Married then Divorced

[Ailina]

If your marriage ended in divorce and you didn’t want the divorce how did you cope with it after it happened. Any and all answers are good. Thank you.

Prayer and time, lots of time. It is a grieving process, and can’t be rushed through. I also joined a support group at my church, and found it really helped me. I have made life-long friends through that group, people who can related to the pain I went through. The support group helped me to understand that being a divorced Catholic doesn’t mean I am no longer Catholic.

 

[GWGWGD]

I agree with what Dulcissima said in a previous post about leaving (I interpreted it as letting go of) the relationship. I too filed after many years of trying to save or remake the marriage. I mourn the loss of - what might have been - (sometimes in my mind - what should have been). I am trying to move through/past mourning the - what might have been -. Prayer, a lot of prayer, time in front of the Blessed Sacrament, sharing with our priest have been very helpful to me. In my prayer, I stopped asking “why?”, and started asking “what?”. What am I to learn from this experience, Heavenly Father, that I might better serve you?

My prayers are with you all!

 

[Liberanosamalo]

tmarkh, yes, you are diminishing our pain when you say we’re selfish for our emotions.

I lost someone I thought I loved very much. IT was made worse because it was his choice to publicly humiliate me and take away everything I had. I still live with the grief and the pain and the loss in different ways than if he had died.

And I have no happy memories. I have plenty of regrets of what I could have done better. LIke maybe not marry him at all.

Just because you have known both doesn’t mean you experienced divorce as some of us did. Maybe yours was one of those polite ones where you parted as friends and you were treated with a modicum of dignity by your ex spouse.

But thanks for calling me selfish. Because I didn’t get enough of that from the guy that tore apart my marriage and ruined my children’s home life and left me bankrupt.

We lost our spouses. But unlike dead people, a divorced person can drag you into court every few years just to make your life miserable long after they kill your dreams and your love and your ability to trust.

 

[tmarkh]

Then again, maybe my divorce was not amicable. Then again, maybe my wife did drag my name through mud and slander me every chance she got. Then again, maybe I, too, went through the rejection and dejection of not being good enough. I still would much rather have gone through a divorce and her to still be alive and me suffer through those things than for her to have died to protect me from suffering those things.

I am in no wise diminishing the pain. I feel like those who say it would be better to deal with the death than a living ex-spouse are very much diminishing my pain that I still suffer daily with the loss of my wife. She died way to young. 36. I was only 36.

If you feel like my statement diminishes your pain, then you should certainly see my point that you are diminishing my pain by saying that death is better than divorce.

 

[tmarkh]

I’m not trying to hurt any feelings or call names or sling accusations. Everyone suffers. My suffering when my wife died (and suffering still with the pain of losing her) is the worst suffering I have ever gone through… even more so than my bad and painful divorce.

For you, your worse suffering is from a very bad divorce. I know that they are both very painful. For me, I would choose a bad divorce over a death any day. Both pains are real; both pains are different. You are free to think that your pain might have been less if the ex-spouse had died.

My remark about being selfish was based on the assumption that you would have rather had your spouse die than have to get divorced. And that IS selfish. If that is not how you feel, than I misunderstood and I retract the selfish statement.

Your divorce was and continues to be painful. As does my divorce. The death of my wife, to me, is more painful. Perhaps that would not be the case for everyone. BUT it is not always the case that a bad divorce is worse than a death.

 

[Ailina]

I’m not trying to hurt any feelings or call names or sling accusations. Everyone suffers. My suffering when my wife died (and suffering still with the pain of losing her) is the worst suffering I have ever gone through… even more so than my bad and painful divorce.

For you, your worse suffering is from a very bad divorce. I know that they are both very painful. For me, I would choose a bad divorce over a death any day. Both pains are real; both pains are different. You are free to think that your pain might have been less if the ex-spouse had died.

My remark about being selfish was based on the assumption that you would have rather had your spouse die than have to get divorced. And that IS selfish. If that is not how you feel, than I misunderstood and I retract the selfish statement.

Your divorce was and continues to be painful. As does my divorce. The death of my wife, to me, is more painful. Perhaps that would not be the case for everyone. BUT it is not always the case that a bad divorce is worse than a death.

I’m confused…did the wife that divorced you then die, and you are mourning her death? Or were you happily remarried after your divorce and then that wife died? Or were you widowed first, then remarried?

My ex led a secret life for years before I found out. So you can imagine the shock and betrayal that would have caused, to know that our married life was a complete fallacy and I never knew it. Then he threw it all in my face by telling me that marriage to me was HELL ON EARTH. He could have just left and spared me that kind of pain. So yes, some divorces can be seem more hurtful than if he had died before I found all this out.