I remember the moment during my second divorce when I realized I was going to need to grieve the loss of my marriage and heal from the circumstances that caused me to divorce to begin with.
I didn’t want to bring the pain into my next relationship. I wanted to be able to love fully without the fear of pain holding me back.
As the child of divorced parents, I knew the pain of divorce firsthand. I knew its lingering after effects, capable of affecting relationships for decades. I saw my mum never truly get over her marriage to my dad, and its demise. I watched her continue to make destructive choices in her relationships and set herself up for emotional pain over and over again.
So I knew it could take time to properly decouple from my past relationship, to figure out what went wrong, what each person’s part was in it, and to resolve it all so I could move on and be happy again.
In the spirit of transparency, I’ll admit I didn’t know how to do this or do it very well.
After my first divorce, I basically went on a relationship spree, dating several men one after another in a short span of time. I was 22 (I got married at 19) and it was very much like the Taylor Swift song, 22. “Everything will be alright if you keep me next to you.”
Replacing your loss with partner after partner is not the recommended way to deal with divorce or any romantic breakup. But we’re socialized with this idea. Ever heard “Well, there are plenty of fish in the sea”? Or “You’ll soon find someone new”?
I did things a little differently when my second marriage, but not much. I immediately leaped into another relationship. When I decided to divorce, it was with the plan that I’d concentrate my energy on raising my young kids and never marry again.
But then I fell in love with a friend, who was also going through a divorce, and I listened to the universe’s urging that I go with it. Given that isolating myself and protecting my heart from romantic love isn’t a great way to heal, either, perhaps that gift from the universe was just what I’ve needed. After all, we’ve been happily together for almost 10 years now.
But this post isn’t about wedded bliss. It’s about pain.
Broken dreams: what causes the real pain of divorce
The real pain of divorce doesn’t come from the end of the relationship itself. There are probably good reasons the relationship didn’t work out and it may even come with some relief to not have to participate in it anymore. But even with relief, the pain is still there.
We go into every relationship with certain hopes and expectations.
Many of these are reasonable. One of these expectations may be that your partner will be faithful to you. It could be that you’ll be respected, treated kindly, and feel loved. That you’ll build a life together.
We have dreams about what our life will look, especially when it comes to marriage. Hopefully, when you said “I do,” you envisioned celebrating your 20th anniversary together, maybe even your 50th.
When a marriage ends in divorce, these hopes and dreams are crushed. Your expectations aren’t met. And this hurts.
It’s completely normal to be hurt when a major relationship ends. We form emotional attachments to people and it can be incredibly painful when they’re no longer in our emotional lives. Or at least not in a safe and loving way.
There’s probably some physiological explanation for the literal pain of a broken heart. But even the change in routine, in moving to a new house, in not having that person in your life can be hard to adjust to.
It may also be a relief. I mentioned that earlier. A relief to not be in that relationship anymore with all the hard things that caused it to end. I know that’s how I felt when both my marriages ended. Relief I didn’t have to do it anymore. Relief that I could move forward.
Conflicting emotions often means grief
The definition of grief that I use in my work is this:
Grief is the conflicting feelings caused when a familiar pattern of behavior changes or ends.
So those conflicting feelings — of heartbreak and hurt and relief and maybe even hope — are totally normal at the end of a relationship.
How we cope with grief from loss can hurt us more
These feeling often leader to behaviors that, while also pretty normal, are often not helpful.
We tend to do at least one of a few things to cope with the breakup.
- We try and replace the loss too soon
- We isolate ourselves
- We numb or avoid our feelings (with TV, scrolling through social media, working too much, alcohol, drugs, etc.)
None of these things help you heal. Instead, they keep you feeling incomplete, in pain and unable to truly love again.
Rather than being open and ready to start a new relationship, you may feel broken, bruised and determined to keep yourself safe from emotional pain.
To love again, you have to find out what’s still incomplete
If you want your next relationship to be a healthy one, you need to look at what still feels incomplete from your last relationship.
What were the hopes you had for the relationship that weren’t realized?
What did you expect your partner to be like or how did you expect them to treat you that they didn’t?
What dream died because the relationship ended?
How did you want things to be different at any point in the relationship — even at the end? Do you wish you’d behaved different, or that they had?
How could things have been better? What do you wish they’d said or done differently, or done more of (or less)?
What was your part in the relationship not working out?
Awareness is the first step
Until you gain awareness of the things which are making you feel incomplete, you can’t truly move on to another relationship with an open heart. Instead, you’re likely to hold that deeper and tender part of yourself closed to try and protect yourself. You’ll be afraid of the pain, so you won’t be your best self, lessening your chances of having a successful relationship.
It is possible to complete the pain of lost love. And it’s never too late to work through the unresolved grief of any of your past relationships so you can be healthier and more present right now.
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