How to Face Feeling Alone After Divorce

Most of us, as we embark on our new life after divorce, face feelings of sadness and loneliness that make us not only sore but confused and occasionally, resentful. Humans are social, community-based creatures. Feeling lonely is one of the most difficult emotions for us to cope with. We might feel shortchanged, betrayed even, because we expected relief to come at some point, not sadness, especially after a divorce. Especially if the last several years in the marriage were tough and we struggled to get to a healthier place. I think this is especially the case if we initiated the divorce. We might feel resentful towards our friends or family, and even kids, for not stepping up and filling the void.  We might still be unconsciously shoving that responsibility onto someone else, someone else who should save us from the looming loneliness after divorce.

Post-divorce Loneliness: Expectations and Reality

As I initiated my divorce over six years ago, I certainly never planned to feel sad later on. My Ex was developing an abusive side to him, coupled with making increasingly irrational financial decisions, I just couldn’t understand. Based on my later marriage years with him, I expected to have difficult discussions about kids and money. But I did not expect to feel loneliness!

Now, many years later, I understand that I wanted to divorce the bad part of my ex-husband and naively hoped to still be in touch with the part I originally fell in love with. After all, we had started as friends, and I had hoped to be friends after the divorce, too. You know, co-parent amicably? Share lovely moments of our sons growing up? Hang on and cherish those memories of us as a young family. This is what I imagined our amicable divorce would be. However, the reality was that the abusive persona of my Ex could not be detached from him. So parallel parenting, almost no contact, and an arbitrary division of kids-related costs was what I got. 

Loneliness, sudden, unexpected sadness, tearful memories, and extinguished hopes haunted me after the divorce. As they do with most divorced people. Here’s what happens and why.

Loneliness After Divorce. How It Might Hit You

There are several ways we feel loneliness especially acutely, and these ways come at different times and in different situations. There is early-stage loneliness and later-stage loneliness. Some of it we get used to, and others may feel it build up, affecting our character and how we view our world.

Early-Stage Loneliness After Divorce

This comes with black and white evidence that life has changed. Your normal course of life has been disturbed because of the divorce and your split. You see one toothbrush instead of two. Buying less food becomes your new norm, and portions shrink because you’re cooking for just one. Sitting at the table can suddenly feel very quiet. You’re doing chores your Ex used to do. Regardless of who left whom, this initial realization of a new reality gives an acute feeling of sadness and can bring tears. But we learn to live with it, we create new patterns, and the course of life resumes.

Another Early-Stage Loneliness

This one is quite surprising. It comes with the initial misunderstanding and lack of support from friends and family. There is always someone who insensitively says that you could have made more of an effort, been a better wife, or prioritized kids and financial security. Such a lack of support in a tough time can trigger feelings of loneliness and alienation. It passes as we build a healthier support system around us. Maybe we need to be with less judgmental people.

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The Second Wave of Loneliness After Divorce

The second wave comes from divorce discussion fatigue as friends and even therapists reckon they have given you enough airtime to moan. Now, as far as they are concerned, you should be getting back to normal. Or, when friends simply go back to their lives and stop checking in on your mood or what you might need. The divorced person feels no longer newsworthy, no longer special, and can feel very lonely and isolated.  I still haven’t patched up with an ex-friend who said to me, “You got divorced already 4 months ago. Don’t you think it’s time to stop sulking and move on?!”

Divorce-Loneliness with Family Changes

Many people say that they feel especially pained and lonely when the kids are not with them. Maybe the kids are with their father or their father’s family.  This kind of loneliness can be exacerbated by the holidays and being left alone. A friend recently confessed that she was not making any plans for Christmas because her son will be with his father, and she saw no joy or purpose in celebrating on her own. (If you can relate, you might read “The Single Woman’s Guide to Surviving the Holidays.)

I certainly get it. My elder son decided to live with his father after our divorce, which gave me a great feeling of loneliness and rejection, especially at dinnertime or on weekends, even though my younger son was with me. With time, we got creative and found workarounds to spend quality time together and to make it special. But it hurts, yes.

Another Loneliness: Social Changes Due to the Divorce

Be prepared, you may feel sad and lonely when resuming activities, going out, or taking trips that you used to do as a couple with other married couples. You may sense that some couples don’t know what to do with you now, you out-of-the-box, as an independent woman —  you are a third wheel?  You may be starting to feel that grief is, in fact, your new companion as you move deeper into your divorce recovery. Loneliness resulting from this new normal is a typical symptom of grief; grief being the loss of familiar patterns, people, or things. A twinge of this can still happen, I’ve learned, even many years after the divorce.

Feeling Lonely in Bed After Divorce

While some women love it, sleeping alone, having no tactile or physical connection, is something others have struggled getting used to.  I’ve heard that deprivation tends to build things up. Women have told me that the need for sex can become dormant; however, the need for intimacy and tactility stays. Casual sex may cover the need for the actual sex act, but it can also make the need for intimacy and feeling of loneliness even worse.

Divorce Loneliness Resulting from the Loss of Your Divorce Buddy

This one comes unexpectedly, too! There is a type of post-divorce loneliness that can strike even years after divorce, and it feels like a friend’s betrayal. When you are newly divorced, it is common for people to form close bonds with others who are divorced. You have a shared divorce experience that many others will never understand. Sometimes such friendship can take the shape of a pseudo-coupledom where many things are done together, and the other person is expected to be there. The risk is that no one can commit to being single forever. If or when a friend finds a partner, has a child, or must move for a job to a different town, that can feel like a real betrayal and abandonment on top of the divorce trauma.

Why Are You Feeling Sad and Lonely After Divorce?

Losing a loving and loved partner quite understandably causes grief and feelings of sadness.

But why do we feel down when there was no love lost?

This is particularly baffling for some, especially if we were the ones who wanted the divorce.

Well, there are legitimate reasons.

It is normal to be disillusioned with the institution of marriage after divorce, to conflate it that all men are bad in general, and the Ex in particular. But it must be said that marriage is the form of partnership that – when done right – offers commitment, security, intimacy, common time together, and sharing love for children. A spouse is the one we can count on to be with us and our kids, to be available for joys, chores, hobbies, and physical intimacy. People build lives around these needs in a marriage. And they don’t with their kids or friends. Even marriages that have gone bad offered some of that at some point. And if they didn’t, there were hopes and dreams of them, if only fantasies.

We can feel equally sad when losing a dream as we do when losing a real connection.

What Do You Do When Feeling Down After Divorce

I think that the best thing we can do for ourselves when feeling lonely after a divorce is knowledge, honesty, and acknowledgement. We need to know that recovery from divorce takes time and can’t be rushed. Decisions made too early after divorce can be hasty, especially if we are just patching up loneliness. These decisions can lead to greater disappointment and hurt.

We need to be honest that the marriage did have good sides to it, and that is why we are missing it. We need adrenaline, courage, and clenched fists to go through with the divorce. But to heal, we need to acknowledge that there were good sides to the partnership, too. And that our Ex was not entirely to blame for why the marriage went south.

Accept that people have their lives to live, and caring for our loneliness is not their priority or their job. Even kids don’t have to fill your void. It’s not fair to them.

Acknowledge and appreciate feeling lonely. Learn to live with that feeling. And maybe ask loneliness, what does it want to tell you today? What does it need you to know, importantly, today as you rebuild your most precious life after divorce? Listen to it carefully and then do something to show the loneliness you heard. Take action!

What action steps might mitigate your feeling alone after divorce?

1. Create rituals for yourself:
2. Walking alone, journaling, leaning into a new hobby that has always called you.
3. Reach out to a safe friend on a regular basis (all the better if she has gone through divorce and healed).
4. Give yourself permission to grieve. There is a grief recovery process that must happen, and to deny it would be naïve.
5. Joining divorce support groups where women understand what you are going through can help you feel normalized, and can encourage you to not live in the past but to move forward.
6. Say yes to small invitations. It helps build your muscle to adapt and try new things.
7. Say yes to getting involved in your community. Volunteering or a small act of service helps you get out of your personal story and see the world at large. You may also connect with others who think beyond their own stories and how they can be of help in the world. Check out our piece on midlife volunteering for women and what it can give to you as a woman recovering from divorce.

If acknowledged for what it is, loneliness can give time for reflection, artistic inspiration, drive to travel, meet new people, and do new things. It could be a door to something far beyond this moment, and wonderful.  Stretch that muscle to partner with yourself and discover what really turns you on.

NOTES

Anna Ivanova-Galitsina is a PR consultant who recently moved to Dubai and is carving out her new life and career in the UAE. She has two almost grown-up boys and is full of optimism in a new relationship after her divorce.

 

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