Life, freedom & transformation after divorce
“Their divorce had been a quiet, sad and silent affair when he’d signed and returned the papers with no question.
He’d shut her out without explanation and turned his back on her.
Samantha tsked under her breath. ‘Leaving you alone to cope with a young child and mortgage.’
‘What cuts the most, mum, is that he’s never explained his behaviour.’
The lack of closure meant Cece had shut down her romantic life and had never dated since.
It hurt, especially when she saw Nik reflected in the smiles her son gave her every day.
Devastated, Cece had done the same as many other women. She’d rolled up her sleeves and taken charge. She’d worked hard, nurtured her young son and kept paddling.
It had been exhausting and almost soul-destroying.
Therapy helped her re-frame her decision-making and view of herself.
She’d worked her way past the chasm between her hopes and experience. Now, she saw her life in broader terms than just a failure or a wasted effort.
She made the choice to embrace the idea that after a relationship breakdown, all she could do was love herself, live her life independently of a man and care for her loved ones.
Mace made her journey more worthwhile. Samantha had been a lifeline.”
In ‘Love To Wreck You’, Cece is a single DIVORCED woman who finds her way back to herself and love again.
It's not advisable to encourage the breakdown of a marriage or romanticise the heartbreak that comes with the fallout of a divorce. The rise in popularity of "women's divorce fiction" shows there’s a demand for tropes that discuss how women can overcome the pain and angst of heartbreak. These literary works may not always be about divorce per se, but they feature in-depth female characters who are either experiencing marital difficulties, have recently broken up with a partner, or are in a similarly challenging relational situation. Throughout the course of the novel, these characters find power, revenge, or peace, or sometimes a combination of all three.
It goes without saying that the goal of a relationship is not to end up in a divorce. But if you do, post-divorce is where you can rewrite all the rules. If you were passive or felt pushed around in your first marriage, you can start off, right from the beginning, in a new role. You can make the plans, get your voice heard, assert whatever it is you couldn't in your first marriage. Women who married in their 20s, 30s, 40s have lots of new priorities, wants, skills, passions, goals and traits. So much has changed. If you and your first partner couldn't or didn't grow and change in compatible ways, finding someone new can be liberating from all those parts of yourself you have moved away from, grown out of or simply chose to release.
Another theme that comes up in the post-divorce discussion is the exhaustion, hopelessness and despair in first marriages that make change feel impossible. It's so much easier to reinvent yourself in a new relationship dynamic. A hard marriage grinds you down. It's exhausting, depressing and, after so long, can feel like (and be) impossible to make any inroads into change. In a new relationship with a new person (with a new set of challenges, neuroses, downsides, of course) but if you choose more healthily, you can shed the hopeless habits of mind and being. You can try out all-new ways of being in love, of being a partner, of allowing yourself to be cared for and for opening your heart to care for someone in a far deeper way.
Post-divorce hope: Transforming yourself from the inside
Anything truly is possible. If you know what worked and what didn't before, and you are mindfully listening to your instincts and thinking about what got you in trouble in the first place.
Like Cece Mirren in ‘Love To Wreck You,’ you too can be vulnerable and open for the first time in your entire life. You can get your groove back in all possible ways. You can rediscover your sexuality and sensuality in new relationships. You can find a new ability to make peace with their imperfect bodies for the first time, well, ever, because they were being cherished in entirely new ways.
You can find new ways to be cherished and loved, with new hope and a fresh future.
Love doesn’t have to wreck you with heartbreak, it can positively wreck you with passion, hope and freedom!
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