BellaOnline Forums Relationships Divorce Tips to moving on?

I get a lot of emails asking me how do you just get over it and move on? How can you forget the hurt? How can you trust yourself to pick the right person? How can you get your good self image back?

Well, most of the things I believe are in my articles, but I am curious how you feel? What did you do in order to let you move on. If your self image was destroyed by your marriage and divorce how did you get it back?

Conversely is anyone here struggling with low self image due to a divorce? Why do you think your divorce caused you to have this problem or do you think you had the problem before?

I think in any divorce there is self-image damage....it is like a death that we have to go through the steps of letting something go - we did love it (him or her) and we've lost it - so we must grieve. That means looking at the whole picture -the good and the bad. Blame is often used and we don't see the big picture. It's not a he-said she-said thing - something or someone we loved doesn't love us anymore - or wants something we don't. Moving on is the hardest part because we as women cling to our 'dreams' we had when we got married. If there are children involved - it's even harder to move forward because we still have to have contact with the ex.

If there are other people involved (eg. affair) then we also have to deal with those issues.

For me - my divorce was the best thing for me, and i believe my kids too. I have been divorced since 2001 from their father, and whether we want to see it or not, there are reasons we don't necessarily see at the time for the divorce. Often things happen down the road and we are able to look at the situation and say, that's right - we shouldn't of been together.

I had very low self-esteem and to answer your questions, i believe the reason we have low self-esteem is because as women - we often do EVERYTHING in a marriage (and i'm not saying there are men out there that do everything too) but most of the burden is on the woman, children, work, school etc. I had to go back to school and finish my degree, lose some weight, make new friends (because most of our friends were 'our' friends as a couple), and just generally get out there. Learn about what i wanted.

My kids were slower to accept the divorce and even after all this time, i think secretly they wanted us to get back together - even though they KNOW in their hearts it wouldn't work. To them, that was their safety, no matter how bad it was.

Learning and growing is the best part about divorce. Struggling and accepting your new life is half the battle, dating again is quite another!

I had very low self-esteem and to answer your questions, i believe the reason we have low self-esteem is because as women - we often do EVERYTHING in a marriage (and i'm not saying there are men out there that do everything too) but most of the burden is on the woman, children, work, school etc. I had to go back to school and finish my degree, lose some weight, make new friends (because most of our friends were 'our' friends as a couple), and just generally get out there. Learn about what i wanted.

You are so right..I did it all. The hardest thing for me was my children were adults. It was very hard on them. Why? Because they did not want their lives to change. I still struggle with did I do the right thing by waiting till they were on their own. Most of my friends disappeared which was an eye opener for me. I got out there and made new ones..it was hard and it took me years to get back on my feet; but it was the best thing I ever did.
Sundancer
www.msgembroidery.com

Likening divorce to death of a spouse is very appropriate I think. At one point (very early after my divorce) I actually thought it would hurt less if my ex had died. Because if he had died it wouldn't have meant that he had chosen to leave me.

And I agree that we lose ourselves in marriage because we often define ourselves as "wife of". Then when the marriage is gone we are "exwife of".

I was just talking about this on another forum. It is so important that when we are married we still do something that defines us as an individual. Being a wife and mother are great, but divorce and death do happen, our children do grow up. We need to figure out who we are on our own.

And even in the mourning of our lost marriage, when it is so tempting to hide in our beds and do nothing, it is even more important to do those things that set us apart as individuals. Because then we can say, "this is who I am" and it has nothing to do with our ex husband.