After Divorce

From Broken to Beautiful – Building Your Best Life After Divorce

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  • I let bitterness control me after my divorce

    When my marriage ended, we did not have a custody arrangement. I had 3 minor aged children (including my step-son) and they visited their dad when he was around. He travelled a fair bit for work and was never interested in being a full-time parent. It was in the middle of the covid insanity, so i was not able to seek out a lot of help and support as the Canadian government banned absolutely everything. I resented my ex-husband for letting me raise his affair child and then leaving once he was near adulthood. I resented him for not recognizing or acknowledging my sacrifice for him. I resented him for fighting tooth and nail to pay as little as possible while i still providing security and shelter for his children.

    Lately, I feel God has been asking me to let this bitterness go. I have come across several books that have been so enlightening regarding who is really harmed by my bitterness. It’s me. It’s hard to slow down and take the time to read a book in today’s fast-paced life. But for anyone who can manage that discipline, I would strongly recommend When You’ve Been Wronged by Erwin Lutzer and The Bait of Satan by John Bevere. Both books provide incredible insight to how damaging it is to hold onto bitterness. The people that hurt us might never apologize. They might never acknowledge what they’ve done or how much they’ve wronged us. But the more successful I am in letting go of my bitterness, the easier it is becoming for me to move past the betrayal to a more peaceful life.

    It isn’t easy to let go of a grudge because it isn’t easy to let go of what feels like my right to avenge myself. What if my ex-husband never has to feel the consequences of what he did? What if his life really just keeps getting better. Our children are all grown now. His business that he didn’t want to share with me when he left has grown more successful. By all appearances, he is doing amazing. And now I’m supposed to get over his betrayal and abandonment? I didn’t like that idea at all. But this isn’t about him escaping consequences, because he might not. But if he does or doesn’t, I am still responsible for the kind of life I live. Bitter people are hard to be around. They often have a legitimate grievance. But they are also very draining. Do I want that to be who I am? A bitter ex-wife? Will my children want to spend time with me if I am consumed by how their father treated me?

    I want peace and I want people to feel peace from me. Bitter and unforgiving people don’t generally draw people to Christ. That is what I want. I want my life and my testimony to be about Christ and not about how angry I am at someone else.

  • What I wish I had done differently when my marriage ended.

    1. I wish I had prepared myself financially. I knew he was checking out.  I knew he was being unfaithful – regular one night stands. But he kept denying the proof that I had (I was 90% positive but did not have the conviction to force the issue). He took my name off his company that he started when the kids were in middle school. He made up some lame excuse that he wanted to start profit sharing with his employees so I needed to not be listed. Obviously, I knew this was a lie, but even at this point (19 years of marriage), I didn’t have the confidence to force the issue. I knew when we were filing income tax that he was being dishonest, as our net income was nearly 100k a year less than what our return showed (because he spent so much money from the company on himself and that money never made it into our home). For the last 3 years of our marriage, I did start pushing this, but he was already so comfortable dismissing my concerns, it did not faze him in the least.  I wish I forced a resolution on the income tax returns and refused to remove my name from the company. But since the writing was already on the wall, I wish I had protected myself financially earlier on.
    2. I wish I had a life insurance policy separate from my ex-husband’s ventures during our marriage. His company was the beneficiary on our life insurance policies and I continued to pay those premiums for the first year after he left. When I tried to change the beneficiary, they told me the company owned the policy so I couldn’t make those changes. So I bought a new policy listing my children as beneficiaries, but since I only purchased this in my 40’s, the premium is quite a bit higher.
    3. I wish I had stood up for myself when it was obvious I was being used and disrespected. When he decided to pull the plug, he asked me to go for supper with him after our daughter’s high school volleyball game. I was pleased that he was finally choosing to spend time with me as I had been begging for that for the entirety of our marriage. During the meal, he announced that he was leaving. He also announced that the youngest child in our family (conceived during one of his affairs and removed from the mother by CPS – I raised him from 2.5 years old – he was 15 years old at this point) would continue living with me along with our 4 other children. Then he told me he would be moving out in 6 months. For the next 6 months, I continued to do his laundry, make his meals, and keep the house and children’s schedules in order. I wish I had made him move out at that time.
    4. I wish I had taken my lawyer’s advice instead of making emotional decisions. When I saw a lawyer, he strongly encouraged me to request more child support and alimony as my income was barely $30k a year to his over $150k. I was still trying to protect a man that had never tried to protect me. I wish I had listened to the lawyer rather than still approaching this from an emotional perspective. My ex-husband is a salesman through and through and even in the face of financial dishonesty and rampant sexual infidelity, I still felt like I should trust him.  He took his half of the equity on our small house and kept the entire company even though I had claim to half as a marital asset.  I wish I had not let my emotions guide my financial decisions in the divorce.