Coping With Being Newly Single

An inspiring read in The Times on Saturday, from writer Justine Picardie.

In her piece ‘Divorce and Separation: A Woman’s View she nails the mindset that develops immediately after a marriage breaks down.

It’s a dignified piece of writing on a very emotive topic, and Picardie writes expertly, without resorting to melodrama, on the phase that follows the end of a marriage, detailing the immense sadness that it brings with it, the recriminations, and the practical fallout of having to pay bills, having to fix the mortgage and having to be strong for dependents.

What caught my eye was Picardie’s likening of marital conclusions to bereavement – particularly due to cancer.It may seem to trivialise the death of cancer sufferers, but there is a truth in her assertion that the two mindsets – that of the recently divorced and that of the grieving widow – are alarmingly similar. Both make you yearn for an unobtainable past, seeing it through understandably distorted and rose tinted spectacles. Your truth can suddenly become nonsensical as you struggle to answer the fundamental question of why this has happened to you.

There is a bereavement process you will go through (I wrote more about that in How To Get Your Ex Back), but just as Picardie notes the good news – that statistically divorcees are unlikely to stay single for long – it’s important to address the point that the loss of a marriage needn’t by any means provoke as much long-term sorrow as the death of a loved one.

Eventually, just as the grieving come to terms with the finality of death, you will come to see that the end could, in fact, be your new beginning. Rather than cut off all hope, the end of a marriage can actually drop a whole world of opportunity on your doorstep. And where the bereaved are reflecting on a person who will tragically never come back, your sad reflections can be altered, so that they become optimistic reflections – and those, given time, can become the roots of your new life.

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