9 Steps Followed By The Women Who Grow Into Someone Better After Divorce
Divorce doesn't have to do damage.
Curated Lifestyle | Unsplash First of all, if you have survived a devastating divorce, good for you! You might have just gone through one of the worst times of your life. You are on the other side intact. Here's where the women who grow into someone better after divorce choose to reinvent themselves and their lives.
Reinventing yourself is one of the most important things to do after a divorce. It's an opportunity to let go of the person you were in your unhappy marriage and embrace a new you who will go out into the world to live and find love. This is powerful!
I am not saying you must cast aside who you were in the past but a few tweaks could make a big difference in what the rest of your life looks like.
Nine steps followed by the women who become someone better after divorce
1. They take a hard look at who they were in the marriage
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No matter whether someone leaves or is left in a marriage, there were two people in the marriage all along, two people who brought it to the place where divorce was an option. After a devastating divorce, the women who grow into someone better after take a pause and figure out who they were in the marriage and what role their own behavior played at the end of it.
For me, my husband left me for another woman. I was destroyed by the fact he walked out on me. For a while I played the wronged woman card, someone who was abandoned through no fault of my own. Eventually, however, the role of the victim got old and I had to take a good hard look at the woman I had been in my marriage and how the person influenced its demise.
What was I like? I always put my kids first. And the dogs. And my friends. I always wanted things my way. Instead of telling him how I felt, I was passive-aggressive, as shown by a scale in the Behavioral Sciences Journal. I treated him with contempt. I stopped being physical with him in any way. Gosh, looking at myself as a whole, I wouldn’t have wanted to be married to me either.
Of course, my being this way didn’t happen in a void. He was responsible, to some extent, for my behaviors, but this was who I had been and who I could very well take into my next relationship. I didn’t want to do that.
So, to reinvent yourself, you must start at the beginning by understanding who you were before the divorce so you can understand what exactly it is you need to reinvent.
2. They consider how they want to do things differently
Many people go out into their lives after a divorce, hoping things will be different for them. Unfortunately, many people don’t know exactly what specifically being different looks like. They just move forward, living their lives and dating, without any understanding of what specifically they want to do differently.
Once you have recognized the role you played in your marriage, it’s time to dig deep and identify how you want to be going forward. I wanted to be the kind of person who put other people first, at least some of the time. I wanted to learn to speak up for myself. I wanted to understand why I struggled with physicality when I was upset. I wanted to make sure I treated a new partner with respect.
With this consciousness about how I wanted to present in the world, I was able to set out to do so. Instead of throwing things against the wall to see what stuck, I was aware of how I was about other people - how I treated them and how I let myself be treated.
By living consciously, I was able to make the change in myself I sought to make. It didn’t happen overnight but it did happen!
3. They reconnect with the person they were before they got married
I am guessing you are different from the person you were when you got married. I know after 20 years of marriage and two kids, I couldn’t have been further from the girl who got married at 28. That 28-year-old girl, with her hopes and dreams, was still inside me. And, to move forward with my life in a meaningful way, getting in touch with her again was vital.
This is key for the women who want to heal and move on completely after divorce. While it doesn't guarantee you will go back to that person, it's important to at least look back and "make friends" with who that woman was.
When I looked back at my younger self, I remembered how much I loved living in a city. I had been living in the country for a few decades and had forgotten. I was selling real estate at the time of my divorce but I remembered I had always wanted to be a therapist. I had had dogs for 20 years but had always wanted a cat.
So, what did I do? I tried to revisit those dreams and see what I could do with them. So, I became a life coach. I moved to New York City and I got not one but two cats. For a while there, I felt like that 28-year-old girl again, looking to the future with hopes and dreams, which set me off on the path to success in mid-life.
Are there things about your pre-marriage self you might like to revisit? Do it!
4. They rearrange their space
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One of my favorite stories is about a client who, after her divorce, totally rearranged her house. If she had been in charge of the world she would have sold it but she couldn’t so she did the next best thing, she moved everything around.
First, she got rid of everything that held any kind of negative energy from her marriage, even if they were things she felt she “must” keep around for the kids. Then, she swapped the furniture in her living and master bedrooms. She bought herself a new bed and mattress and painted the bedroom walls a light pink, a color her ex always hated.
Before she knew it, she had a whole new space that was all hers. The vestiges of her marriage had been bringing her down, something she didn’t realize was happening, so they were tossed out the door. Lighter and newly energized, she moved forward to get the life she wanted.
5. They do something they've always wanted to do
When we are married, we tend to do married couple things. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s just often something happens after years of marriage. What drops to the wayside are things we want to do that our spouse might not want to do or that there isn't time for.
The women who grow into better versions of themselves after getting divorced take time to do something they've always wanted to do. They find a dream and they work toward it — little or big — in a way they could never before.
What kind of things would you want to do? It can be things big or small. I always wanted to go to Peru. I did. A client had always wanted to horseback ride. She did. Perhaps it's getting a tattoo, dyeing your hair blue, or piercing your nose (something my furniture rearranging client did). Perhaps it's sleeping on the left side of the bed or sleeping later on the weekends.
Truly, doing whatever it is you have always wanted to do, no matter how big or small, is a key part of reinventing yourself after a divorce. After all, part of your reinvention is being someone who has experiences she didn’t have during her marriage, as suggested by studies in Current Issues in Personality Psychology.
6. They spend time with old friends (and new)
For many of us, marriage leads to letting go of some friendships. Maybe it’s because a friend and a spouse didn’t get along. Perhaps it's because of geographical distance. Perhaps it's because of a lack of time. Perhaps it's just apathy. For whatever reason, when we are married, we can let go of people who are important to us.
Now is the time to fix this!
Think about friends from your recent or distant past who it would be fun to reconnect with. I know for a client of mine, getting involved in a Zoom group of people she went to college with was life-changing. They were people with who she had shared a formative part of her life and reconnecting with these people put her in touch with who she was but also inspired her to think about what she wanted to do next. Outside of Zoom calls, she plays tennis with someone she didn’t know well in college but connected within the group. She has traveled to Boulder and California to see other friends. She has plans for a girl's trip to Mexico in the spring.
Now you are single and most likely have a little bit more time to yourself, make an effort to reach out to people from your past, and maybe make some new friends along the way.
7. They get some professional support
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I know few of us dream of spending time getting professional support, whether it be from a therapist or a life coach. After all, we are tough. We can get through these things on our own. But the women who find themselves and build better lives after divorce know that support helps them do that.
More likely than not, you have never gone through a divorce before and, as a result, you have no idea how to manage it. Asking for support from professionals isn't that different from calling tech support when you need help with your computer or a plumber when you've got a leak.
Of course, you have friends and family who want to support you, and those friends and family love you but aren’t necessarily the best means of support. Friends and family are likely to tell you only what you want to hear, which isn’t always helpful. They might also bring their own experience or agenda into their support, like a sister who had a bitter divorce and wants to make sure you do things the way she did so you can get a good outcome, even if it's not the right outcome for you.
Talking to a life coach or therapist will help you get impartial, professional help from someone who has helped others through the experience. They will be supportive but they will also help you face some hard truths, truths that could be the key to you getting through the divorce and being able to reinvent yourself.
Look into finding some support. It doesn’t have to be forever, it just needs to get you through this difficult time.
8. They curate their social media feeds carefully
This is critical. When we are going through a tough breakup, we often turn to social media to find support. After all, there are a jillion people out there who are willing to share their experience and their “expertise” with you. And it’s free.
Unfortunately, what you see on social media only reinforces how you are feeling or the way you are thinking. It doesn’t allow you to learn or grow. The algorithm will connect you with people who are feeling the way you are now: angry, bitter, or perhaps lost. When you see a video of someone ranting about their dysfunctional ex or read angry and bitter quotes, it will only keep you feeling angry and bitter and mired in your pain. When you see those things over and over, it won’t help you move forward.
Instead of spending time on social media focusing on the breakup, the women who bounce back into better lives after divorce seek what is inspirational and will give them hope for the future. Follow their lead by interacting with people who have survived a breakup and are feeling positive, you will absorb their positivity.
9. They work to maintain faith in themselves
A paper in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health showed how doing the work to boost one's self-esteem can create a better outcome after divorce. If, however, the person gets stuck in their poor self-image and sadness over how they perceive they "failed", they will not recover as well from divorce.
The women who recover from divorce more completely do the work to maintain faith in themselves and focus on the aspects of their lives that make them feel good about themselves. Is it simple? No. Is it worth it? Absolutely.
You are still here. You have survived your divorce and, instead of curled up in a ball on the couch, you are reading this, figuring out what is next. You might be beaten down and exhausted but you haven’t given up yet.
More than likely, this isn’t the first time you have been beaten down. You have felt overwhelmed and depleted and maybe even hopeless. You have been through hell and come out the other side at least somewhat intact. Perhaps a little bit battered but you have still emerged.
You will emerge again. The person you are right now isn’t the person you will be forever. You will do what you need to do to move forward and you will get to a place where you will be happy and self-confident again.
If you can have faith in yourself and take the steps you need to take to move forward you will not only survive but you will thrive. I promise!
I know the idea of being able to reinvent yourself after your divorce is daunting.
And I get it! Many many women have been in the boat you are in now, feeling like they have lost their paddle. But, I can promise you, you have it in you to pick up the paddle and move forward in your life.
So, get up off the couch, take a look at yourself in the mirror, and tell yourself you can do this. Because you can!
Mitzi Bockmann is an NYC-based Certified Life Coach and mental health advocate who works exclusively with women to help them be all they want to be. Mitzi's bylines have appeared in MSN, Prevention, and Psych Central.