The Top 10 Ways to Quickly Recover from Divorce (or a Break-up), Get Your Life Back on Track and Guarantee a Bright Relationship Future for Yourself

Originally Submitted on 6/8/2000.

Divorce is a devastating ordeal for most people. Recovery from divorce can be a difficult, treacherous road. At times, people don't recover at all. Others, although appearing to be past their divorce, still carry the pain of the breakup and the fear of getting close to a partner again.

Here is a different way to approach divorce recovery, a way that will allow you to deeply heal. The following ten steps will show you how to recreate your life and your relationships to be far more fulfilling than before the divorce.

Are you a True Love Magnet? To find out, take the True Love Magnet (TM) Quiz at www.WhatItTakes.com by clicking on the "Relationship Quizzes" link found at the top of the page.

1. Grieve deeply and completely.

Many times people are terrified of dark feelings, such as sadness, depression, anger, etc. The intensity of these feelings can seem strong enough to take a hold of your soul forever. The key point to remember and trust is that although these feelings are indeed strong, they will not last forever. Nor will feeling these feelings in some way damage you or destroy you. You will feel better once you allow yourself to feel.

2. Grieve the future your marriage had, which now will never be.

When people marry, many dreams and hopes are created. These are not simple to let go of, because we use dreams and hopes to guide us to our future. Find out what dreams and hopes were in your marriage. Then separately grieve each one. Know that your dreams and hopes are not dead. You will recreate them again with someone else or for you alone.

3. Identify and spend time with the people in your life who know how to listen to your feelings with complete love and acceptance.

When recovering from divorce, or any devastating loss, it is critical for you to be allowed to speak your mind, as much and as often as you need to. Many people are not comfortable listening to others' dark emotions. Listening to someone else's anger, fear or grief often makes us afraid that their emotions will overtake us. This is why seemingly loving, caring people often try to "fix" us when we share about painful feelings. It is important that you are not interrupted or given advice - speaking is how you will heal.

4. Understand what happened in the relationship.

In order for you to be able to come to terms with the divorce and to move on to creating a wonderful life, you need to understand what happened to lead to the breakup. This is the part of your journey where you will have to be extremely honest with yourself. It will do you no good to blame your ex-spouse or yourself for the divorce.

You need to clearly understand the dynamic you and your spouse created together. You need to clearly trace the threads of the events that led to the animosity or the cooling off in the relationship.

5. Understand why you chose your former spouse to be your partner.

People choose relationships for many different reasons, the most popular being "love." What most consider being in love is not love at all. Here are some of the reasons why people choose each other:

A deep need to be wanted
A life-long struggle to meet someone like his/her parents and save them or change them
A fear of being alone
Infatuation
Material security
For the good of the children, etc.

If you can honestly examine and understand why you chose your partner, you will be able to see the beginnings of the divorce at the inception of the relationship. You will also start to build tools to be able to choose differently the next time around.

6. Forgive your partner, forgive yourself.

Now it's time to forgive. Understand that you and your partner did the best both of you could. Understand that even when you were doing things to hurt each other, it was still the best you could do at the time. Perhaps the painful actions came out of self-defense, or self-preservation. Perhaps they came out of revenge for the pain you felt the other was inflicting. Forgiveness is a sure way to free yourself up to have a wonderful life in the future.

7. Create distance between you and your ex-partner. Spend three to six months with no contact.

One thing that is so difficult about divorce is no longer having another person around, no longer having your best friend and confidant. It is difficult to let go of the everyday interactions and the friendship. And yet, if you are to heal well, you must create three to six months of no contact (or as little contact as possible) with your former spouse. This will give you the opportunity to grieve and work through your anger. It will also allow the relationship between you and your ex-partner to begin again (if at all) on a different footing.

8. Create a supportive community.

Going through divorce means you have just lost your best friend and partner. You need to be listened to. You need to know that you are wanted and loved. For these reasons, having a supportive community is critical to your recovery from divorce. A community can be a church or synagogue group, an on-line community or a group of friends whom you ask to support you. Make sure that your community clearly knows that you need their support and how you need to be supported.

9. Resolve to learn everything about you and relationships.

If you are to create a better relationship in the future, without repeating the same mistakes, you need to understand and examine every aspect of relationships in regard to yourself. You need to know what you want in a relationship, what kind of partner would be best suited for you, what you absolutely need in order to feel satisfied, and what you absolutely will not accept.

10. Take great care of yourself in the process.

Divorce or break-up recovery is a stressful, painful and life-changing process.

When people are going through fundamental life changes, they must take care of themselves extremely well. A good rule of thumb is to treat yourself as if you have a slight cold - delegate or reduce your workload, eat well, exercise gently and get lots of rest. Add in extras like a massage, taking a creative class, doing activities that you consider fun, etc.

Although recovering from divorce is not easy, you will succeed and come out of the process much better for it, if you follow the above systematic approach. Much success to you!

This article was originally published by Coach Rinatta Paries in The Relationship Coach Newsletter, a weekly e-zine for people who want fulfilling relationships. For singles, the newsletter will help you attract your Mr. or Ms. Right. If you're in a relationship, you will learn to create more closeness and intimacy with your mate. To subscribe, go to www.WhatItTakes.com

---

About the Submitter

This content may be forwarded in full, with copyright, contact, and creation information intact, without specific permission, when used only in a not-for-profit context. For other uses, permission in writing from CoachVille is required. Questions: email topten@coachville.com

Please use your browser controls to close this page & return to the selection page, or click to return to Top 10 home page.