The Real Divorce: Cutting the Emotional Ties that Bind

Lessons for any divorced woman on how to sever bonds with their ex-husbands

Your divorce decree is only step one in moving into a new life after divorce. The real divorce is the cutting of the emotional, mental, and physical ties that still bind you to your ex-husband. This is the real work of divorce recovery: becoming a single woman possessed of confidence, self-esteem, an enthusiasm for life, and most important, a complete break from the emotional turmoil that led to your divorce in the first place.

All too often, women experience the same conflicts with their exes that originally led to divorce: constant arguments, reactive behavior leading to emotional upsets, old patterns of reliance, the barrage of destructive barbs aimed at your self-esteem, and deep hurts. To be truly divorced, you must put forth great effort and inner work that will sever your ties to your ex, and you must build a structure that will facilitate that work.

Let me give you examples: You and your ex have children together; therefore you must be in contact with one another on a regular basis. Unfortunately, your discussions with him always end in an argument. Nothing happens easily. The deep resentments and hurts suffered in your marriage and divorce remain intact. You each know each other’s hot buttons and continue to push those buttons, resulting in upsets. It’s the old e. You continually get sucked into this abyss.

The Real Divorce: Cutting the Emotional Ties that Bind

If this is the case, you know that you have not divorced on an emotional level. You are an ex-wife, as opposed to a divorced woman. Somewhere inside of you is still an attachment of some sort to either your marriage or your ex. You need to look inside to determine where you are still tied to him.

Acceptance of your new place in life is mandatory. Acceptance comes from acknowledging that your marriage is over with no hope or wish for it to continue. Acceptance allows you to live in a way that reveals a freedom from the past. It means living in the present and the future. It takes work, but before you can do this work, you must put in place new rules that will lay the groundwork for a completely new relationship with your former husband. These rules are there to protect you from any further hurts or upsets.

You must build a new structure that empowers you instead of disempowering you. Take the analogy of going on a diet to lose weight. You need to create an environment that will both motivate and move you toward your goal. To do so, you remove all of the temptations that lead to overeating or eating the wrong foods. You clean out all the junk food form the cupboards and replace them with healthy and non-fattening foods. You create a support system with a friend whom you can call when you feel yourself slipping into your old eating habits. You take on a partner in your exercise program. In other words, you do everything that you can to surround yourself with ways to achieve your goal.

You must do the same thing when you are working at disentangling yourself from your ex. Create an environment that will help, not hinder, your progress toward true independence. Remove all the temptations to stay connected to your ex. Within this framework, you are free to do the inner work of healing.

My ex and I had a fairly amiable divorce, and we have managed to move out of each other’s lives albeit for the children. Or so I thought. In the book Leaving Him Behind by Sandra Kahn, the author mentioned something that set off a light for me. My ex has spent a good deal of time around my new home, as his condo has taken much longer to complete than he’d predicted. In order for the children to see him more often, I have been extremely accommodating and have allowed him to be in my home with the kids. He knows the code to my house lock and often enters on his own. He has the tendency to walk kauniita EtelГ¤ -Afrikan naiset into the house, open the refrigerator door, and grab something to eat, which is what he always did when we were married. Not such a big deal, you might say. But Ms. Kahn says otherwise.