Before I had children, I used to cringe every time I heard a child throwing a tantrum in a public place (we call it “showing out” or “pitching a fit” here in the South).  With every high pitched scream, my blood would boil and my senses would become heightened as I just wanted to go up to the mother and yell, “Would you please, for the love of God Almighty, escort your unruly brat out of this store before we all lose our minds?!”  I would think to myself, “I would never let my child act that way in public!”  And then……….I had kids of my own, and my judgmental mindset returned to bite me squarely in the rear end.  These days, when I see a child falling to pieces while I’m out and about, regardless of whether the mom is actively trying to remedy the situation or if she has basically resigned herself to the inevitability of it, I just walk on, hoping that mom’s day improves greatly.  Why?  Because now, I get it.

When faced with circumstances we haven’t personally experienced, we’re not really in a position to make judgments on how another person handles it.  Sure, it sounds great on paper to make a sensible plan to ensure that your little angel behaves in a perfectly appropriate fashion in the presence of the general public.  However, when your toddler decided to skip a nap, is hungry, keeps dropping their favorite stuffed buddy (like, fifty freaking times in one grocery run), wants your phone so bad they can taste it (because that’s actually want they want to do with it…..taste it), throws a fit for every single toy their little eyes behold, and basically refuses every attempt you make to keep them in good spirits, you realize just how little you understood about kids before you actually had one.  

The same is true when it comes to divorce.  Someone may say, “Well……I would never let a man raise a hand to me.  I can’t believe she put up with that for so long!” Or they may say something like, “How could she not know he was cheating on her?  How stupid can you be?”  They could even smugly say, “Well, you know….marriage is forever, not ‘til you get tired of trying.  I can’t believe they didn’t try harder to make things work!”  In reality, though, we never know what someone is going through unless we’ve been there ourselves.  When we make judgment calls with no experience from which to construct our sage advice to others, we are showcasing our ignorance and running the risk of hurting rather than helping our friends who are going through possibly the worst time of their lives.   

With that all being said, I felt that maybe we divorcees could use a time of bonding, I suppose, over some of these “wise words” we’ve heard along this crazy divorce journey.  This isn’t to bash the people making the comments.  As you probably know, some people really do mean well but simply do not understand.  Others, however, can be quite judgmental.  In either case, though, this isn’t to bash, but to confirm to each other that these comments are just not helpful.  My hope, though, is that someone wondering what to say to a friend or loved one going through divorce will read this and avoid making some of these statements!

So, for all who would wish to “help” us…………

DON’T SAY THIS STUFF!  IT’S NOT HELPFUL.

To my fellow divorcees:  These comments fall under the “well meaning but ignorant” category, in my opinion.  The people who say these things to you are really trying to help.  They’re in your corner.  But because they haven’t been through your situation, or perhaps they have but processed it differently than you are processing it, they just don’t know the right words to say.

“Find a hobby.”  Seriously?  Seriously….I heard this one from multiple people.  Listen…..hobbies are great.  After a few months, I found some myself.  But when we’re in the thick of things with divorce, feeling completely turned around and heartbroken, I hardly think gardening or stamp collecting or whatever the hell else we could occupy our time with is going to take the place of losing the loves of our lives, our families, our homes, our peace of mind, or whatever else was lost along with our marriages.  Though it’s a nice thought, it feels like you’re suggesting something akin to putting a child-sized band-aid on a life-threatening injury.      

“Enjoy this time alone/Take this time for you.”  Here’s the problem with this statement: we’ve just experienced a loss.  The fact that we’re alone is the very reason why we feel like complete crap at the moment.  For those of us who are still in love with our exes, the reality that we are profoundly alone now is more painful than you can imagine.  For those of us who are not, we basically just went from one bad situation to another.  Depending on our respective situations, we may have just come out of a marriage in which we essentially felt alone the entire time.  This “alone time” does not feel like a blessing, no matter how many ways you phrase it to try and make it sound that way.

 “Get to know yourself.”  There is a smidgen of truth here.  It is important to rediscover yourself after divorce.  Sometimes in marriage, we can become so focused on the needs of our spouses that we forget to stay in touch with who we are and what we need.  However, I started to put this one in the next category (the judgmental comments), because it assumes that our marriages defined us to the point that we must not even know who we are now.  Can that be true?  Sure.  Is it a given?  Not at all.  Some of us are very self-aware, despite what we’ve been through.  Some of us know ourselves quite well, which is what helped us to know that we needed to get out of a toxic relationship or that we deserve better moving forward.  Don’t assume that we’re ignorant of our own identities.  Although this isn’t the worst piece of advice someone can give, it’s not really the best either.

Anything disparaging about someone’s ex.  When I first started the divorce process, one thing that made me more angry than anything was family and friends making harsh comments about my soon-to-be ex-husband…….and I was coming out of an abusive marriage!  Something people don’t realize is that no matter the circumstances, divorce hurts everyone.  Even if the person leaving had a really good reason to do so, he or she is likely not skipping away with glee.  The decision to end a marriage can be extremely difficult to make.  Remember – we married our exes for a reason.  The good things, those admiral qualities that made us fall in love with them, are also included in what we’re leaving behind.  We’re not just walking away from the bad parts, but from all of the parts we loved as well.  It won’t make us feel supported or validated if you bash our exes, because in doing so, you’re also bashing the people we once loved enough to spend the rest of our lives with.  If anything negative is said about the ex, let it come from us, not from you.

“Why don’t you volunteer at…….?”  NO.  Bad timing. Look, I get the concept of this.  The theory is that by helping others, we will feel fulfilled in some way while simultaneously distracting our minds from our own problems.  But sometimes, a person simply has nothing to give to anyone else at the moment.  When I was still talking to lawyers, signing papers, and negotiating the particulars of my new reality, I was pretty much emotionally spent.  I didn’t have any “juice” left.  Although I am usually someone who loves to help other people, I just had nothing to give at that point in time.  For once, I needed someone to give to me.  I needed to be the one on the receiving end of someone else’s kindness.  Divorce will drain a person.  This isn’t a case of someone having a pity party and not looking at the bright side of life.  This isn’t good material for a story straight out of Chicken Soup For the Soul.  This is the ugly, nasty, depressing part of life that is probably not going to wrap up nicely and quickly like a Hallmark movie.  In fact, helping others might not be the best thing for some of us when we’re first going through this.  We need time to take a breath and digest what’s happening in our lives and pursue some sort of personal healing before we can begin to pour our energies into other people again.

“You’re so beautiful/handsome/smart, you will have someone new in no time!”  This is a nice thought.  It’s also very flattering.  We’re glad that you think we’re such a catch.  But honestly, the adult single scene out there is a crazy one!  We’re not just going to walk out there tomorrow and run into Mr. or Miss Right (again, life isn’t a Hallmark movie).  Be careful making comments like this.  We are very vulnerable during and after divorce.  For some of us, dating is the furthest thing from our minds.  We don’t want you to even talk about the idea of us getting involved with someone else right now.  Others of us may be dealing with a deep longing to find a healthy relationship once and for all.  Don’t give us false hopes that we are so great that we will find someone “in no time.”  Truthfully, the search for the right person can take a while and often be very discouraging.  Encourage us, build us up, tell us we’re worthy and deserving of love…….all good things.  But don’t make it seem like finding the right person is either what we need to be pursuing or is something that’s going to be a piece of cake.

DON’T SAY THIS STUFF EITHER!  IT’S LEGITIMATELY JUDGMENTAL.

To my fellow divorcees:  This stuff kinda sucks.  Whether or not the people who say it mean well (most of them, strangely enough, do), it is not to be taken to heart.  Do not let comments like this mess with your mind or get you down.  You know your situation better than anyone else.  Let it roll off your back and keep moving forward!  Again, they just don’t get it.

“You don’t need another relationship right now.”  This isn’t really your call to make.  I understand that a person needs time to heal, time to grieve, and time to rediscover himself or herself after divorce.  However, people have different ways of doing those things.  For one person, having someone special in her life may help her heal and learn new things about herself.  For another, more time may be needed for self-reflection.  In either case, it is up to that individual, not you, to know what they need in that moment.  Even if it doesn’t make sense to you, you can’t tell us when it’s appropriate for us to start dating again.  Also, you may not understand the situation your friend just came out of.  Some of us are coming out of marriages where we were quite unfulfilled and out of love for a long time before it finally ended.  Although healing is required, we may be more ready to pursue a loving relationship than someone who, for example, is still reeling from being unexpectedly served divorce papers. Don’t tell us when we’re ready to move on when you don’t know where we’ve been or how we feel

“God’s love is all you need/You don’t need someone else/Your happiness does not lie in another person, etc.”  At some point, I hope to dedicate an entire post to the relationship between divorce and the church.  For now, though, I will give my massively abridged version of a response to this one.  First of all, God’s love is amazing and definitely the greatest love that exists.  That doesn’t mean that we can’t have a legitimate longing for any other form of love and feel empty if we don’t receive that. God Himself created us to “need” each other, including specific needs for romantic love (more on that later).  Secondly, the fact that it is completely possible to live a joyful life without a romantic partner does not invalidate a need or a desire for one.  I can make it if I have to live in the woods and survive on wild berries and squirrels.  Am I wrong for not particularly wanting to?  No.  We might want to think about re-evaluating our definition of the word “need.”  When you say this, you’re basically insinuating that unless someone is content and pleased to live a life in which significant desires of his heart go unfulfilled, desires that God Himself put there, then he must not love God, must have idols in his life, or must just not be a very good Christian in general.  Don’t do that, especially if you yourself are currently enjoying a loving, Godly marriage.

There is definitely more to come from me on this subject.

Calling divorce a sin or deciding whether or not we have Biblical grounds for it.  I know what the Bible has to say about divorce – which, honestly, is not much.  Listen, I do not claim to be some sort of great theologian.  But I do know that no matter what specific criteria the Bible may lay out for divorce to be approved in the eyes of God, the fact remains that you do not know what a person may be going through behind closed doors.  It’s easy to pull out the Bible and condemn someone based on some sort of Scriptural technicality when you don’t have to live that person’s life.  You may say, “Well, they should have thought about what they were getting into before they got married, because marriage is forever!” Easy to say if yours is great.  By the way – how do you know they didn’t think about what they were getting into?  And as long as we’re using the Bible, where does it say that abuse is grounds for divorce?  As far as I know, it doesn’t, yet most people are quick to accept it as a good reason to leave a marriage (which it absolutely is, by the way).  So, just how specific do we want to get when it comes to which divorces God will accept?  I agree that you don’t treat marriage like chewing gum.  You don’t just casually throw it away when it’s lost its flavor and reach for a fresh piece (no pun intended…).  But what may look like that to you on the surface is very likely a much more complex situation that you know absolutely nothing about.  Let God do the judging, and you just do the loving.

Again, more on this later.

“How could you let this happen/How could you not see the signs, etc”  It is sometimes easier to see what’s truly happening in a situation when you’re not directly a part of it yourself.  Love can blind us to certain things that our friends and family can see clearly.  Keep in mind that particularly for those in especially toxic relationships, our vision is a bit blurry.  Fear of retaliation if we leave, fear of being alone if we end the marriage, love for our spouse regardless of what they did to us, concerns about our children, and many other things may cause us not to see things as bluntly as you do.  This type of comment is often uttered in cases of abuse, infidelity, or some other shocking act.  Let’s be clear……..no one “lets” someone abuse them.  In an abusive relationship, the victim’s power is taken away from them.  It’s not that they are “letting” someone do this to them, but that they do not know how to stop it from happening.  It’s not as simple as just walking away (again, another post for another time).  In the case of cheating, the signs may not always be obvious.  People can be very clever about hiding things.  Sometimes, people want to believe that things will get better.  When an abuser or a cheater says, “I’m so sorry, baby.  You deserve so much better than this.  I will never hurt you that way again, I swear,” we want to believe it could be true.  We want to hope that maybe love can overcome what’s been done.  The victims in these situations are not stupid.  Never, ever blame a victim of abuse or infidelity for what’s been done to them.

Suck it up, Buttercup!  I would sincerely hope that no one out there would actually believe that this is something you should say to someone going through divorce, loss of a loved one, serious financial issues, depression, or even a freaking bad day.  This is just a straight-up insensitive comment.  The fact that someone would come to you during the life-altering, soul crushing struggle that is divorce only to have you tell him or her to “get over it” or “suck it up” or “man up” whatever you might say is just……well, quite frankly, I just don’t know what to say about it other than DON’T SAY THAT.  It is really one of the most cruel things you can say.  And do not have the arrogance to believe that it is cruel in the sense that your “truth bomb hurts” us.  It’s not you bringing truth……it’s you being a jerk.  Don’t do it.

So, now that we’ve gone through all the many, many things NOT to say to us divorcees, let’s end with some suggestions of what someone could say that would actually help.

TRY SAYING THIS.  IT MIGHT HELP!

Nothing.  Honestly, sometimes the solution is to listen more than you talk (imagine that!).  Just be there and let the person vent to you.  We all need that sometimes.

“Tell me your story.”  This is probably one of the best things you can say, in my opinion.  I do recognize that not everyone may be ready to share his or her story right off the bat. That’s why I have heard the question presented to me many times as, “If you don’t mind my asking, what happened?”  I’ve always appreciated that.  It is a respectful way to open the door for someone to share their struggle with you.  Let us know that you’re interested in what happened as told from our perspective.  That lets us know that you care about what we’re going through and that you’re not going to go out and formulate your own idea of what happened before you have the facts.

Ask Questions.  Take this time to learn about what it’s like to go through divorce.  If you do know what it’s like, embrace a different story and let it remind you that we’re all in this together.  Everyone’s situation is unique.  Practice active listening.

“I’m here for you/How can I help?”  Letting us know that you are there if we need to talk or vent or just need a friend to spend time with is priceless.  Maybe you can make yourself available for a coffee date, just to get your friend out and about and have some social time If nothing else.  Your friend may be in need of childcare while visiting lawyers, getting affairs in order, looking for a new job or new place to live, etc.  Though your friend may or may not accept it, you can at least offer to bring her a meal, mow her yard, or take the kids to the park for a couple of hours so she can have a bit of downtime.  Divorce is tough.  It’s good to know you have people who are willing to support you when you feel like you barely have any strength left.  Your friend will appreciate it.

“It’s okay (okay to feel how you feel, okay to grieve, okay to be angry, etc.).”  Divorce can send you through a whirlwind of feelings.  You can pretty much run the whole gamut of possible human emotions during the course of a single day.  It’s important not to judge a person’s anger, remorse, bitterness, sadness, pain, frustration, confusion, grief, or anything else he may be experiencing.  Validating your friend’s feelings is crucial to helping him through the healing process.

You’re not alone.  This is maybe the single best thing you can say to someone going through divorce.  Loneliness is one of the predominant feelings a person experiences when this happens.  Let your friend know that there are others who understand what it’s like to deal with this.  If you’ve never been divorced yourself, put your friend in touch with someone who has, maybe someone who is further along in their journey and can listen to them from a place of understanding and experience.  Nothing is more helpful on this journey than bonding with other people who know how you feel (which is my whole reason for starting this blog!).

Do you have any comments to add to any of these lists?  If so, I’d like to hear about them!

I am strong.  You are strong.  Let’s do this together!