Are you trying to muddle through the heartbreak of a divorce? It is critical to understand the stages of divorce to help your heart heal.
While marriage isn’t nearly as revered as it once was, it still holds value. Plus, it’s an important step that couples make. Some people take that step because they love each other and want to build something with their partner. Others rush into it. But that doesn’t change the fact that many people still value the idea of getting married.
The only problem is that divorce rates are higher than ever. And while a divorce is necessary to ensure people do not stay in unhappy or unsafe situations, it doesn’t mean that it does not affect people. After vowing that you’ll be with someone forever, not having them in your life can be hard to imagine. So, going through all the stages of divorce, grief can seem inconceivable.
Divorce symbolizes the loss of your life as you knew it. You end one chapter, and even if you’re preparing to start another, it doesn’t feel like you’re progressing. It feels like you gave up all your happiness, and you will never find it again. When you get divorced, it feels like you are letting go of the love of your life. And even though that’s probably not true, you have no way of knowing that at that moment.
Even if you get divorced for the right reasons, you still experience a loss. True, the person you are divorcing isn’t dead, but they’re out of your life, or they’ll never be in your life like they used to be. So, it’s only natural to go through a period of grief right after a divorce. But how does this grief manifest? And how can you get over it and allow yourself to heal?
The 5 Stages of Divorce Grief
Grief goes through the same stages in almost all instances. The only thing that differs is how these stages manifest. But the steps you go through when you lose someone are the same as those you go through after a divorce. While there is no way of comparing these experiences, psychologists still found that you can categorize them differently.
1. Denial
Whenever a life-changing event happens, the first thing you feel is denial. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you refuse to acknowledge the truth, though that might be a part of it. In most cases, you might rationally understand what’s happening but cannot process those emotions. This occurs because the brain often cannot deal with a change that big and that sudden in a short time frame.
So, it denies reality to shield itself from all the grief, anger, and hurt it knows it will have to feel. You have probably gone through this stage, even if you haven’t gone through a divorce. What you think when you are in the denial stage of your divorce is similar to what you’d feel when going through a breakup. A divorce is a breakup but with some added legal steps if you think about it. So, you are probably familiar with how denial feels.
In this stage of the divorce, you’ll keep telling yourself that your partner was not serious about wanting to separate. That they’ll eventually realize divorce is not the answer and come back. Even if you initiated the divorce, you could still go through the denial stage. There’s not much you can do about this stage other than staying rational and letting go of any hope. If you hold on to the idea that your partner …
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