I’m a child of divorce. Have you read the studies about me? Did you hear somewhere that I had difficulties in math class and/or severe emotional problems? Do you assume my teenage self ran away from home, used drugs and got pregnant? You’d be wrong on all accounts. Except, of course, for the stat I didn’t mention above... the one about my higher risk of divorce. I am a child of divorce who has been divorced. But I don’t blame my divorced parents for that one. In fact, I’m rather grateful. I was thirteen when my parents separated. At that point in my life, I was just becoming aware of love and romance, and for a time I was a little angry at my mom and dad for giving up on something so wonderful. I’ll never give up like they did, I thought to myself. I’ll never get divorced. Funny thing, my parents’ divorce wasn’t so terrible. Overall, it was a rather good thing for my family. I gained some pseudo-stepsiblings in the process, and I learned about the ways relationships can change. I saw my parents become better parents, and even friends, because they didn’t have to be domestic partners. I began to see divorce not as a problem itself, but as a much-needed solution to a problem. As time passed, I was able to appreciate the ways in which my life had improved because of the divorce. I also saw my mom and dad grow as individuals, and I developed closer relationships with each of them as a result of our family structure. So, what impact has all of this had on my adult relationships? I’m OK with divorce. We’re all human beings, learning and growing as we walk along the path of life. Sometimes part of our personal growth involves ending relationships that no longer serve us, and that’s OK. Like I said, I’m now divorced myself. My ex and I were able to be honest about the state of our relationship, and we made the difficult choice to do what was best for both of us. I think of divorce as a shared goal. So many people think of divorce in terms of war: where two sides face off and fight. That wasn’t the model I grew up with, thus I don’t know how to play that game. I believe the process of ending a relationship (like the process of building one) takes cooperation, communication and compromise. I believe that families should evolve, not dissolve, through the process. As a child of divorce, I experienced far more gains than losses. I gained a second home and an extended family. I gained new friends in new places, new adventures and new relationships. These days I firmly believe that divorce should be viewed as an evolutionary process for families. Seeing dissolution sets everyone up for disappointment. I’m acutely aware of my personal health in relationships. I know my needs, and I know my boundaries. I believe that compromises are necessary, but I’m not willing to sacrifice my physical or mental health in order to save a relationship. When I consider new partners, I think about how what it would be like to separate from them. As I mentioned before, I think the end of a relationship is an act of teamwork. Therefore, I don’t want to get involved with anyone who wouldn’t work with me through that process if necessary. I’ve no interest in men who’ve indulged in dirty divorce tricks, nor those who are adamantly against divorce. I am a child of divorce. But I don’t think of myself as broken. I don’t believe my childhood was lacking. I think my parents made a difficult choice which turned out to be the best decision for our family, and I benefitted from that. Nowadays, I see myself as stronger, more open-minded and with greater self-awareness as a result. Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/divorced-moms/5-ways-my-parents-divorce_b_6030488.html
Within six weeks of my marriage ending, I found myself gallivanting all around Colorado with a much younger man. He was an instructor at my yoga studio who, through his intoxicating looks and 20-something prowess, helped me temporarily forget that my life was actually in complete shambles (I had suddenly become a 40-year-old single mother of three without any plans for my future). We’d go on long hikes, spend afternoons wrapped in my bedsheets, and travel to hidden hot springs and tropical beaches enmeshed in the physical comfort of each other. I t was a delicious distraction, but once it came to an end, I was left to face myself. I had to deal with the raw emotional pain that would trap me until I dealt with it. I knew I wouldn't be able to move on to a fulfilling relationship before I did that. Over the next few years, I attended support groups and coaching sessions, shed tears over past choices, spent nights reading personal growth books, and tried to make sense of the madness of this new frontier. At some point, I realized I was done. I had faced my demons. And while my past would always be a part of me, I was truly ready to move forward. Here are most important lessons I learned about finding true, lasting love: 1. Stay single until you can be sure you're starting a relationship for the right reasons.
A truly loving, committed relationship is about sharing life experiences, learning and growing with someone who is self-aware and free of the "pull" of past hurts, and being open and willing to doing the work it takes to create and exist in a safe, drama-free space together.
To reach this place, we must first commit to learning the lessons we have to learn on our own. That's the only way to escape the ending of our last failed relationship. Dig in the dirt. Let yourself fall apart and know that it’s OK not to be OK for a while—maybe for a long time. The grieving process can be lengthy and painful. But there is so much necessary growth waiting for you in the time after a breakup. You can't skip the hard part and go right to Phase 2. This is the task you have to complete before leveling up. 2. Love yourself more than you ever thought possible.
You’ve heard the sentence "No one will ever be able to love you more than you love yourself." Take it from me: This is 100 percent true 100 percent of the time. We attract people who will treat us only as well as we treat ourselves. If we believe ourselves to be unworthy or unlovable at a deep level, no matter how pretty the package of our prospective partner, we see them as our salvation only because we know little enough about them that we can project our own ideals onto them. Over time they will begin to reflect our own limitations and flaws. Self-love needs to happen consistently on the physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional levels.
Physical self-love: Begin by listening to, then responding to and respecting the needs of the body. Create a nurturing inner sanctuary where you feel safe. Learn what your body requires through exercise, diet, and rest to maintain balance. Commit to giving it the nutrients that it needs to thrive. Mental self-love: Kick out the roommate in your head that tells you you’re not good enough, beautiful/handsome enough, young enough, or wealthy enough to have a wonderful, loving, and supportive partnership. Replace self-deprecating thoughts with thoughts that affirm your wholeness, such as, "I am awesome and deserve someone who knows my worth," or "I am completely lovable just the way I am," and "I am deserving of great love." No matter what happened with your ex, you have the power to rewrite the conversations that affirm the truth of who you are. Emotional self-love: Bring deep self-compassion and kindness to your wounds. Understand how you contributed to the relationship's dissolution. Examine the pain that arises from your childhood. Get therapy or divorce coaching. Spiritual self-love: Develop and maintain a deeper connection to your spirit by recognizing and honoring the voice of your intuition. This can be accomplished through meditation, journaling, and spending quiet moments in nature. This inner guidance will let you know when you are truly ready for a relationship and whether someone you meet is right or wrong for you. Create the life of your dreams by connecting to a vision that reflects your worthiness and lovability. Know your passions. Find confidence in your purpose. Make a commitment to follow those passions, no matter what (or who) comes along. Committing to self-love and our life’s work before committing to a romantic relationship is the key to fulfillment and wholeness. When we commit to a life of service to ourselves and others, we have made the vows that must precede (and that enable) a commitment to another person. 3. Learn what a healthy relationship looks like, and take your time.
After being married or in a long-term relationship, it’s easy to idealize the next person you date. Because we have already been deeply connected to—or maybe married and had children with—our past partner, we may easily project scenarios onto people we have just met, fantasizing about the role they will play in our lives without knowing much about them.
But the truth about dating after a breakup is that the real measure of an appropriate and desirable partner goes well beyond whether or not they will be able to fit into the same role as an ex. It's about knowing who we are and what we want and then truly getting to know someone over time. There are wonderful resources that can help clarify what a healthy relationship requires. Commit to the process of understanding what it takes to communicate and build a solid structure for a relationship before jumping in. Healthy relationships start off slow—as friendships. Commitment, then intimacy, comes only after a physical, mental, and emotional connection has been made and consistently demonstrated over time. When you love yourself, you can be open to many alternate resources for creativity and love and support. That allows you to avoid relying on a partner to give you something you lack. Even if you were in a codependent or unhealthy relationship, you can—and will—change these patterns by honoring yourself, knowing and sticking to your standards, and requiring (in a healthy and loving way) that others love and honor you as much as you love you. 4. Have fun.
When you do decide to date again, approach it as an adventure rather than a burden. Prepare yourself as much as possible, then let go, have fun, and trust the process. You get to choose whether you will date a little or a lot. Learn what you might want in a future partner by meeting people and having fun. More than anything, dating is an opportunity to be exposed to new thoughts, environments, and lifestyles. In asking and responding to questions about one another’s lives and core values, we create the opportunity to authentically communicate about ourselves with others. We can approach dating as a fun challenge. How can we get to know what really makes the other person tick? Most importantly, we can enjoy the process of noting how we feel when we are around this person. Is there a lightness and joy or an anxious pit in our stomachs? Is there ease or awkwardness? Are there feelings that something is just "not right"? Practice nonattachment, rely on your personal support system, and stay curious about other people's worlds. Learning how they fit in with yours can be a joyful process rather than a painful one. Now, after three years of healing from divorce and casually dating, I'm in a new relationship. I can attest to the fact that entering into a long-term commitment isn’t the endgame—it’s just the beginning. It will bring up our vulnerabilities and fears like nothing else can. When we enter the arena with an arsenal of self-love, high standards, and an understanding of the process, we can create and enjoy the ride of a relationship at a much deeper level. Source: https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/4-things-to-do-before-you-start-a-new-relationship
Your pain is almost unbearable but, you will get over it.
To understand the emotional pain experienced during a divorce, it might help to discuss the two types of emotional pain, according to some psychologists. There is “clean pain” and “dirty pain.”
Clean pain, is the pain that comes with living life in general. The loss of a loved one, having a serious illness, being in an abusive relationship and so forth. We all, at some time or another experience this kind of pain.
Dirty pain, is pathological pain and comes from what we tell ourselves about situations we find ourselves in. For example, negative thinking about oneself or, harsh judgments from others and a negative view of the world and experiences will cause us to experience “dirty pain.”
Both clean and dirty pain are experienced during a divorce, which is one reason the pain of divorce is hard to move past. It is common during a divorce to feel the pain of loss and the pain of pathological thinking about that loss. In other words, we experience both necessary pain and unnecessary pain during a divorce.
Regardless of whether you are the one who wanted a divorce or, the one who was left behind, there is emotional pain and healing to be expected. Perhaps if we look at where the feelings of sadness and negative emotions come from it will be easier to understand why the healing process can take longer than expected for some who divorce. Where Does The Pain of Divorce Come From? 1. You’ve lost someone you once loved or maybe still love. There is a grieving process much like one would experience if they lost a loved one to death. It isn’t unusual to blame yourself for the end of the marriage or, blame your ex-spouse. For those who didn’t want a divorce, there will be periods of anger at everything and everyone. You may withdraw from friends and support and isolate yourself in an attempt for self-protection. Your ex is someone you were once intimately attached to; give yourself time to adjust to that loss. 2. You’ve lost dreams for the future. In a marriage, we live in the present and the future. There are constant thoughts of where we, as a couple will be 5, 10 or 20 years down the road. With divorce, any future the two of you had planned is gone; you have to start from scratch and learn to build a future for one after a divorce. It is easy for newly divorced individuals to get stuck in the present or the past, ruminating over what went wrong and how they are feeling, “right now” instead of looking forward. Is it any wonder that some find it hard to get past the pain of having to let go of the future and start over again? 3. You’ve lost an intact family. If we have children we all work hard at having the “perfect” family. A lot of time and emotional energy goes into maintaining a great intact family. A lot of emotional pain goes into letting go of the idea that we didn’t have a “perfect” family. When a family falls apart we are made more aware of the work and energy that will go into building a new and different family with a new partner. We have to not only take into consideration our own pain and fears we have to focus on doing what is in the best interest of our children who’ve suffered the greatest loss of all. 4. You feel as if you have failed. Most of us don’t live in constant denial and are able to take responsibility for the role we played in the demise of our marriage. Admitting to ourselves that we made mistakes can leave us feeling vulnerable and riddled with guilt. Even as commonplace as divorce is in today’s society there is still a certain amount of shame and embarrassment attached to the idea that we were not able to keep our marriage together. Facing others in our social circle, church or family can bring up negative emotions that also take time to heal. It is a matter of adjusting, going from being part of a couple to single again after a divorce. And, that being OK within and without. The above is a short list. It, by no means, covers all the bases. Pain is relative and each divorce situation is unique. You will suffer losses that are exclusive to your marriage and your recovery. The secret to recovering and moving on after divorce is to become self-aware and honest with yourself. Divorce may mean freedom but with that freedom comes loss, and there must be a willingness to take the necessary time to heal. Source: https://www.liveabout.com/reasons-the-pain-of-divorce-is-hard-to-get-over-1102713
Optimism bias: Why the young and the old tend to look on the bright side
We all like to think of ourselves as rational creatures who smartly prepare for the worst. We watch our back, weigh the odds and pack an umbrella when the skies look threatening. But although we take such precautions, we generally expect things to turn out pretty well — often better than they actually do.
The belief that the future will probably be much better than the past and present is known as the optimism bias, and most of us have this tendency to overestimate the likelihood of good events happening to us and underestimate the likelihood that bad events will come crashing down.
For instance, people hugely underestimate their chances of losing their job or being diagnosed with cancer. They also envision themselves achieving more than their peers and overestimate their likely life span, sometimes by 20 years or more.
In short, we are often more optimistic than realistic.
Take marriage, for example. In the Western world, divorce rates are higher than 40 percent: Two out of five marriages end in divorce. But newlyweds estimate their own likelihood of divorce at zero. Even divorce lawyers, who should know better, hugely underestimate their own likelihood of divorce. Although the sunniest optimists are just as likely to divorce as the next person, they are also more likely to remarry. In the words of the 18th-century English author Samuel Johnson, “Remarriage is the triumph of hope over experience.”
Karl A. Pillemer, a Cornell gerontologist, used the wisdom of crowds — more than 1,000 Americans aged 65 and over — to glean material for his book “30 Lessons in Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans.’’ Here are 12 of his tips.
Many of us who have children believe that our kids will be especially talented, even while thinking our neighbor’s kids aren’t all that promising. A survey conducted in 2007 on behalf of the BBC found that 93 percent of respondents were optimistic about the future of their own family, while only 17 percent were optimistic about the future of other families. Collectively, we can grow pessimistic — about the future of our fellow citizens, about the direction of our country, about the ability of our leaders to improve education and reduce crime — while we continue to think our own future is bright. Why does optimism about our personal future remain incredibly resilient? It is not that we think things will magically turn out okay for us, but rather that we believe we have the unique abilities to make it so. The rosy future Optimism starts with what may be the most extraordinary of human talents: mental time travel, the ability to move back and forth through time and space in one’s mind. To think positively about our prospects, it helps to be able to imagine ourselves in the future. Our capacity to envision a different time and place is critical for our survival. It allows us to plan ahead, to save food and resources for times of scarcity, and to endure hard work in anticipation of a future reward. While mental time travel has clear survival advantages, conscious foresight came to humans at an enormous price — the understanding that death awaits. The knowledge that old age, sickness, decline of mental power and oblivion are somewhere around the corner can be devastating. Ajit Varki, a biologist at the University of California at San Diego, argues that the awareness of mortality on its own would have led evolution to a dead end. The despair would have interfered with our daily function, bringing the daily activities needed for survival to a stop. The only way that conscious mental time travel could have arisen is if it emerged along with irrational optimism. The knowledge of death had to emerge in parallel with the persistent ability to picture a bright future.
The capacity to envision that future relies partially on the hippocampus, a brain structure that is crucial to memory. People with damage to the hippocampus are unable to recollect the past; they are also unable to construct detailed images of future scenarios. The rest of us constantly voyage back and forth in time; we might be thinking of a conversation we had with our spouse yesterday and then immediately jump to our dinner plans for later tonight. But the brain doesn’t travel in time randomly. It tends to engage in specific types of thoughts: We consider how well our kids will do in life, how we will obtain that desired job, whether our team will win, and we look forward to an enjoyable night on the town. We also worry about losing loved ones, failing at our job or dying in a plane crash. But research shows that most of us spend less time mulling over negative outcomes than we do over positive ones. When we do contemplate defeat and heartache, we tend to focus on how these can be avoided.
Why do we maintain this rosy bias even when information challenging our upbeat forecasts is so readily available? We experience both positive and negative events in our lives. We know the economy is unstable, for example, but still we remain optimistic about our own future. When expectations are not met, we alter them. This should eventually lead to sober realism, not blind optimism. Underestimating bad news Only recently have we been able to decipher this mystery. My colleagues and I at University College London recently scanned the brains of people as they processed both positive and negative information about the future.
Among other things, we asked them to estimate how likely they were to encounter 80 different negative events in their life, including developing cancer, having Alzheimer’s disease and being robbed.
We then told them the likelihood that a person like them would suffer these misfortunes; for example, the lifetime risk of cancer is about 30 percent. Then we asked again: How likely are you to suffer from cancer? We wanted to know if people would change their beliefs according to the information we provided. It turns out they did, but mostly when the information we gave them was better than they had expected. If someone had estimated that their risk of cancer was 50 percent and we told them, “Good news: The average likelihood is much better, only 30 percent,” the next time around they would say, “You know what? Maybe my likelihood is only 35 percent.” So they learned easily and quickly.
However, if someone started off estimating their cancer risk was 10 percent and we told them, “Bad news: The average likelihood is about 30 percent,” they would scale up only gradually. The next time, they might say that their likelihood of contracting cancer was only 11 percent. It is not that they did not learn at all. They simply decided that the figures we provided were not pertinent to them.
Where do these irrational beliefs come from? This disconnect is related to something scientists call prediction errors, which describe the difference between what you expect and what actually happens.
When we gave our research volunteers information about future likelihoods (such as contracting cancer), we scanned their brains looking for changes that might relate to the gap between their estimates and the information they received. A few brain areas, including the left inferior frontal gyrus 1, responded to unexpected good news. For example, when someone thought his likelihood of cancer was 50 percent and we told him it was only 30 percent, this region responded fiercely. On the other side of the brain, the right inferior frontal gyrus responded to unexpected bad news. But it did not do a very good job. In fact, the more optimistic a person was, the less this region seemed to process bad news. If your brain is failing to respond to unexpected bad news, you are constantly wearing rose-tinted glasses. These findings are striking: When people learn, their neurons encode desirable information that can enhance optimism, but the neurons fail at incorporating unexpectedly undesirable information. When we hear a success story such as that of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, our brains take note of the possibility that we, too, may become immensely successful and rich one day. But hearing that the odds of divorce are almost one in two tends not to make us think that our own marriage may be destined to fail. Does age matter? Does everyone show an optimistic bias? As it turns out, they do. In an as yet unreleased study, my colleagues and I found that people of all age groups changed their beliefs more in response to good news, and they discounted bad news. Even more surprising was the finding that kids and elderly people both showed more of a bias than college students. On one hand, the young and the old were quite good at responding to desirable information: Everyone updated their beliefs similarly when they learned they were less likely to get cancer or have their credit card stolen than they had initially believed. But when they learned their chances were worse than expected, kids, teenagers and older adults seemed to ignore this information more than college students and middle-aged individuals. The behavioral economist Andrew Oswald has found that from about the time we are teenagers, our sense of happiness starts to decline, hitting rock bottom in our mid-40s. (Middle-age crisis, anyone?) Then our sense of happiness miraculously starts to go up again rapidly as we grow older. This finding contradicts the common assumption that people in their 60s, 70s and 80s are less happy and satisfied than people in their 30s and 40s. How can we explain this? The first thing that comes to mind is that these changes have something to do with raising kids in our 30s and 40s. Could it be that having children in the household has a negative influence on our happiness?
Oswald ruled out this possibility. He also controlled for people being born in better times, marital status, education, employment status, income: The age pattern persisted. Even more surprising, the pattern held strong even though Oswald did not control for physical health. In other words, older individuals are happier and more satisfied than middle-aged individuals even though the health of the former is generally worse. Oswald tested half a million people in 72 countries, in both developing and developed nations. He observed the same pattern across all parts of the globe and across sexes. Happiness diminishes as we transition from childhood to adulthood and then starts rising as we grow wrinkles and acquire gray hair. And it’s not only we humans who slump in the middle and feel sunnier toward the end. Just recently, Oswald and colleagues demonstrated that even chimpanzees and orangutans appear to experience a similar pattern of midlife malaise.
Oswald did observe some interesting differences. For one, the age at which happiness is at its lowest is different around the world. In Britain, for example, happiness reaches rock bottom quite early — at 35.8 years of age — before it starts going up again. In Italy, by contrast, happiness hits its ultimate low much later — at 64.2 years. And while women reach the bottom of the happiness barrel at 38.6 years on average, men reach it more than a decade later — at 52.9 years. (Oswald observed another interesting divergence in happiness trends: Americans have been growing less happy since 1900. In Europe, however, happiness has been increasing steadily since 1950, after 50 years of decline. Why the difference? We simply don’t know.) What explains the age findings? One possible answer is that happy people live longer, while pessimistic ones die earlier, so those elderly individuals who remain for scientists to test are happier than the average 30- or 40-year-old. Another possibility is that older individuals have experienced a larger range of adverse events, so they are less likely to view these events as frightening and consequential; thus, their psychological coping mechanisms may be better. A third potential explanation is that the decreased ability in older adults to take bad news into account may be enhancing their optimism and thus increasing their happiness. The decline may be connected with age-related changes in frontal lobe function, which is important for incorporating new information into prior beliefs.
The sun will shine Why would our brains be wired in a way that makes us prone to optimistic illusions? It is tempting to speculate that optimism was selected by evolution precisely because, on balance, positive expectations enhance the odds of survival.
Research findings that optimists live longer and are healthier, along with the fact that most humans display optimistic biases — and emerging data that optimism is linked to specific genes — all strongly support this hypothesis.
Life during and after a divorce can be crippling, but there are many reasons to stay positive. Psychologist Michael Jolkovski posed the question to me: Why should there be any trouble holding one's head up after a divorce? 'Shame is a big part of why divorce is always more painful and disruptive than anyone anticipates,' Jolkovski points out. 'At some level, a divorce feels like a giant failure in one of the biggest projects in life.' It takes a lot of emotional work to get through these feelings and to feel better again. But, we believe in you. You can do it. Read 10 reasons why you should stay positive after a divorce -- they may help you along the way... 10. What is Marriage, Anyway? "I would encourage your readers to reflect on how they built up their understanding of what a marriage is. This begins very early in childhood, in play with dolls and drawings and make-believe with friends, which often center on some notion of family," Jolkovski explains. "These notions are running quietly in the background in adults as unconscious assumptions, which can have a brutal collision with adult reality. This reality includes facts of life such as that people come to marriage with wildly differing understandings of what it is all about; that we cannot make anyone love us, no matter how wonderful we try to be, and that none of us has that much control over the way life plays out." Instead of focusing on the failed marriage, Jolkovski suggests to realize your resilience and flexibility. 9. You Did Something for You Peggie Arvidson has been divorced twice, and she admits it's not easy. "I guess the best reason for holding your head up, though, is knowing that you did something for you. Not in the selfish, 'It's all about me' way or in the way of making him a bad guy and you look like the victim, but rather I could hold my head up knowing that I had done a lot of inner work to make a decision that was harder than most people think and I was going to honor me," she explains. Arvidson also points out that in the process, you'll come to trust yourself more, realize that you're strong enough to take a stand, and understand that you learned something along the way. 8. Your License to Reinvent Faith McKinney, who's been divorced twice and has been remarried now for seven years, thinks the new start is a positive change. "The great thing about divorce is that it is a license to reinvent yourself without your ex-husband's input or criticism," she explains. "I learned to trust myself and that it's OK to enjoy myself." McKinney began to make mistakes without fear of reprisal or retaliation. "Even though it is very difficult emotionally, financially and socially, I survived. Twice." 7. Anything is Possible For Emma, blogger of DivorcedBefore30.com, the divorce gave her a sense of invincibility. "You'll have good days and atrociously bad days, but on the good days, you'll see that anything is possible," she explains. "People are, for the most part, gracious. You will have fun again as soon as you give yourself permission to let go." 6. Here's to Good Family and Friends Don't forget about the people on your team! "Your friends and family will be there to help you pick up the pieces -- let them," Emma advises. The love will have your head up in no time. You just have to stop and smell the roses (and by "smell the roses," we mean recognize the people that love you). 5. Looking Good For those getting divorced, a transformation is inevitable -- that's something to look forward to, according to Andrea Gross, lifestyle coach who's writing a book called, When You're Ready. She's happily divorced and has never been happier. "There were days and even weeks and months that I could barely function. Now, only one year later, I look and feel better than I did 10 years ago." People ask Gross what her secrets are, and that is the reason she started her practice. The secret? "I have found inner happiness and strength -- I am my authentic, sexy, confident self again." 4. Letting Go It's grand -- it really is. "If you gave it your best shot, and you know it's over, don't waste time in resentment and anger -- it's self-destructive. Let go," says Tina Tessina, a.k.a. "Dr. Romance" and a licensed psychotherapist. "Do your grieving, cry, write in your journal and talk about it alone or with a trusted friend." You can even have a fun "letting go" ceremony with close friends, and say goodbye to your married life, she suggests. 3. Relief For Ron Thomson, who has been divorced twice with no animosity, fighting or children, believes one reason to keep your head up is because of relief. Although both of his ex-wives were the ones who initiated the breakup and wanted the divorce, Thomson did keep his head up. "Whatever problems we were experiencing are now over," he recalls. "It hits you later that your family is gone and you are alone." At either case, you get to start over again, Thomson points out. "To me the women lost out on a good man. That's a good reason to hold your head up," he adds. 2. When You Put Your Kids First Sometimes taking the higher road is another way to keep your head up. Don't be negative -- think of the transition for the kids. "You can keep your head up if you manage to put your own needs aside for the kids. I don't mean stay married, but, during divorce and beyond, put the kids first," says Lauren Whitman, author of Austin's Best Idea Ever. "When my (now) husband and I were first together, he missed his daughter terribly. I encouraged him to stay in touch with his daughter daily and to tell her that he loved her often. I think he felt supported in keeping that connection strong since I took that position." 1. Look to the Future Alicia Rinaldi, a family attorney who has also had to mediate in a multitude of family law matters, reminds us not to forget about what's to come. "I'm not a trained therapist or social worker, but I try to encourage my clients to see past the present so that together we can get them to a better place in the future," she says. "While the stress of experiencing a divorce or strife in your family life is certainly great, keeping an eye towards the future helps put things in perspective so that setbacks don't derail the case." The transition of divorce can be extremely rewarding -- being in a toxic relationship can stifle a person's dreams and expressions, but separation from it can also be a stepping stone to teach you what you need out of a partner, and what you want out of life. Source: http://www.sheknows.com/love-and-sex/articles/813740/10-reasons-to-stay-positive-after-a-divorce-1
