Let’s face it, it’s not easy to announce your divorce, it may in fact be what you are dreading the most, but confiding in others will help you gain the support you need to pick up the pieces. There are so many different emotions – sadness, anger, fear, guilt, etc. One of the fears is about telling your friends and family. How will they react? What will they think? Will they ask a lot of questions that you don’t know how to answer? Will they be supportive?
Some divorces come as no surprise that people saw coming and some divorces seem to come out of left field, depending on how much you and your spouse were “keeping up with appearances.” It is natural to want to keep up with appearances, after all, you may have went through months (even years) where you didn’t know if it would work out or not, and if it did you didn’t want your friends and family to dislike your spouse or think poorly of your marriage. This is not uncommon at all, it just makes initiating the conversation a bit more difficult.
Remember that ultimately your friends and family want you to be happy. Tell your immediate family and closest friends first. From there, it gets trickier to know what is the best approach to take. You probably don’t want to, nor is it healthy, to tell the story over and over, so maybe an email to extended family and friends works for you, or maybe having a specific friend and family member responsible for letting certain people know is the best method for you. Having to worry about whether you are breaking the news in the right delivery method should be the least of your concerns right now, and people ultimately need to understand that. However, because everyone seems to want to know why, it is imperative to have a brief “elevator speech” ready. This can be as simple as, “We are two good people, that are simply not good together.”
Your boss may need to know since divorce proceedings might conflict with your work schedule, but the need to tell co-workers will vary. If you aren’t close to them and normally don’t discuss your personal life then an announcement probably isn’t necessary. In today’s digital world there is also social media to consider. Don’t feel like you have to make an announcement, you can do nothing or simply change your name, eventually people will figure it out. News travels, and beyond close friends and family, you don’t own anyone an explanation.
Don’t be alarmed if some people start to distance themselves. They may also be grieving this divorce. Sometimes friends whose own marriages are struggling will separate themselves from you for fear that it may happen to them as well. It’s important to remember that divorce does not define you. Your true friends will stand by you and most likely will want to help, but they may not necessarily know how. Perhaps before you break the news to friends and family make a list of what people can help with. Whether that’s enlisting in moving help, help with the kids, emotional support, attorney recommendations, or even needing a group of friends to commit to a night out once a month. Write down anything and everything that you might think could help, and then when people ask you can let them know immediately. Helping assists people in coping and understanding, so enlisting in friends and family’s help can be beneficial to all. Friends will want to help and lend advice. Allow them to help, but please seek advice from professionals (clergy, attorneys, therapists, advisers, etc), and remember to take care of yourself emotionally and physical.
Our last blog post from Daisy Camp discussed ways you can avoid going to trial in a divorce. The last thing anyone wants is to go to trial, but sometimes going to trial is simply unavoidable. The good thing is, less than 5 percent of divorce cases go to trial, but what if you find yourself amongst that 5 percent? What can you expect in a divorce trial?
Judges generally try to help you resolve your case before the trial date, but sometimes that is simply impossible. If, after months, and sometimes even years of negotiations, you and your soon-to-be-ex-spouse still have not reached an agreement, your last recourse is to have a trial. Divorce trials typically do not involve juries, but are held by a judge in the judge’s chamber. The judge reviews volumes of documents, hears evidence from each spouse, your respective divorce attorneys, possibly witnesses, and then come to a decision based on evidence.
Trials can be as short as half a day or as long as several months (although that would probably be unusual for a divorce trial). The length of a trial depends on the number of witnesses, how long each examination takes, and what motions are made during the course of the trial. The emotional and financial costs rapidly add up. Divorces can be very expensive, but divorces that go to trial are even more costly, both financially as well as emotionally.
According to the book “The Collaborative Way to Divorce” by Collaborative Attorneys, Stuart Wells & Ron Ousky, “When divorcing the “traditional way” settlement may only happen only after you or your spouse have been to court on one or more occasion, for temporary hearings, settlement conferences, and so on. Sometimes these cases settle within days or hours before the trial is scheduled to begin – after you and your spouse have already incurred most of the financial and emotional cost of preparing for trial.” In these cases although the trial was avoided, the damage is already done. 
No one imagines they will find themselves single, divorced, and living in a 4 bedroom house in the suburbs alone, and then it happens. So what do you do when you wake up and realize that your life is not at all what you ever imagined it would be? How do you “cope” and “mourn” the loss of the life you had been planning for yourself?
First, remember you are not alone. You are never alone in this. Lean on your friends, family, and a good support group – whether it’s a support group you created with a network of friends and family, or a more formal divorce support group in your area. There are so many resource out there, find people/places/networks that you feel comfortable with. Seek out professional counseling or therapy, sometimes just talking about these hopes and dreams that could have/should have/would have been to a neutral party can be such a relief.
Know that it is ok to mourn this loss. For you it may be the loss of the “perfect family” you had envisioned – whether you never had kids and always wanted them, or had 1 or 2 and had wanted more. Maybe for someone else who is forced to go back to work because of the divorce, it may be the loss of being able to stay at home with the children. Perhaps it’s the loss of a certain lifestyle one may have gotten used to or thought they would attain someday, whether financially or within a certain social circle. Maybe divorce forced you to move to new area and you are mourning the loss of being close to your friends, in a certain school district for your children, or even simply mourning the loss of your home. It’s not irrational to mourn these things, whether they are lifestyles and material items you no longer have, or were simply hopes for the future – it is ok.
Take comfort in knowing that you never know what the future has in store for you. Maybe you always wanted kids and suddenly find yourself dating someone with children that you simply adore (young or old). Think you’re too old for that reality? Maybe you will remarry and have pile of grandchildren in your future. Maybe having to go back to work will one day lead to a promotion that allows you to take your children on trips of a lifetime and provide for their college education. There is a quote by Joseph Campbell that reads, “We must be willing to let go of the life we had planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” Remember that. 
I sat in on a seminar recently with a room full of moms. Moms of babies, moms of toddlers, moms with children just starting elementary school. The topic was about learning to fall in love with your husband again, and the speaker was a woman in her 70’s. The dialog was mainly, “Do this to keep your husband happy, do that to keep your husband happy…” I think many were wondering why they got up early on a Tuesday morning to listen to old-fashion marriage advice. However, in between the eye rolls of many overtired moms, I caught the true message of the speech – don’t forget about your marriage, the kids are wonderful, but if you make them your whole world, they leave the nest, and the marriage is over.
I had not really thought about empty nest syndrome in this sense. I had mainly thought about the kids going off to college and the parents are alone in a big empty house, they are a little lonely, maybe start a new hobby, and life goes on. Only life doesn’t go on, at least not in that sense. Divorce after decades, the graying divorce, divorce after 50, whatever you may call it, is becoming more and more common. Decades of putting the kids first, likely putting the career second, and well, the marriage must have fallen down on the priority list.
When children are babies and toddlers they require about every last bit of energy you have; once they start school it’s homework, sports, and juggling schedules. Making it all too easy for the better part of 20+ years for your marriage to be entirely kid-centric. The graying divorce gives new meaning to staying together for the kids. The couple in many of these marriages might not have even seen it coming. Years of enjoying the children together – family vacations, neighborhood outings, cheering the kids on together from the sidelines, only to wake up one day and realize they no longer have anything in common, the kids were all they had in common.
A half-century ago, only 2.8 percent of Americans older than 50 were divorced. In 2011, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 15.4 percent were divorced and another 2.1 percent were separated. Was it that divorce was more taboo 50 years ago, or maybe because people are living longer these days? A healthy 60 year old might look at it in terms of having 20+ years left; 20+ years that they are choosing to be happy, and ditching the unhappy marriage. Baby boomers are setting record high divorce numbers.
If you found yourself amongst this new era of divorce, the good news is you are in good company! There are support groups nationwide that are catering specifically to the increase in baby boomers and their graying divorces. Seek out divorcees going through a similar situation and create a support system. Most importantly, keep on living – enjoying yourself, pursue your interests, take on a new hobby, travel, and make the most of your new-found free time! 
