Getting divorced is hard. It’s no wonder that most of what we hear or read about divorce and separating a family is negative, sad and angry. But there are a lot of positive things that can come from going through this process, too.
As a society, sometimes I think we tend to focus so much on the negative when a marriage ends that we lose sight of the very positive life changes that can make a divorce so worth going through. Once you get to the other side, there are benefits of divorce for everyone involved - adults and children, alike
As a divorce lawyer in Vermont, I work closely with many people deep in the throws of the toughest parts of the divorce process. Lately, I’ve been asking some former clients to tell me about the positive changes that came out of their experience during and after getting a divorce. I heard many common themes and I want to share them with you.
Independence
Getting out of a marriage - especially a controlling one - can be a journey to independence. And becoming independent of a former partner reminds people how strong they are. Financially, a formerly married person often opens new accounts, refinances their home or buys a vehicle, and they have the freedom to make decisions based on their own needs and desires, rather than always thinking about how it will affect a spouse. This can be incredibly liberating! It’s an example of why divorce, while a difficult transition, can also leads to feelings of strength.
Resilience
Have you met someone who overcame a bad illness and noticed how calm and levelheaded they seem? That’s resilience. It’s the knowledge that she can overcome a life-threatening situation and carry on with life. That same calm strength can be an outcome of successfully moving on from a failed relationship, too. When you’ve learned that you can survive the pain and difficulty of the breakup, things can be more in perspective. People can grow to a point where smaller difficulties don’t seem like a big deal. Anxiety goes down, and perspective grows.
Growth
The struggle of freeing yourself from a bad partnership leads to growth in any number of ways. Emotional stability and openness can result from working through the end of a prior relationship. Many people tell me about what they would do differently next time. These are things like having more open discussions about needs and desires, and more independence in decision making and finances. Former partners feel more capable of making decisions based on what they want in life rather than what they feel they are expected to do. Not surprisingly, life can be more self-directed after a divorce than it was before. And these strengths are helpful far beyond romantic relationships. They also are skills that help with developing close personal friendships and improving relationships with coworkers, family, and others.
Parenting
After divorcing, parents often find an important shift in their primary relationship. That’s because they can focus on being a parent rather than a partner. This is the sentence I hear most often in this context: “I became a better mom.” Although being a single parent is certainly difficult, parents often find themselves more connected with their child than they were when in the midst of a volatile or troubled partnership. When you can’t divide the parenting role in the ways you did as a co-parent, you can develop parts of yourself as a parent that you hadn’t worked on in the past.
The more I speak with former clients about the positive side of divorce, the more I am convinced that divorce is often the best solution for everyone involved. Many people tell me that their new life is filled with laughter and far happier than it was when they were still married.
In my work as a lawyer, helping people during the darkest days of divorce, I find this feedback incredibly inspiring, and I hope that some of my current clients do too. To be sure, it won’t help everyone. But when going through a divorce, some people find it helps to focus on the positive, and to rest assured that somewhere down the line, in the not-so-distant future, they, too, will feel far stronger, independent and happier than they do right now.
Are you going through a divorce in Vermont?
I can help.
Contact Me: (802) 255-1252