People don’t decide to end a long-term relationship lightly, especially when children are involved. Divorce and separation are two of the most painful life events anyone ever goes through.
They can lead people to question everything they thought they knew about themselves and their lives. They are overwhelming.
If this is happening to you, you are probably exhausted. Your life may seem out of control, and the prospect of calm and safety may seem a very long way away. Most people feel confused and often overwhelmed by strong emotions.
The grief, sadness, pain and often anger that you may feel about the past will be mixed up with the anxiety and even panic that you may be feeling about the family’s future, most especially what the future will look like for your children.
Uncertainty and the strength of emotions will definitely stress you out. Stress is known to be damaging to your health, both mental and physical.
So what should you do?
A good first step is to get some information about your situation. As with most things, you will probably start with the internet, where the basics can be found for free, provided you look in the right place.
Do be careful, though—there is a lot of misinformation out there, as well as a lot of information that isn’t relevant to England and Wales.
The UK government website, www.gov.uk, has some clear, straightforward information on it. This is a good place to start if you live in England and Wales. You can find lots of helpful advice and
help at www.advicenow.org.uk.
If you have children, it could help you to look at the co-parenthub,
a resource created by the government agency that looks after children involved in court proceedings. You may also be interested in what the NSPCC says about separation and divorce.
Other independent organisations with good websites containing helpful information include Citizen’s Advice Bureau, Relate, Gingerbread, and Family Lives.
You may prefer to watch videos rather than look at words on the screen, and there are lots of useful videos on YouTube, too—just not as many ‘official’ ones.
We recommend having a look at the videos available on the Family Mediators Association website, which you can find here: https://thefma.co.uk/about-family-mediation/videos-showing-mediation-works
All the websites listed mention the benefits of trying to sort your situation out by reaching agreements between yourselves. That may seem a dreadful idea while you are still caught up in the storm.
It is certainly very difficult to do alone. But with good professional help, most people eventually work things out between themselves without involving the courts.
The evidence shows that in lots of different ways, this is better for everyone in the family,
especially the children.
So, where can you find good professional help?
Talking to a family mediator is a good place to start.
Family mediators work with families to help them make decisions together. They offer an impartial and confidential service to people who are choosing to try to make decisions together rather than ask someone else to make the decision for them.
It can be very helpful to get some legal advice early as well if you can afford it – family mediators don’t advise about your particular situation, but they can give you lots of information about the law in general terms and about research into what works for children.
We recommend finding someone who can help you work through all your strong emotions. Friends can be a wonderful source of support.
Talking things through with a professional therapist can be even better, as they have lots of experience working with people in crisis and will be able to suggest strategies that have worked in the past for other people.
Some of the most important things you can do, according to the professionals, include:
• Permit yourself to take time for yourself – just like on an aeroplane, you can’t help anyone else until you have helped yourself! If you can find a way to relax and exercise, that will help you.
• Setting yourself some clear short-term goals and a schedule for working towards those goals.
• Create an image of what a good future would look like in the long term and see if that fits with your short-term goals.
• Focusing as much as possible on that good future and what will improve things daily.
• Working towards forgiveness and leaving blame behind as much as possible – this isn’t because blame is ‘wrong’ – it is because it hurts you more than it will hurt anyone else (except possibly your children). Until you can let go of blame, you won’t be able to build the good life for yourself that you want and deserve.
The key is that you don’t have to do this alone—whatever your situation, there are people who can help make the separation process better for everyone involved.