Divorce is exceeded on the stress scale only by the death of a spouse, and that's an average divorce.
Yours may be worse, but you weren't made to live in guilt.
Once you're past the hardest part,s to maintain your employment and the rest of your life with the pins knocked out from under you.
That's difficult, but eventually you'll search for ways to move beyond.
Here are five ways I've found.
1.
Negotiate a Truce Even If You Have to Reconstruct the Narrative In the difficult scenes that surround a breakup, at some point we realize the marriage is going to dissolve.
The two parties tend to be furious with one another, riding a roller coaster of fight and flight with hints of resignation.
Angry outbursts are almost unavoidable.
As difficult as it may sound, this is the best time to negotiate a truce.
Send out a peace envoy.
Even if you want to continue to work on the marriage, it's time to stop fighting and start making what you can of your new life.
Competing narratives, often self-serving and self-protecting, develop during a breakup.
Possibly you've been arguing for the narrative that you firmly believe in, the one that supports your own actions.
You may have even developed talking points, like a politician.
It's 'who you are;' your view of the world.
But your view hasn't prevailed.
It's time to let go of your talking points and create a new narrative of what's happened, balanced between your view and the view of your spouse.
Some marriages simply can't continue.
If there's child abuse, repetitive violence or alcoholism, for example, a spouse must almost surely leave.
Even if divorce has come into play for less compelling reasons than those listed, this might be the time to mentally re-cast the breakup as inevitable.
Tell yourself, "This was unavoidable," even if you don't believe it.
You do this to lessen blame and mitigate guilt.
Once the other party understands you're moderating your views, tensions will diminish.
2.
Build a Team-Friends, Counselors, Eventually a Lover True friends are invaluable at any time, and the need for them becomes even greater during a divorce.
A 'Leavee' particularly needs someone to confide in, a friendly listener.
It's hard to underestimate the value of a friend who can give you a loving combination of nonjudgmental support and reasoned advice.
Friends can only take you so far.
At some point, if you can afford it, it's smart to seek professional help.
On the legal side, once a spouse hires a lawyer for representation, the other pretty much has to accept that the legal side of the breakup will be adversarial.
If that hasn't happened, you may save a lot of expense and grief by finding a mediator you both respect.
At some point, too, most people need a therapist.
A professional can point out patterns that the untrained eye neglects and consult on or prescribe medications.
Certainly, professional help should be consulted when there's even a notion of suicide.
As a personal note, at my lowest point I found myself thinking 'if it weren't for the kids, I'd probably give up.
' A psychiatrist started me on antidepressants, which I took only for a few months but may have saved my life and the mental life of my kids.
Finally, while in no way do I recommend promiscuity, once the breakup-dust has settled, a lover can go a long way in re-proving one's sense of self-worth.
A therapist told me that this may be difficult for women, but the old axiom that, in order to get through a divorce, a person needs three helpers-a good friend, a good professional, and a good lover-seems to be pretty solid advice.
3.
Honor Commitments to your Children and Keep Them Out of the Middle If you've told your child that you're going to pick them up at ten o'clock on Saturday and you show up at 10:20, those twenty minutes may be the longest minutes of their week, proof that you don't care.
They may see it as proof that you never did care.
It may be theoretically impossible to keep kids out of the middle, but if the parties make a concerted effort the damage can be minimized.
My understanding is that many family law judges are listening closely to kids by age eleven.
By the time they're thirteen, kids pretty much get to decide where they'll live, on what schedule.
But understand "Rule A" for most children of Divorce.
They didn't choose to break up the family, and they don't ever want to say 'Mommy is right,' or "I want to live with Daddy.
" They may think it, but don't make them say it.
My children wanted to be as neutral as the Swiss.
"Fifty, fifty," one of mine would repeat emphatically.
What can you do to help them maintain their neutrality? The most obvious thing is not to put them in the middle, even on little things.
Don't turn to a child and say, "I know I'm supposed to have you home by four, but with your friend here, why don't you call Mom and say we'll be a little late?" 4.
Switch Roles-Can the 'Leavee' Mentally Become the 'Leaver'? When a marriage starts to unwind, life is much easier for the person who initiates the divorce, the 'Leaver.
' They've raised the stakes earlier and have the luxury of orchestrating the process of informing their mate.
The 'Leavee' often feels ambushed; the person they trusted most in life wants to abandon them.
This change requires some difficult mental gymnastics.
The leaving spouse may not want their power position usurped.
The challenge is to take responsibility for the divorce and actually envision yourself as the initiator.
If nothing else, thinking through this role will help you abandon 'victim-thoughts' and envision more powerful courses of thought and action.
5.
As You Heal, Concentrate on Your Long-Range View The divvying-up of money and goods at the termination of a marriage is one of the most difficult parts of divorce.
In most states, divorce is "no-fault," so it should be straightforward: the assets generated during the period of the marriage are split 50/50, and formulas determine income equalization.
But it's never quite that easy.
Who values the assets? If two appraisals are miles apart, what happens? What constitutes "income"? How will college expenses of the children be split? Sticky items have to be decided individually, at the most difficult of times, often making the degenerating relationship even worse.
Family law doesn't typically make provisions for children's education past high school.
That may be glorious news from your financial planner's perspective, but if you've raised your children with the expectation of college, the divorce proceedings might be a good time to ensure their educations.
You could, as part of the settlement, indicate that you'll participate in funding.
If, for example, you marry and your new spouse doesn't see this as a legitimate expense, you've already established your conviction with the divorce agreement.
"Sorry," you can say.
"I already signed the papers.
" While you're taking the long-term view financially, it might be a good time to work with a therapist to see how the divorce fits into the other events of your life.
Perhaps, like me, you've got kind of an 'emotional glass jaw,' whereby it's harder for you than most to rebound from a hard emotional hit.
Someone who had to deal with abuse or alcoholism as an adolescent can find a divorce particularly difficult.
Psychologists talk about a 'narcissistic wound,' where someone's sense of self-worth is decimated early in life.
A powerful blow like an unexpected divorce can put them back in their teens overnight.
Their recovery will be difficult and could take many years.
I'm convinced the key to long-term mental health is forgiveness.
Both parties make multiple mistakes in a divorce.
The obvious necessity is to forgive your spouse his or her mistakes; less obvious is that, in order to thrive, you also must forgive yourself.
-Kevin is author of "Nineteen Poems Around a Divorce and Beyond," a book that has helped many through divorce.