After divorce: grief, children and starting again

After a marriage ends, everyday life can suddenly feel unfamiliar. There is a new flat or a half-empty home, a new routine for the school run, emails from solicitors, and conversations with an ex-partner that have to stay polite and practical. Underneath it all there is often a quieter question: who am I now, outside this marriage?

Divorce can be amicable or bitter, sudden or long expected. Whatever form it takes, it is one of the biggest changes in adult life, and recovery naturally takes time.

Why divorce hurts so much

Divorce is a loss, even when it was the right decision. People lose not only a partner but a shared future: the holidays that were planned, the picture of how their children would grow up, the role of husband or wife that shaped how they saw themselves. Many people don’t want the relationship back, yet they miss the sense of knowing who they were inside it.

The feelings rarely come in order. Anger one day, relief the next, then numbness, then a flash of hope that fades by the evening. Researchers who study grief have found that people don’t move through fixed stages, so there is no “right” sequence to follow. Disrupted sleep, a change in appetite, tearfulness and trouble concentrating are common in the first months.

How most people come through it

Research is encouraging. In a review of studies on divorce and health, David Sbarra and his colleagues at the University of Arizona concluded that most people adjust well over time. The risk of lasting difficulties is concentrated in a smaller group, for whom the separation is followed by long-term problems with mood or health.

It is worth seeking help if low mood lasts most of the day, nearly every day, for more than two weeks, if it becomes hard to manage work or care for children, if alcohol is becoming a way to cope, or if there are thoughts that life isn’t worth living. A GP or a psychotherapist can help. Anyone having thoughts of ending their life can call Samaritans free, day or night, on 116 123.

What helps recovery

How people treat themselves seems to matter. In a study published in 2012, Sbarra and his colleagues asked 109 people who were going through a divorce to record themselves speaking for four minutes about the separation, saying whatever came to mind. Independent judges then rated how much self-compassion each person showed: whether they spoke about themselves with kindness, saw their experience as something many people go through, and were able to hold painful feelings without being swept away. People who showed more self-compassion were less troubled by unwanted thoughts and feelings about the divorce, both at the start and up to nine months later. In practice, that can mean speaking to oneself as one would to a good friend going through the same thing.

The practical side can be exhausting in its own way. Since no-fault divorce was introduced in England and Wales in April 2022, neither spouse has had to be blamed, but there are still finances, housing and arrangements for children to sort out, often while already tired. It can help to avoid major decisions in the first months where possible, such as selling the family home or moving to another city, because decisions made in the middle of a crisis have to be lived with long after it has passed. A family solicitor and a mediator can take a great deal of weight off a person’s shoulders. Before going to court, couples usually need to attend a first meeting with an accredited mediator.

It also helps to keep two kinds of conversation apart. Practical exchanges with an ex-partner work best when they are short and businesslike, while grief and anger are better shared with friends, family or a therapist.

Social life often needs rebuilding. Friendships made as a couple can become awkward, and some may not survive. Regular activities where the same people meet every week, such as a running club, a choir, a class or volunteering, make it easier for new connections to grow naturally. Wanting time alone is normal; avoiding everyone because facing people feels impossible is worth paying attention to.

Children and divorce

For many parents the hardest question is whether the divorce will harm their children. The honest answer is that it can make things harder for a while, and that much depends on what happens next.

In 2019, Emla Fitzsimons and Aase Villadsen of University College London used data from the Millennium Cohort Study, which follows children born in the UK around 2000, to look at 6,245 children between the ages of 3 and 14. They compared children’s emotional and behavioural difficulties before and after their father left the family home. When the father left in early childhood, there was no short-term effect on children’s mental health. When he left in later childhood, emotional difficulties increased in both boys and girls, and behaviour problems increased in boys.

Other research points to something parents can influence. A review by Gordon Harold and Ruth Sellers at the University of Sussex found that the way parents express and handle conflict affects children’s emotional wellbeing, behaviour and later relationships, whether the parents live together or apart. Children cope best when they are kept out of their parents’ disagreements.

In everyday life this means:

• not using a child to pass messages between parents;
• not criticising the other parent in front of the child, who will partly hear it as criticism of themselves;
• keeping routines as steady as possible: school, bedtimes, weekends;
• letting the child love both parents, and miss the one they see less.

If a child is clearly struggling, for example becoming withdrawn, unusually angry or reluctant to go to school, it is worth talking to the school and the GP.

New relationships

There is no set time to wait before dating again. A more useful question is what lies behind the wish to date again. Curiosity and genuine interest in meeting someone new tend to lead to better choices than the fear of being alone, which can make it easy to overlook warning signs or repeat an old pattern.

Often it helps to rebuild the rest of one’s life first: friendships, interests, and the ability to spend an evening alone without needing to fill it. When that feels possible most of the time, a new relationship is more likely to be a choice than an escape.

Divorce ends one chapter before the next is ready. The time in between is hard, and it helps to go through it with support rather than alone.