Top 5 Divorce Triggers

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Let's be honest. Anyone who has experienced divorce will tell you there are triggers. Emotional arsenals to be exact. If you need a visual think firecracker stash accidentally meets flame. You get it. Boom. Spark. Boom. More sparks. Firecrackers ignite. Sky implodes. It's fairly easy to understand this phenomenon. Divorce is like grief. No one who is married either happily or unhappily wants this outcome. They loved this person. Hence, there are triggers that exact emotional revenge upon us. Even if we are happier than we were while married, we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t feel sadness for what once was. And as any divorcing individual can attest to, they sneak up on you because they are hidden in our day to day lives, the new lives which we are attempting to build as we exit our old lives. Here are the top five divorce triggers that you should be aware of.

The Friends

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The friends you chose together who were impossibly you. You tipped beverages beside one another, cheered games in unison and congregated in school hallways. You were working mothers and dads, stay at home mothers and dads, room mothers, coaches, cub scout leaders, volunteer chairs and more. You wiped noses, scraped knees, and tears. You loved each other and one another’s kids as if your own. You prance down the bleachers, the school hallways, and church towards these friends who are your people.

Now you sidestep the route you used to relish. You no longer belong the way you once did. At least not to some of them. You are much like a teen transferred to a new school during senior year, still desiring to fit in yet realizing you don’t really want to?

Pictures

In a word, don’t look. Pictures are a cruel reminder of a promised life. They are joy and love and hope and conversely, impossible pain. That certain you staring at the lens meets you who will never position that camera again. It’s a conundrum. A truth you won’t be ready or willing to accept emotionally though intellectually you have no choice. Select a few you can cherish without torturing yourself for gone are the days of retakes.

If you’re recently divorced with children and wondering what to do with all those photos and marriage mementos and you’re maybe not ready to hang them on the wall, do your kids a huge favor and box them up and put them in a corner of the attic. Realize that the mementos from your marriage aren’t about you anymore, they don’t even belong to you anymore. They’re for your kids who deserve to know what coupling they come from.