Active or Passive: what will you choose?

After the divorce is final, you find yourself in the proverbial “And on the way.” As corny as that phrase may be, it is accurate in describing the basic mindset choice everyone divorcing must make: (1) Should I take a passive role in my recovery, take the hits and let time heal the pain? ? Or (2) should I take an active role and overcome all the obstacles and problems that prevent me from finding satisfaction in my life after the divorce?

It is not easy to choose the healthy and happy path for your life after divorce. But the passive alternative, while easy to do, will bring you a lifetime of unmet expectations and regret. The choice is yours. What will it be?

Our culture tells you to be passive

The dictates of our culture are transmitted to us primarily by our family, friends, loved ones, teachers, coaches, religious leaders, television, and movies. The constant message we receive tells us to take the passive route as there is nothing you can do to heal the pain except let it pass long enough.

My sister in law took the passive route. Several years before they met her, he divorced her. Her husband had had a very public affair with a friend of my sister-in-law. She was mortified. Whenever she mentioned her ex in casual conversation, she always had something cynical or critical to say about him. She wouldn’t let it go. She was never in another long-term committed relationship. Twenty-five years later, she died of cancer. If time healed her wound, certainly 25 years should have been enough. she was not

The traditional prescription of passively doing nothing and letting time heal the trauma does not work. Trauma just sits deeper and deeper within us and then seeps to the side when something happens that triggers pain and fear from the past.

The Alternative Pathway: Be an Active Participant in Your Recovery

Thanksgiving dinner doesn’t magically materialize on the dining room table ready to be served. A lot of time and work is devoted to the preparation of the traditional autumn festival.

Similarly, a successful recovery from divorce takes time, work, and preparation to attack and dissolve your reluctance to let go of the pain of the divorce and attachments to how life used to be.

This reluctance is primarily an emotionally based resistance to change.

Emotion-based resistance can arise from a number of sources. For example, fear, loss, pain, anger, resentment, collapsed self-esteem and self-confidence, shame, failure, dashed dreams, and dashed hope are just a few of the problems that prevent you from have a fulfilling life after divorce. These problems will not magically resolve or go away on their own.

Therefore, you need a plan of attack designed to dissolve every source of resistance. What works initially with this type of resistance to change is empathy followed by a structured way of facing the fear of an unknown future, identifying the actual losses suffered, and then dissolving the anguish over what was actually lost. Relying on time alone to achieve this is insane.

What “active” options do you have?

Two common ways that people take steps to address these issues are divorce support groups and counseling. While both are better than the passive option of letting time heal everything, neither support groups nor therapy provide the action needed to dissolve resistance.

A better active option is to tailor your work to the specific “hurdles” caused by the divorce that you must deal with. This can be done by working with a divorce recovery coach.

So what is the point?

Passive is easy. Active is hard.

However, if you want to recover from your divorce and the trauma it caused, you must take positive steps to resolve the specific problems caused by your divorce. These problems will not resolve themselves. You must take control of your future by actively dealing with the current damage that your divorce has caused.

The alternative? You risk waiting 25 years for them to “fix” and ending up wasting the rest of your life like my sister-in-law did.