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How to survive the Holiday Season – For the Newly Divorced

Date: December 17, 2012
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Depression, Divorce, Relationships, Uncategorized
Comments: 7 Replies

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This is a topic I have written about extensively in the past, but since I consider myself a divorce advocate I wanted to re-visit it.  The holidays are rough…hang in there guys! 🙂 

I wanted to write this piece because I really think a lot of the “Advice for Divorced People” websites, books and other resources might be written by people who have never actually been divorced.  Some of the post-divorce holiday advice is extremely helpful, and some comes across as overly chipper, insensitive and a bit clueless.

My first Christmas without my husband I felt completely numb.  I had made the mistake of having an intense rebound relationship before I was ready.   That brief affair ended dramatically less than a month before Christmas.   On the big day itself, I sat in my aunt’s house surrounded by my family and felt nothing.  Everyone looked at me as if I was a ghost.  It had only been six months since I found out the truth about my marriage.  Nine years of my life that I thought was the strongest relationship I had ever had, was now a fraud.   I found it especially painful that I was sharing the holiday with relatives who were in my wedding party.  It meant so much for me to have them a part of that day.  I wanted to go up to each one of them and apologize for letting them down.  We were all actors in a play that had gotten re-written midway.  Instead of a happy ending, it closed with a surprise twist and tragic finale. My loss overwhelmed me with a deep sense of shame.  None of my relatives blamed me, but I couldn’t escape the guilt.  Ultimately, I had picked the wrong partner. Little did I know things for me were going to have to get much worse for me before they got better.  I was about to spiral out of control into an episode of life-threatening depression.

That was three years ago, and much has happened in my life since then.  I haven’t really had much romance, but I have healed and moved forward.  My marriage had been the center of my happiness.  I had made myself co-dependent on one person and I paid dearly for that mistake.  Now I have this crazy network of unique, creative and astonishingly wonderful friends to whom I am eternally grateful.  I never want to go back to isolating myself emotionally to one person.  The trauma of my divorce also helped heal wounds I had with my family.  I feel healthier and happier than I have in years.  But there is always the holiday season, when the gray clouds loom and I find myself fighting back the demons in my head.

If you are newly divorced and reading this, I am not going to sugarcoat your obstacles. Divorce is hell.  It can cause a slew of emotional problems and even trigger mental illness.  The catastrophe of divorce can also fuel substance abuse and any number of self-destructive behaviors.   Anyone who has gone through a divorce understands the added loss of friendships and family members.  Some friends you thought were lifelong will drift away post-split. You might also be worried about your children, or blame yourself for failing them.  For many divorced people the biggest hurdle is overcoming the feeling of shame.

Don’t listen to those negative voices.  Marriages fall apart for all sorts of reasons.  Many couples just fall out of love, or learn they can’t live with each other in a healthy environment.  Other marriages are frauds from day one with partners victimized in green card scams, serial cheaters, or deceitful spouses.  You have every right to feel angry and to express pain, but at the end of the day, it is better to focus on repairing the damage and moving forward.  Regardless of who ended the marriage, both partners experience damage.  You can succumb and spiral downward or you can fight back.   Get help if you need it, either through therapy, counseling or medication.  Don’t let depression or substance abuse take over your life.  It will get better. Your fairy tale may have fallen apart, but you will have another chapter.  Even though it might feel like it, your life is not over.

There is no substitute for time.  However bad you feel now, know that it won’t always be like this. The holiday season is just hyped up to make a lot of people a lot of money.  In the long run it is just a short time out of the year and it will be over before you know it.  A better day to celebrate might be seeing a movie with your kids, or a football game with your dad, or just having drinks with your best friend.  Don’t let the build up of holiday parties and family obligations get to you.  As I have said many times on this blog, no one is fortunate all of the time.  We all have our ups and downs, and if you are recently divorced, you are going through a lot.  Just remember, things will get better, and you are not alone.  Much Love.

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Dating After Divorce – Wife Shoppers & Baby Momma Math

Date: September 25, 2011
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Dating, Dating - NYC, Dating After 35, Dating After Divorce, Dating Online, Gay Husband, New York City, Straight Spouse
Comments: 7 Replies
English: A sleeping male baby with his arm ext...

English: A sleeping male baby with his arm extended (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I always thought I would have kids, my husband and I planned to eventually have a family, but at the age of 36 I discovered my husband was a closeted homosexual.  My marriage immediately ended and I entered the dating pool past my prime reproductive years.   I knew it would eventually take time to have healthy relationships again, and I definitely felt like my biological clock wasn’t just ticking but banging loudly like Quasimodo’s bells through my entire body.

Because I am over 35, some men view me as a lousy match if they want to have kids.  I didn’t think it would be this bad, but in my age range I tend to find hook-up artists who never want to settle down, men messed up from a break-up or divorce, extremely socially awkward men with no dating experience and the men I refer to as wife shoppers.   A wife shopper is usually the following

  • Over 40
  • Never Married – No children
  • At the peak of their professional career
  • About to buy property or has just bought property

Wife shoppers are men searching for the future mother of their children.  They make no bones about wanting to start a family and many won’t consider women over the age of 35.  Women do lose reproductive capacity after 35, and in health terms pregnancies in older mothers are deemed higher risk.  Yet none of my extended or immediate family members have had to use any extraordinary means to get pregnant.  In fact, most got pregnant almost too easily, my aunt and my grandmother both having babies in their forties.  So do I have to print out my medical history and that of my extended family and bring it to dates?  Should I put it on my online dating profiles?  Something tells me that bringing up fertility on a first date would cause most men to bolt.

I have discovered most wife shoppers through online dating websites.  Something about online sites just make it too easy for them.  Men can sort of pick the traits they prefer, height, build, eye color, hair color, age, and if a woman wants children.  On dates, a wife shopper will bring up reproducing almost before they have ordered their first drink.  One of the habits I have noticed is something I call baby momma math.  My date will look at me, ask me my age again, and then I watch them adding up how long we would have to date before trying to start a family, and they aren’t exactly subtle about it.  I have also gotten questions right off the bat such as

  • What neighborhood do you think you would want to live in?
  • Private or Public School?
  • How much debt do you have?
  • How many kids would you want to have?
  • Do you have a good relationship with your family?

I don’t remember this ever happening to me when I was in my twenties.  Maybe it’s something about the personality traits of any man who waits until they are at the peak of their career before getting married and having kids.  In their mind they have a checklist and once they have gone down everything else they want to accomplish in life they move on to starting a family.

Having my marriage end the way it did has given me major trust issues to begin with, so the idea of running down the aisle with a man hell-bent on becoming a father is terrifying.  Divorce is hell on earth and the thought of having another divorce only the second time with children is especially nightmarish.  Rushing into a situation in order to have children with a partner I barely know seems like a recipe for another divorce.

Of course women have been doing this sort of thing for ages.  It is almost a cliché of the single woman over a certain age talking about eggs, biological clocks and running out of time.  When I meet a wife shopper, at first I think it is a good sign because at least this man isn’t like the multitudes who just seem to want to get laid and nothing else.  But then I start to feel like little more than a womb.  Keeping a healthy marriage together especially one with children is extremely difficult.  The union between the two adult partners should be the most important thing, communication, lifestyles, goals, and temperaments must work in harmony before the added stress and pressures of children are added to the mix.  I have accepted that having a biological child may not happen for me, as I would rather not bring children into a haphazard marriage situation.  I just wish I could find something in between the hook-up artists and the men who think nothing of ordering up a wife they way they would a sandwich.

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