101: Married Again, But Still Grieving Divorce?

The Remarried Life

Summary Brian Mayer talks about a rather common issue of not fully being emotionally past a divorce and past marriage even after you have married currently. Grieving is a process and is difficult and mostly impossible to stop or speed up. We will talk about ways to cope with this issue to lessen the burden on you are you current spouse. We hope you enjoy today’s message. For more information and additional resources please visit our website at http://www.theremarriedlife.com

Today's Goodies

• When something painful happens we all must go through the grieving process. For some it starts immediately and progresses quickly. For others it stops and starts and feels very slow. Unfortunately, it is complicated and there are lots of factors at play when it comes to this issue. They include:
• • How long ago did the divorce occur? This one is pretty obvious but bears discussing that they less time between divorce and remarriage the higher likelihood you will be grieving in some way.
  • Who initiated the divorce? Often if you initiated it, it means you had more time to grieve even while still married. If you were blindsided or somewhat unaware then the process takes longer.
  • How have you moved through significant troubling events in the past? These can include death of loved ones, legal troubles, serious health issues, or job loss just to name a few.
  • Your age at time of divorce can also play a role. Sometimes but not always if you are older and have more life experiences the grieving process can move more quickly.
  • How are the other parts of your life operating? How you are doing financially, your relationships with others, stress from raising kids, stress from a job can all interrupt the grieving process.
• So then what are the stages of grieving? Before we talk about this remember that the grieving process is not linear meaning that you can bounce back and forth through the stages. Usually though the more return to past stages, the more it will hopefully speed up the next time through.
• • Denial: I can’t or don’t believe this is happening.
  • Anger: Once the numb wears off this emotion will usually flood in
  • Bargaining: This is the stage where we ask “what if questions.” What if I had been home more? What if I had not been so angry all the time?
  • Depression: After we realize there either is nothing we could have done or that it doesn’t matter, then sometimes great sadness sets in.
  • Acceptance: At this stage, we can sometimes feel we have accepted things and then slip back but eventually this will take hold completely.
• So what can you do as you work through your grieving of a past relationship even while married again?
• • Don’t believe the myth that you can speed up grieving
  • Don’t believe the myth that there is a timeline
  • Know that you are not less of a human for not feeling strong enough. All humans go through this process.
  • If you feel comfortable discuss this with your current spouse. If trust and commitment are strong with each of you then it should be a good discussion.
  • Talk to others who might be experiencing this now or have in the past.

Resources:

• None Mentioned Today

Thanks For Listening!

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As always remember that marriage is not something you have, it is something you do. Talk to you next week unless you are binge listening in the future in which case I will talk to you in about a minute! Take care.