Life Resources

Back to Previous Contents Page

Marriage Breakup

9. To the Already Divorced

A series that considers means of countering Divorce

Introducing this Page   

This page simply speaks to those of you who have already been divorced. If you have browsed other pages in this section it is possible you will be left thinking, so what about me? I am divorced, have I blown it? Have I done wrong? What hope is there for me? What about what they did to me!

 

If you're not feeling any of those things, if you're feeling fine about yourself, you don't need this page – perhaps! However, the Bible says the heart is deceitful and that simply means we don't really know what goes on inside us, so you might find reading through what follows here helpful.

 

On this page we want to deal with the feelings we can be left with after a divorce, especially feelings of guilt and anger, and then wonderings about the future.

 

We will make suggestions but if and how you implement them is entirely up to you, because only you know how you feel and the details of your past, i.e. we can make suggestions but only you can decide whether they will be helpful to you in your circumstances – but see if there is anything helpful here for you.

 

There is one final caveat we want to make before we move on: if your divorce was decades away in the past, any talk about you doing anything in respect of your ex-partner is possibly quite unrealistic. Only you will know whether is was too far back, or your contact with your ex-partner so infrequent, that the path of active steps with them are realistically out of the question.

 

There is a lot on this page so you can either read it straight through on jump down to the parts that immediately grab you in the Contents below:

Contents of this Page

1. Guilt

  

2. Anger

   

3. Taking Hold of theFuture

       

1. The Guilt of Divorce 

 

a) The Problem of Guilt

Contrary to much modern counselling we want to suggest that you face any genuine guilt you have. Much modern counselling tries to escape guilt and tell you it isn't there. The only trouble is that something on the inside of us knows it is, and unless properly dealt with it remains there as a blight upon our lives.

There are thousands of people who have come out of divorces, damaged and scarred. They are walking around with unresolved conflict inside and are desperately trying to pretend that everything is all right, when deep down inside they know it isn't. If you have come out of a divorce without receiving counsel, it is probable that you are scarred and have these unresolved issues within which, if not dealt with, at the least can spoil the rest of your life and, at the worst, can cause all future relationships to blow up. That's how important this subject is.

b) Distinguishing between Real Guilt and False Guilt

But we did say above, genuine guilt! Genuine guilt is real guilt when we have done something wrong – and we know deep down it was wrong – we may haggle and justify ourselves but deep down there is that niggle that knows that if we had our time again we'd rather not do it, because we know it was wrong! Real guilt in this context is where we know we did things that contributed to our divorce coming about, or we didn't do things we could have done to prevent it happening.

 

If we can look back on the events leading up to our divorce and categorically state that we did nothing that contributed to that divorce, we have no guilt. If!   Now the point of saying this is not to make you feel bad, or increase bad feelings about yourself which you might have already, but instead it is to bring out into the open something that needs dealing with.   False guilt feelings are bad feelings about yourself that you have had dumped upon you by someone else, that are not justified . A typical example is the person who has been violently abused by their partner and feels guilty that they contributed to it.   Understand that NO violence is justifiable in a marriage relationship, so nothing you said or did justified what they did to you. You are not guilty of their wrong!   Another example of false guilt is where you had been a good partner but your ‘other half' went off with someone else. The fact that they succumbed to temptation may have had nothing whatsoever to do with the part you played in the relationship. They may have simply fallen to a temptation and nothing you could have done would have stopped it.

c) Dealing with Real Guilt

Now I'm sorry if you're not a Christian, but you're going to have to put up with me speaking like a Pastor, because I am. Hang in with me for a moment and see if it doesn't work for you.   Guilt is always a feeling in respect of a person. If you were the only being in existence and on this planet alone, you could do what you liked, because there is no one else to harm or offend. There would be no possibility of feeling guilt.   Guilt comes when we look outside ourselves. So, deep down you have these feelings of guilt and they are first in respect of God (even if you don't believe in Him – which may be your way of trying to deal with it) and then in respect of the person – probably your ex-partner – with whom you were in conflict.

The way to deal with and get rid of guilt is not to excuse it, but to acknowledge and confess it. Now we've just suggested (and stay with me) that there are two people to be dealt with:   God!   Your ex-partner

i) Sorting it with God

God is easy to deal with if you are genuinely sorry, because if we are genuinely sorry and you tell him so in prayer, He WILL forgive you. Yes, there's a lot more to it than that and you can find that elsewhere on this site, but for the moment that's all you need to hear here

ii) Sorting it with Your Partner   "No! No! No!"

This is the difficult bit. If you really want to clear the past up and be set free from it, then somehow you want to go back to your partner and simply express your sorrow for your part in the parting of the ways.   Now for some reading this, this may seem to an impossibility. (Remember, this is only when you have a strong sense of nagging guilt, and it's probable that you will feel your ex-partner was equally if not more guilty – but you'll have to leave them to sort that, it's not their side of it we're dealing with.)

    

Check out what is being said here: you're not being asked to make up to them and go back to them, you're not being asked to go face to face with them, you're not expecting them to come back full of light and gratefulness,       you are simply being invited to clear your conscience by a letter or some other simple communication that says something as simple as, “I've been thinking about what happened in our past and simply want to say I'm sorry for my part, especially for……” (and list your failures.)

Now you will need to recognise that a combination of your pride, your hurt, your dignity etc. will really struggle against all of this, yet many have found that when they do this, it releases something in them they hadn't realised was there, and they feel a new sense of freedom.

 

If there has been a divorce settlement based upon guilt, many will feel they would be unable to go through the above without threatening the settlement. That is something you need to consider. The above is simply for those who wish to clear their inner selves of the past hurts, to which they contributed, and feel free to be able to do that.

 

d) Carrying out a check on yourself.

  Put aside all you've read above so far, the key question is what do you feel about yourself when you think about your divorce? If you are genuinely at peace with yourself, OK. However, if you feel bad about your part in it, you really should think about doing something about that.

 

Check out the above, but if you're not comfortable with that (and reading it cold on a website is not easy) think about seeing a counsellor.

2. The Anger of Divorce

 

The other side of the coin from guilt is anger, which you may feel deep down if:

•  you feel you were abused by your ex-partner in the whole affair leading to divorce and

•  they failed to acknowledge their wronging to you, and

•  you have feelings of rejection and hurt as a result of what happened.

Questions to ask yourself are: •  Does the anger I feel in my life at present, stem from the injustices I feel over my divorce?   •  Does this anger impinge on my life and spoil it and prevent me from fully enjoying a life free from past hurts?     •  What are the realistic prospects of doing anything constructive about this?

Now if what you've read under this heading so far applies to you, you have to realistically assess your situation and determine what you think is really possible in the circumstances.

 

Because you have acknowledged this sense of being wronged there are two clear paths you need to face: 

i) There is a possibility that there could be healing and resolution (not necessarily reconciliation) between you and your ex-partner whereby you can both be at peace with each other now , OR

ii) Realistically you are not going to be able to achieve healing and resolution and therefore the only thing to do it to put the past behind and press on with a new life.

 

i) There is a Possibility of healing and resolution

   

•  Let's be clear; resolution means that you can come to a place of peace when looking back, because your ex-partner has said sorry for the wounds caused to you.

    

•  Unless there is a strong religious belief in either or both of you, this is fairly unlikely unless the break-up was simply a question of you drifting apart and you both just decided to go your separate ways – in which case you shouldn't have anger to be dealt with anyway!

        

•  The desire here, if it is at all possible, is to be able to go to your ex-partner and, in a non-threatening way, say you want to bring peace to you both over what happened, and what do they think about that.

     

•  To see a possible approach here, you probably need to read the section elsewhere on this site on Forgiveness. If that is so CLICK HERE. It's a difficult path, but if it can be achieved it is well worth it in terms of your future well-being.

   

ii) There is No Realistic Hope of healing and resolution

  

• What we do sometimes with a partner who wishes to bring peace and resolution where their partner has gone off, is encourage the remaining partner to think through a process whereby they consider writing a letter to their ex-partner:

   

• acknowledging their own contributions to what went on (because we can usually find something where we were less than perfect), and saying sorry for that,
• simply declaring the hurt that they received at the time without being condemning,
• declaring that they have now moved on and would like to be at peace about the past,
• asking what their ex-partner thought about that.

• Such a letter does risk opening up the pain of the past and getting an adverse response from the other party, but it does also provide an opportunity for the other party to say sorry and for there to be a new measure of peace brought about.

    

• Such a suggestion does challenge the writer as to whether they have allowed bitterness to so cloud their judgement that this is really an impossibility and, assuming it is a possibility to write, it produces a challenge to the conscience of the other party as to how they will respond to a reasonable letter. The possibility of anger as a defence mechanism in them may be very real, which may take time and reflection to abate.  

   

• If you feel your ex-partner is in no state to receive such an overture because they were so set in their ways (e.g. a wife beater who refused to acknowledge their problem) you need some help to be able to dump the past to enable you to more fully move on into the future in a good way. There are two possibilities:

• The Christian path : Here your belief system believes in a God who is available to help you and therefore your path involves prayer that:

    

• lets the other party go to God for Him will deal with them in His way, and
• asks for grace to be at peace about the past, and
• asks for wisdom to know how to move on in life in a good way. (That may involve doing some of the things below in a prayerful attitude)

  

• The non-believer path : Here your belief system does not believe in a loving divine Being who is there for you and you are left, therefore, to your own resources. You can use the following approach:

   

Determine that you are going to let go the past so that you do not keep having desires (in your mind at least) to get back at your partner.     Write down on a piece of paper all the wrongs you believe they inflicted on you. When you have done that thoroughly, burn it ceremonially, declaring that you let go all the things listed and will never refer to them again.      Write down a list of things you would like to achieve in life now that you have a new lifestyle and consider how you can positively work on these    e.g.1 Maybe you have sole responsibility of the children – recognise you now have primary input into their lives and are the main influence for good in them, and determine to do all you can to help them grow up well. e.g.2 Maybe you are alone now – this is a great opportunity for you to do things that having someone else around had hindered – learning something new, taking up a new hobby or past-time etc.