If you are recently divorced you will know the familiar question: “How are you coping?” The reason people ask is because divorce is about identity: who you are, what you need and how you rediscover your identity to rebuild your life after the marriage is over.
Some people choose to remain the victim of their partner by holding onto feelings of self-pity, anger and bitterness long after they are divorced. The problem is that people who do this become increasingly unhappy and their energy drains.
Others, no matter what age they are, see divorce as a new lease of life, an opportunity to reclaim who they are, irrespective of how protracted or painful the process was. “Divorce was a major life change for me,” says 45-year-old Soweto entrepreneur Cebi Zwane, who married when she was 25 and divorced four years ago.
“I knew I had to get out, but it was hell breaking the illusion of a stable home to our three teenagers, and separating from my ex to create a new life. Four years later and assisted by a professional counsellor, I am finally settling into my new identity as a single woman and beginning to feel at home with my new life.”
The path of rediscovering who you are post-divorce is painful but if you work through the pain and let it run its course, it will guide you to retrieve the parts of yourself that you sacrificed in the marriage, says Joburg-based emotional coach, Stephanie Vermeulen, author of EQ: Emotional Intelligence for Everyone and Stitched Up: Who Fashions Women’s Lives.
Where there are children involved, she says, “you need to let go of any thoughts you might have that you should have stayed married for their sake”. Invariably the children knew something was very wrong and probably blamed themselves when their parents were estranged or fighting. After the divorce, keep reinforcing that it had nothing to do with them and keep telling them how much you love them.
Apart from the emotional stress of deciding to get divorced, and breaking the news to her teenagers, Zwane was married in community of property. “I was the one making the money. My husband had lost his way, which meant I paid heavily financially in our divorce settlement.”
Despite this, she went ahead and “really celebrated” the day she received her divorce papers. “I must say I was expecting something with a gold crest because I had fought so hard for it but it was just a plain old piece of paper that comes out of a printer.
“Having spent time in the divorce courts, I also couldn’t believe how many black people get divorced these days.”
Zwane says her parents are in their seventies and still happily married. “They are great together and they know each other so well. There is something really beautiful about that. I had to accept that this is not how it was going to be for me.
“I don’t even know anymore if I would want to get married again, although part of me still thinks marriage is a good thing. If I get into a relationship now, it will be different for me because I am no longer a pretty young thing. Good companionship would be an essential element.”
For the past four years she has focused on her career and her children, who accepted the divorce far better than she thought they would. As teenagers they just got on with their lives.
“They live with me and I am grateful that my ex-husband has remained a good father to them. I have not reached the stage where we might be friends and I’m not sure I’ll ever get there,” says Zwane.
Four years later she is finally on a roll. “I am going to start losing weight and focusing on the new me. Part of the new me is to spend one week alone at home every year when my children are on holiday.
“I create absolute silence and spend time with myself. ‘Solitude is the soul’s holiday’ is an expression I like to use.”Through solitude and her “ongoing balancing process”, Zwane says she has come to realise the hardship of her marriage and divorce had a positive side because it strengthened her.
Strength is a term that frequently comes up when men and women discuss coping with divorce. One of the big post-divorce issues is to deal with the tension, explosion of emotions, anger, disappointment, resentment, fear and guilt men and women experience during their failing marriage. Facing these emotions requires strength, Vermeulen explains.
Many people simply “numb out” to avoid facing these feelings. They turn to alcohol, prescription or non-prescription drugs, overeating, TV-holism, excessive partying, excessive exercising, workaholism, anything extreme. A healthier outlet is to seek some form of counselling or therapy to deal with your emotions.
Says Stuart Rothgiesser, a Cape Town-based communications strategist: “I was divorced six years ago at the age of 34 when most of my friends were either getting married or having children so it wasn’t easy to socialise during that time because we were in such different spaces.”
He joined a men’s group to find direction. “The group I joined, called the ManKind Project (www.mkp.org.za) , helps men find their inner strength by connecting with their emotions, and finding out what it means to be a man, which is something few South African men are encouraged to do,” he explains. “Men are mostly taught that you can’t be straight and sensitive, but that is counter-intuitive and destructive.”
Six years later Rothgiesser is committed to his work and interested in life again. He feels that he lost both of these qualities when his marriage started to fail.
After your divorce, make sure that you give yourself time and space to be whoever you want to be, Vermeulen advises. It takes time to rediscover yourself and work through your emotions.
If you jump straight into another relationship, you might attract someone similar to your ex and recreate a situation similar to your previous marriage.
Men are particularly vulnerable to this and will often remarry soon after their divorce as they are socialised not to deal with their emotions. The feeling of falling in love again is distracting but deceiving because you land up taking the baggage from your past into the new relationship.
Rothgiesser says it took him a good three years to get back on his feet. “There is a honeymoon period of great self-exploration just after divorce or separation, and then the reality sets in.”Cape Town-based writer Laura Twiggs and her ex-husband had been separated for well over a year before the divorce came through. They did not have children.
“My divorce was granted on Monday, August 3, 2010. I think I felt happier then than I did on my wedding day, when I was beset with anxiety about whether I was doing the right thing. There was no such doubt when it came to my divorce,” says Twiggs.
She was not as sure about how she would cope once she was divorced, but has since come to realise that her “coping” was put to a far greater test in the death throes of a marriage that wasn’t working than after her divorce.
“From the time my ex-husband moved out of our home, the coping skills that served me best were those I’ve never been at all good at: opening up emotionally to others, asking for help and expressing vulnerability,” she explains.
She started inviting friends over – which she had stopped doing when the marital home became a site of anger and conflict. Having friends around her made the world of difference; almost as much as the therapy she entered, which is another form of asking for help, and one she highly recommends.
Her friends offered a listening ear and stepped in and made practical changes, such as transforming her study into her new bedroom to separate her from the space she and her ex-husband had shared for seven years.
“I opened up and dropped my need to be in charge,” says Twiggs “It’s odd to think that a coping skill might be letting other people take the lead, but I am thankful this period taught me that I didn’t have to be so self-reliant.
“At the same time I am so grateful that I have never depended on anyone else for my financial wellbeing. I am sure I would be experiencing all this very differently if I was not financially independent.”
In the months that followed the divorce Twiggs started feeling confident enough to explore new social arenas without a partner or husband. Her sense of play and frivolity began returning. She started taking greater care of herself and her appearance, and welcoming adventure. She began stepping out of her safety zone, going out dancing again and taking a road trip alone.
And then there are her dogs and cat. They provided comfort and entertainment throughout. “All of these things have put a huge and welcome distance between myself and my marriage, and I can honestly say that after just six months of officially being a ‘divorcee’, I’m no longer ‘coping’. I’m living a new life, and thriving.” - The Star