As I began coming to grips with the fact that my first marriage was ending, my mind filled with questions. How will this divorce affect my family? Are my two sons and I really a “family” in the way that I understand that word? Will this divorce affect my professional credibility or reputation? Does my career and my profession even matter anymore? Will I be accepted in the Church as a divorced, middle-aged man? Are there good single women out there who will want to date a fortysomething single father? Are there actually good single women out there who will want to date me? (Dating had been hard for me in my 20s, and I dreaded going back out to date again after more than 15 years of marriage.) Are my best days already behind me?
These recurring thoughts added up to the idea that life as I had known it was over. I thought my little family, which had meant everything to me, was ending, and it hurt in a way I had never hurt before. I woke up every day feeling like someone had kicked me in the stomach. I carried that feeling around all day long and took it to bed every night. Because I didn’t want to take it to bed, I had a problem with insomnia for several years. My nights were consumed with working through the pain I was feeling. I spent many late nights journaling, finding articles to read on the internet, or chatting on Facebook with friends, and trying to somehow fill the vast emptiness inside me. The pain of the loss I felt was relentless and I doubted I could ever be truly happy again.
Though I could not see it at the time, one of the great silver linings in the black cloud of an unwanted divorce was the opportunity it afforded me to reinvent myself. If I had understood this in the beginning and reinvented myself more intentionally, I might have healed faster.
I will always remember the first time my former wife refused to go on a family vacation as our divorce was becoming inevitable. She told me she did not want to go, but I could take our sons by myself. I almost canceled the trip. I remember thinking, “How is this a family vacation if the wife and mother of the family refuses to go?” I ultimately decided to take the boys on the trip because I wanted them to maintain a sense of family identity, even though our family was changing. We were living in Washington at that time, and our trip was to see family in Utah. I planned some other activities to make our trip enjoyable. We drove to Cedar City in the morning on a weekday and bought our tickets to Othello at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. (The tickets were cheaper because we went on a weekday and bought the tickets first thing in the morning, the same day.) We spent time at Cedar Breaks and other scenic places, taking pictures of the beautiful scenery before we returned to the Shakespeare Festival in time for the green show and then the play. We had a wonderful day together. My fourteen-year-old son and I talked about insights from the play on our way home. On the way back to Washington, we spent a few days camping, hiking, and sightseeing in Yellowstone National Park.
Over the next several years, my sons and I took many road trips together, including two more to the Utah Shakespeare Festival. I was broke, so I made these road trips as cheap as I could. We camped and stayed with relatives instead of staying in hotels or motels. We packed food to minimize meals at restaurants. We took road trips rather than flying on airplanes. Until I had more money, we visited national parks and historical places like the Alamo and Nauvoo rather than expensive theme parks. The kids got to know cousins and other extended family. Now that my boys are grown, I cherish the memories we made together during those cheap vacations and road trips. We became a closer and stronger family—even though there was only one parent on these trips.
Part of reinventing myself in the wake of divorce was figuring out how to do fun things and make memories with my kids on a very limited budget. Before you object, let me reassure you that where there’s a will, there’s a way. I encourage you to get creative about how to have fun and make memories for your kids within your budget—even if it is meager. Being a single parent doesn’t mean you are done making memories with your children.
When it became clear that my first wife and I were going to divorce, I also began collecting items for the kitchen in my new place. Again, I was struggling financially, and most of my new items came from the dollar store. But beginning to accumulate some necessary items helped me to begin looking forward to my new beginning. Picking out my own style of dishes and kitchen tools was new and a little liberating to me, since my former wife had always made those decisions. Deciding for myself forced me to think about what I liked because it was no longer an option to defer to what she wanted. I also redecorated my bedroom in a style I wanted to try, which helped me express my own identity separate from my former wife also. (My former wife complimented me on the changes I made to the room in her absence, which was a surprise.)
This may be the first time in decades that you get to decorate your living space the way you want without checking in with a partner or plan a vacation with your children without considering the wishes of another adult. Pointing out these “silver linings,” I don’t intend to minimize the pain of divorce. If you took your marriage vows seriously, divorce is painful, and it is hard, especially if you didn’t want the divorce in the first place. If you have been married a long time, you lose a big part of your identity when your partner decides to end your marriage. You may be reading this thinking, “I don’t know who I am anymore without my former!” You may feel at a loss as to what decisions to make or how to design your new life.
Whether it is redecorating your kitchen or bedroom to suit your personality, planning low-budget vacations with your children, making new friends, or taking up a new hobby, now is the time for you to be intentional about designing a new life you love. If you don’t know yourself and are not sure how to pick out a bedspread or shower curtain, remember that there are no right or wrong answers to these questions. They are matters of taste and preference, and you are entitled to your preferences as much as anyone else. So go shopping for such things and just notice what catches your eye. Experiment a little to see what gives your home a personality that feels good to you. Perhaps for the first time in your life, you don’t need anyone’s permission to like what you like. So don’t be ashamed to like something your former spouse might dislike or even make fun of. This is your life now.
Of course, there are deeper and weightier matters that are not dictated so much by simple personal preference or budgetary concerns. Sometimes a divorce resulted, in part, from one partner’s departure from the covenant path. In many other relationships, disillusionment over a divorce has motivated people to depart from the covenant path. When faith in Christ and His restored gospel are no longer tied up with keeping your marriage together, many if not most, divorcees choose to cease activity in the church. I do not see this as a matter of mere preference because my own preferences and personal beliefs cannot change eternal truth. So, any focus on disillusionment because of the loss of “the good life” or eternal blessings does not change the reality of those doctrines, though your understanding of them may deepen as you contemplate what the experience of grieving a marriage has taught you.
One example of that kind of deepening understanding in my own life involved the phrase popularized by President David O. McKay that “No other success can compensate for failure in the home.” At first, I believed there was no clearer “failure in the home” than a divorce where there was a temple marriage. By that reasoning, I had not only failed at marriage but at life overall. What was the use of being good at anything else? Over time, I have come to understand and believe in a gospel of redemption. I have not failed in the home and the family realm until I have given up. Since my divorce, I have continued to try imperfectly to be the father my children need. I am trying to be the best husband to Cathy that I can be. As tragic as divorce feels, I have not given up trying for success in the home. I now accept that divorce was part of my path, and I am grateful for so many signs of God’s redeeming grace in my life, such as a wonderful wife, stepchildren who have added to my joy, children and grandchildren, and opportunities for service, such as writing this column.
Deciding whether to continue and perhaps even intensify participation in the church will depend on where your quest for truth has taken you. Have you turned to God in your crisis and come to understand that your divorce is part of your life’s path? Or has your divorce convinced you that the eternal nature of family relationships cannot be true because you have experienced difficulty in that part of your life? If you are doubting the reality of God’s love or the truthfulness of the restored gospel, I hope you will be brave one more time. Make it your quest to find the real truth—and don’t just react to hurt feelings and a life that did not quite turn out the way you might have hoped.
As you take your first steps forward to reinvent yourself after divorce, I hope you have fun with the process of expressing yourself, finding new intellectual pursuits, new friendships, and new adventures. There is a whole new world waiting for you! But most of all, I hope you will take this challenge as an opportunity to deepen your spirituality. Journal and think deeply about the kind of many or woman you want to become as you embark on this journey. Ponder what it will take to become that person and be intentional in your effort. I promise you that God is mindful of you, that He has not forgotten you, and that he is ready to walk beside you as you exercise faith in His desire to help you reinvent yourself.
When you think about reinventing yourself, doesn’t it really begin with “a mighty change in us, or in our hearts” (Mosiah 5:2)? When your heart is broken and you feel like your best days are behind you, remember that you are learning to forgive “seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22). You are being made a better and more powerful version of yourself when you truly master Jesus’ admonition to “Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you” (Luke 6:28). Above all else, your divorce is a challenge to love, forgive, and minister to others from your own pain. Divorce was a part of your path to teach you to forgive more, feel more compassion for others who suffer, counsel with more wisdom, and love more fully. “For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8).
Resource:
Intentional Courtship can help in this journey.
About the Author
Jeff Teichert and his wife, Cathy Butler Teichert, are the founders of “Love in Later Years,” which ministers to Latter-day Saint single adults seeking peace, healing, and more joyful relationships. They are co-authors of the Amazon bestseller Intentional Courtship: A Mid-Singles Guide to Peace, Progress, and Pairing Up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jeff and Cathy each spent nearly a decade in the mid-singles community, and they use that experience to provide counsel and hope to mid-singles and later married couples through written articles, podcasts, and videos. Jeff and Cathy are both Advanced Certified Life Coaches and have university degrees in Family & Human Development. They are the parents of a blended family that includes four handsome sons, one lovely daughter-in-law, and two sweet little granddaughters.
Purchase Jeff & Cathy’s book Intentional Courtship:
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