How To Survive Divorce

How to survive divorce with your sanity intact and your happiness beast mode on, is the subject de jour (ooh hark at me and my french ways).

Well I have been there and done that so thought it only polite to share the "how to" bit.

THE BLAME GAME

The issue that first hits the stumps is the

"Who's fault is it"

No matter what you would love to say on this one, whether it be a cheating husband/wife, one half saying the other "just doesn't understand" the answer is very, very simple and the sooner you get this the quicker your happiness and life status quo will return.

THERE IS NO BLAME, PEOPLE JUST CHANGE!

Now, to the spurned lover this will sound incredibly harsh and even somewhat unfair, but it is, and always will be, the truth.

We as humans are ever evolving creatures, I shall put myself in the petri dish here for analysis.   I am a lover of this thing we call life, I enjoy it and think it there to be enjoyed, however my idea of enjoyment and my ex-husbands were quite different.  He loved playing on gaming devices, going to the pub and basically not being very near me.  I on the other hand am a tactile person and had a rosy picture in my head of family days out at the weekend, walking together, cycling together, getting fit together . . . . it took me 18 years to realise my dream would never come true.

The main turning point was realizing the vast chunk of my life had been spent in a pretty much exercise free zone.  Yes, I walked the dog and went pootling with my daughter's on the bike but never even realised our local swimming pool had a gym, and, even if I did would have considered it a Men Only zone.  Skip on a few years to 38 and suddenly I realise I am so unfit it is ridiculous and have spent way too much of my life wishing to be a different shape.  I start looking into fitness . . very cautiously you understand, this was an alien planet as far as I was concerned.  Skip to 39 I made a promise to myself to be fit for 40, this is when my whole world suddenly got turned on its head.  I trained hard, very hard, in retrospect TOO hard I lost ALL of my excess body weight, but in doing so a new passion had arisen, another crack in the ice of an already globally warmed iceberg in the marriage, I adored training, I was hooked.  I wanted more knowledge about it and here lay another issue for this was yet another passion that was NOT shared with my husband.  He was a construction worker and considered lugging plaster boards up and down the place good enough exercise for him.  So, the petri dish develops more globs in it as my changes kick in.  I am no more the happy little round house wife that cooks meals and hopes her hubby will be back before 8pm, I am now a very happy woman realising a passion and realising that her husband is not and never has been the man she actually wanted.  I realise I just don't love him.

Who is to blame here?  Me for wanting more out of life or him for not providing it?  Answer neither of us, we were just different beings with different needs and passions.  No one was to blame, life just happens and we have to deal with that.

 The man I married was not my soul mate, no matter how hard I tried to bully him into it.  As you can see we are both at fault as we were a) not living the life we truly wanted and even worse b) trying just to "tick along" as society says married people with children should stay together for the children's sake.  I say STUFF THAT!!

WE HAVE TO STAY TOGETHER FOR THE CHILDREN 

NO YOU DON'T!!

Ahh the ego such a pampered lover.  It tells both you and your partner the best thing you can do, even though your marriage/relationship is in tatters, is to stay together for children as this is what society dictates.  Yes, of course it is the best thing.  Just like if a child is growing up on the Gaza Strip it may as well stay there in times of non bombing and violence as that is what it is used to!  Sod moving the child to Barbados where there is a chance of peace, tranquility and somewhere to relax, readjust and focus on THEIR little lives.  Let's keep them in the purgatory of being pulled from one parent to the other, constantly seeing or hearing the two people they love rip each other to pieces and having to deal with all the whispered slurs from one, or boths parent about the other.  Let them have their whole childhood focussed, not on their study, their passions or their future but on your messed up relationship with each other . . . anybody seeing a problem yet?

The best thing for you is just the same as the best thing for your child.   MOVE ON.  Yes a divorce is hard on all parties involved there is just no getting around that, it hurts, but here is the readjustment point . . EVERYONE HEALS!  Your children will get through the mess quicker if they are not being used as weapons ie "I'll take the children away from you if you [insert random demand]".  Why not put on your big grown up pants and sit with your child and find out how they feel.  It is worth noting your ego may take the biggest kicking of its life at this point.  Let them tell you who they want to live with for now.

 . . . back to me, my children wanted to stay with their father because he had the big house and a better job.  Fair enough!  I got to see my youngest daughter a few times a week.  Don't get me wrong it hurt like a red hot knife through my soul, but, after precisely 3 months my eldest daughter had moved out to live on her own and my youngest daughter was pleading to live with me, which I grabbed with both hands it has to be said.  It turns out a big house and wallet don't provide the things they truly wanted.  I now live very happily in the smallest house you can imagine with my new partner (who really IS my soul mate) and my youngest daughter.  I never asked for a penny in child maintenance, told my solicitor I did not want any of my husbands earning, I even gave my husband the house we had built, (later found out he had not been paying the mortgage so had to sell it).  The point here is, your marriage is defunct, you have to move on for the sake of your sanity and, if you have children, for the sake of their future.  If you are using your partner's income as your own then it is time for you to stand on your own two feet or at least come to a FAIR decision, but, I guess that bit should be left to the solicitor. Remember the more money you get through the divorce the chances are the richer your solicitor will be!  If you are in the UK and using Legal Aid and get some settlement in the end from a sale of house or whatever, between the solicitor and Legal Aid they will rip as much of their losses back from you as they can in my case £7,000+!  

The moral of today's little literary outpouring is;

We have to learn to move on with our lives.  Stagnating in any situation that makes you unhappy will turn to depression, which in turn will end in illness, it is how our bodies and minds symphonically work.  Surely it is better to take responsibility for your own life, to live by design not by default, to stop waiting for others to pick up your slack and to realise the best money to have in your pocket is not that gleaned from someone else by a solicitor, but that you have made by yourself.  Divorce is as hard or as easy as you want it to be, the trick is not to push so hard at each other but learn to bend without breaking.  Life is full of lessons and we just have to be aware enough to realise they are being taught.

Right, I am off now to hug my soul mate and make my daughter (who has just passed her triple science exam with 100% allowing her to take it as her GCSE triple option, which in turn allows her to further her life into becoming a vet) her dinner before I cycle into town to teach a fitness class.

Be happy, lose the ego, love life.