reasons to hire a solicitor, someone to act and speak for you without emotion and to deal with the legal aspects with a peer who is also unemotional. Unfortunately this doesn’t always work for a myriad of reasons.

Emotions are different for everyone, as marriage is different for everyone and the emotions differ greatly between the “leaver” and the “leavee” even if the marriage was terribly unhappy or separation was definitely on the cards. People will all put up with different amounts of unhappiness, boredom, inequality, abuse, etc to keep a marriage together. Marriage means different things to most people and it is when the meaning of the marriage no longer applies to the marriage that one or both people decide to leave.

Let’s take a look at some of the most common emotions that will be experienced during the divorce process. You may not experience all of these but they are good to study to get a picture of how your spouse may be feeling and thus the difficulties in reaching outcomes in the legal aspects of your divorce.

I Can’t Get My Head Around This

The shock of being told that your marriage is over, that your life is going to change and nothing will ever be the same after this moment causes great emotional shock in most people. The way they express it is another thing all together.

What does happen for everyone who gets some sort of large emotional shock is that a rush of chemicals is produced in the body and floods the blood stream being taken to every cell in the body. The verbal word has just become a physical and emotional reaction.

The result of shock is a feeling of helplessness and vulnerability wrapped up in a splintering of your sense of security. The trauma comes from feeling frightened and helpless and your subjective emotional response to the event.

Remember the way a person behaves to the shock announcement that their marriage is over may not seem to be overly emotional but that does not mean that shock has not set in and rational thought is not present for the time being.

If you are going through the shock of divorce or separation here is what you can do to make it a little easier.

• Let other people help you and comfort you.
• You need to feel safe, so if necessary, stay with friends or family for a while.
• Do not be hard on yourself and give yourself time to adjust so you can cope when you need to.
• Recognise that you are in shock and need to cope with that before you can cope with any decision making.

Shock can last for from a few days to many months and the helplessness that comes with it may be debilitating at times. There may be physical side effects like lack of appetite or over eating, insomnia or being tired all the time to name just two. If you find yourself physically doing things that you don’t normally then accept that you are in shock and will not give yourself a hard time on top of the overall divorce situation.
Being kind to your self is good medicine.

Mood swings are really common in this phase and you may find yourself swinging from optimism to deep depression within days or even hours. You may alternate between panic, fear, rage, outrage, excitement and hope and not be able to control these or hold onto the emotions you would prefer. Unfortunately it is all common and will get better with time.

Reach out to your children; they will be having the same disoriented emotions as you. Be honest with them about how you are feeling without playing the blame game or belittling the other parent. It is important for your children to be able to express their own emotions to you so they will be able to get on with their job of being a child, not being a sounding board.

If you are not in shock but you feel your spouse could be then give them the space and safety to come to terms with the separation decision before you ask them to make rational decision about finances or children. In the long run you will be saving yourself heart ache. Obviously, decisions have to be reached and sometimes quickly so use all your discretion and sympathy when dealing with a person in shock.

This Really Isn’t Happening To Me

Denial is an easy route to take when you do not want to face up to something. A lot of marriages end because one or both partners have been in denial about the troubles in the marriage. Not wanting to look at problems or talk about problems does not make them go away, if anything they become bigger and things escalate. Dealing with issues as they arise is always the best step and becomes easier every time you do.

Denial is not a place you want to be as it is a waste of time to pretend that your spouse is not leaving or that they will not want a financial settlement that will see you worse off or that your children may not be living with you as you want.

Our nature is to avoid pain and that is why sometimes denial is the best emotional route as this way we do not need to seek a right answer when there is not one. By denying the situation you can emotionally save yourself and your family from the pain that is coming. The trouble here is that the pain is coming and you can seriously hurt everyone more by denial emotions.

Facing the facts head on is the path to recovery here. Denial is not a happy place to live as it is a place where no action is taken and everyone is pretending and uncertain. This is not where you want to be. Look at the facts, accept them and then begin to plan around them.

What Do I Do With All This Anger?

Anger is a huge emotion and can be absolutely encompassing especially if you feel your life as you know it has been ended through no decision of your own. It is important to let yourself feel angry but do not let it take over as you need to keep yourself centred to deal with all the aspects of the divorce process.

Letting anger take over and spread out so that everyone you know or your spouse knows is under no illusions about how you feel will not serve you in the least. It will be you that becomes the one avoided and at this time you need friends around to support.

Here are some things you should know about anger:

• Anger is a potent survival tool
• Anger is a response to pain (psychological or physical)
• Anger is a secondary emotion, that means there are other emotions governing it
• Anger is a source of energy
• Angry causes the brain to downshift to a lower evolutionary level
• Prolonged or repressed anger is unhealthy

The most interesting point above is the fact that anger is a secondary emotion. This means there are other emotions behind the anger and these are the emotions that are governing your life while you go through divorce and they are the emotions you should be concentrating on. Fear, frustration and heartbreak, feelings of entrapment or disrespect are but a few of the feelings that can be underlying anger. It is up to you to work out the underlying feelings that are causing your anger and deal with them. If necessary find a therapist or coach to help you.

Anger can be a great emotion to start you on an action plan but make sure you do not use your anger in a negative way such as having your solicitor send out demanding letters that are only going to antagonize and make matters worse. Use your anger to look at yourself and make a plan for yourself and your life. This is a new start whether you like it or not so it is up to you whether you are going to be going along for the ride or driving the engine.

Confide in your closest friends, the one’s that know you well and will not judge, and with everyone else do not talk about your relationship or divorce in depth or with emotion. Your close friends will help you by understanding that it is a phase that you need to get through but everyone else will just see it as gossip. Being the one that gossips will only make you look bad!

Revenge comes from anger. This is not a road you want to go down. Being able to look back and say to yourself that you handled yourself in a dignified manner throughout your divorce is going to be so much more satisfying in the long run than if you have to look back and admit to some ugly behavior because you wanted to get even. And what is even anyway? To hurt and keep hurting – sounds too hard, the best form of revenge is to be happy, really, really happy.

I Am So Scared – I Can Hardly Operate

Fear is a very real emotion for most people going through divorce as the world as they know it is about to change. Fear of the unknown can be quite debilitating, that is why I would never go deep sea cave diving. It gives me the creeps and every horror movie I have ever seen comes together in my fear of this. Now I can live happily with this fear as it does not stop me doing anything in my daily life.

Fear is an emotional response to a perceived threat and having your life turned upside down is threatening indeed. Fear of the unknown, can cause you to react passionately and unwisely because you are reacting to anticipation not reality. Some of the negativities associated with fear that you may experience are poor performance at work, avoiding company and isolating yourself.

Here are just some of the fears you may have going through your head:

• Financial fear
• Fear of being alone
• Fear of being a single parent
• Fear of dating
• Fear of being a single income
• Fear of being able to cope emotionally

The most common fear in intractable conflict is the fear of losing one’s identity and/or security. Fear grows if it is left unchecked. Imagination takes over and things in your head escalate to such fearful heights that action can seem too hard. This sort of fear can also greatly interfere with any legal process you are going through and instead of letting go you try harder to hold on because you do not know how you are going to cope.

The only people to benefit from this is the lawyers, and I have nothing against lawyers, but too often I have seen people fight to the bitter end over small amounts to have it go in lawyer fees anyway. Most people fight harder to keep hold of something instead of fighting to build something. If you need to build a new life then plan how you are going to do that.

Take a good long look at yourself and make a list of what it is you want and how you are going to go about getting it. A plan will help alleviate fear: it will give you written goals and steps to get your life where you want it to be.

How Do I Cope With This Sadness?

Grief is an important part of the divorce process and you will go through some sort of grieving stage no matter if you wanted the separation or not. You will find yourself grieving for the life you had planned that is now never to be. You will mourn for the visions in your head about what the future will hold or how things should be today, all the hopes, plans and dreams that you shared as a couple. These images are your own little album of life and the future. You obviously do not see things the same way as your partners, children or friends but your visions keep you on track doing whatever it is you do.

You may also grieve for the loss of support whether it be companionship and a shared past, financial, emotional, intellectual or social. All these experiences are the culmination of a marriage even if that marriage was not especially good or satisfying.

When you go through a divorce everything usually disappears, the love, the spouse, the house, the parenting, possible children not ever born, the finances, the future, maybe the in-laws, some of the friends, etc. What is there not to grieve about?

When divorce is discussed it is usually to do with the legal process or the children or bad behavior, grief is rarely a topic that comes up in divorce and this is a shame as everyone goes through it.

So what are some of the signs of grieving?

• Feel physically worn out and shattered
• Extreme up’s and down’s of emotional control – happy one moment and tragic the next
• Can’t think straight and forget things
• Can’t stop crying
• Don’t want to eat. Food makes you sick (while grieving people tend to lose up to 40 pounds)
• Get every illness going around
• Can’t sleep
• Want to sleep all the time and yet are still tired
• Over indulge in alcohol or other drugs trying to not feel
• Lost interest in daily life – your job, home and physical appearance
• Feel guilty about everything you did or didn’t do and could have done differently
• No libido
• Do not take proper care of yourself – hygiene may be suffering
• Go over and over the past to no avail
• Make the break up your only topic of conversation
• Don’t have the normal array of feelings – feel like you have shut down
• Feel extremely alone

Grieving takes time and everyone is different so you need to give yourself time to feel the emotions and work through them. In time your grief will lessen and you will be able to make plans and move on leaving the past behind and making a new vision and future.

If you can grieve together that could be really healthy and uniting. Often this is not the case, so recognize that you are both grieving for a way of life that has ended. Both of you have now to pick up and reevaluate the future and what it holds.

Always remember that life is still being lived and your future is in your hands and can be what you want it to be.

I Didn’t Think I Was Capable Of Hate – I Was Wrong

Dr. Sigmund Freud defined hate as an ego state that wishes to destroy the source of its unhappiness.
I think this describes pretty well how hate can come to play in divorce proceedings.

Hate is the opposite of love and as such is the perfect emotion to cling onto when you find yourself at war with the person you used to love or still do (yet desperately wished you didn’t).

When you find yourself in a bitter legal fight that might have gone on for a long time and you cannot see an end, and certainly not a happy one, then feelings of bitterness and frustration turn to hate.

BUT stop and take a good look at yourself and the reasons you are fighting so hard, you will find you also have feelings governing your every decision that may not be logical.

If you have been badly hurt then hate can be used as a defense against more hurt. It is kind of like hit first before you are hit.

The trouble with hate is that it can becomes all engulfing and spreads through you like a disease, you will not come out being the better person or be able to move on into new relationships that will definite you instead of hurting you. Try to let it go.