Now coming to the question that brought you here: how to move on from divorce? While there is no one-size-fits-all answer here, learning to put one foot in front of the other and taking baby steps toward a bright future is the key. Instead of getting overwhelmed worrying about everything all at once, tackle the moving-on process systematically. Prioritize your needs and work toward addressing them.
Dealing with uncomfortable feelings as well as rewiring your brain to heal from the pain are both equally essential for moving on after divorce. And how exactly can you do that? Here are a few expert-backed tips that can help:
# Prioritize self-care to heal and move on
Now that you’re single again, you’ve got to have your back. The pain and the emotional wounds of a failed marriage can become all-consuming if you don’t take active measures to work through them. That’s why prioritizing self-care is crucial at this stage. Give yourself whatever you need to get through this difficult time and find peace, happiness, and joy again.
# Grieve your loss but know when to stop
Life after divorce can feel like a never-ending maze full of twists and turns with no way out in sight. To make matters worse, you no longer have a partner you fall back on and figure it all out with. That can be a scary and lonely place to be in life. Not to mention, you’ve lost a defining aspect of your life. All this change and uncertainty is bound to bring up a lot of negative emotions and uncomfortable feelings.
# Get the logistics of your new life in order Rebuilding your life after divorce essentially means starting over from scratch. When you pull apart two lives that have been enmeshed for so long, it’s only natural that you won’t come out whole. And we don’t just mean emotionally. Irrespective of the state of a marriage, spouses depend on each other for a lot. A divorce means learning to live without that support system.
# Cut out toxic people from your lifeLife has given you a chance to start afresh, and it’s best to do so with a clean slate. As you move forward after divorce, cut out any and all toxic people from your life. We all have people in our lives who, for some reason, seem intent on bringing us down and end up reminding us of instances we’d rather forget. For instance, if you decided to walk away after infidelity, you wouldn’t want your supposed friends to remind you of your partner’s transgression every chance they get or gossip about it.
# Don’t let the divorce pity party go on for too longThe end of a marriage is not the end of possibilities for you. Sure, it is a painful experience but you can’t keep wallowing in negative emotions like self-pity, anger, or bitterness. Irrespective of whether you married young and have no idea what life without your partner would look like or divorced at 50 after spending decades with your spouse, it’s possible to rebuild your life all over again.
# Learn to set healthy boundaries with your ex
Unlike a breakup where partners can just snap all contact and go their separate ways never to cross paths again if they so decide, cutting out a former spouse from your life completely may not be realistic. This is especially true if you’re co-parenting as divorced parents. In situations like these, unhealthy boundaries with the ex-wife or ex-husband can wreak havoc on your emotional well-being and also make it impossible for you to move forward.
# Help your children make peace with the divorceParents’ divorce sweeps through the children’s lives like a hurricane, turning their entire world upside down. As you battle with your own pain and struggles, you cannot overlook the impact of the divorce on your children. Irrespective of whether you decide to co-parent or offer them assurances that you’d both always be there for them, they are bound to struggle with fears and insecurities of their own.