MENOPAUSE MONDAY: What If Divorce Is Actually the Beginning?
Divorce.
Even the word sounds miserable.
It conjures up solicitors, paperwork, arguments over who gets the air fryer and somebody discovering that apparently a decorative ceramic chicken is now an asset of the marriage.
And then comes the language.
Failed marriage.
Broken home.
Starting again.
Hang on a bloody minute.
What if you haven't failed?
What if your marriage simply ended?
And what if the end of something isn't always a tragedy?
Sometimes it might be the beginning of a life you didn't even realise you were missing.
Maybe Divorce Isn't Falling Apart
Maybe it's finally admitting something isn't working.
There can be enormous courage in that.
Because staying is familiar.
Even an unhappy familiar can feel safer than the unknown.
You know which side of the bed you sleep on.
You know whose turn it is to put the bins out.
You know exactly how loudly somebody can eat a bag of crisps before you contemplate homicide.
It's your life.
And leaving that familiarity can be terrifying.
But sometimes there comes a moment when you realise:
I would rather face the uncertainty of what's next than spend another decade pretending this is enough.
That's not necessarily failure.
That's honesty.
And Then There's Midlife
Oh, midlife.
That glorious period where your oestrogen starts buggering off, your chin sprouts one solitary pubic hair and your tolerance for bullshit packs its bags shortly afterwards.
Something happens.
You start looking around at your life differently.
Not just your marriage.
Everything.
Do I like my job?
Do I like where I live?
Do I actually enjoy these friendships?
Why have I spent 25 years pretending I like camping?
Why am I still keeping a dress from 2003 that would now barely fit around my left thigh?
And perhaps the biggest one:
Who the bloody hell am I?
Because women can spend decades being defined through relationships.
Wife.
Partner.
Mum.
Daughter.
Carer.
Employee.
The organiser.
The one who remembers everybody's birthdays.
The keeper of the passports.
The person who somehow knows where the Sellotape lives.
And when a marriage ends, one of those identities suddenly disappears.
That can be frightening.
But it can also be...
incredibly bloody exciting.
You Get to Meet Yourself Again
Not the 25-year-old version.
She's gone.
And thank Christ, because some of her eyebrows were questionable.
I'm talking about you now.
What do you like?
What do you want?
What music do you play when nobody else is in the car?
What do you want your bedroom to look like?
Where do you want to travel?
Who do you want to spend time with?
What do you want to eat?
Do you actually like Sunday roasts or have you just been peeling potatoes since 1997 because everybody else does?
What turns you on?
What makes you laugh?
What makes you peaceful?
What makes you feel alive?
They're deceptively simple questions.
But if you've spent years making decisions as part of a couple, suddenly choosing entirely for yourself can feel almost illegal.
Want to paint the bedroom neon pink?
Paint the bloody bedroom.
Want to eat cereal for dinner?
Crack on.
Want to spend Sunday wandering around an art gallery instead of visiting people you don't particularly like?
Off you go.
Want to book a weekend away on your own?
Book it.
Want to buy a vibrator and discover Wednesday afternoons have been criminally underused for the last twenty years?
Well...
Welcome back, Sally.
Finding Yourself Doesn't Mean Reinventing Yourself
I don't actually love the phrase:
"Find yourself."
Because you're not a missing set of car keys.
You haven't disappeared.
You've probably just been buried underneath years of responsibility, compromise, habit and asking:
"What does everybody else want?"
So perhaps after divorce you don't need to find yourself.
You need to start hearing yourself again.
Start small.
Notice what you choose when nobody else's preference is involved.
Notice what gives you energy.
Notice what drains you.
Notice who you miss.
Notice who you absolutely bloody don't.
Notice what you're relieved you no longer have to do.
That last one can tell you a LOT.
And don't rush to fill every empty space.
Empty doesn't always mean lonely.
Sometimes empty means:
available.
Available for new friendships.
New experiences.
New routines.
New love.
New sex.
New adventures.
New versions of your life.
And, most importantly...
available for you.
You Might Discover That You Bloody Like Yourself
This could be the biggest surprise of all.
Because being alone and being lonely are not the same thing.
There can be something wonderful about discovering your own company.
The whole bed.
The whole duvet.
The remote control.
Nobody asking what's for tea.
Nobody turning the big light on.
Nobody breathing on you.
Nobody loading the dishwasher incorrectly and then somehow making you sound unreasonable for noticing.
PEACE.
Glorious bloody peace.
You might start doing things alone that you previously thought required company.
Coffee.
Cinema.
Walking.
Lunch.
Travel.
Classes.
And slowly something shifts.
You stop thinking:
"I've got nobody to do this with."
And start thinking:
"I'll take myself."
That is a powerful little sentence.
And Yes, You Might Fall in Love Again
You might.
You might meet someone gorgeous.
Someone funny.
Someone who understands the woman you are now.
Someone who doesn't need you to shrink.
Someone who knows how to communicate.
Someone who knows where the clitoris is without requiring Google Maps.
Wonderful.
But here's the important bit:
New love doesn't have to be the happy ending.
YOU are not the waiting room between husbands.
Being partnered isn't proof that you're lovable.
Being single isn't evidence that something is missing.
Maybe love comes again.
Maybe it doesn't.
Maybe you don't bloody want it to.
Your life can still be huge.
Divorce Can Teach You What You Will Never Tolerate Again
That's worth something.
You learn your boundaries.
You learn your needs.
You learn what love isn't.
You learn what you ignored.
You learn where you abandoned yourself to keep the peace.
And hopefully you stop beating yourself up for it.
Because hindsight is a smug little bastard.
Of course you can see things now that you couldn't see then.
You're standing somewhere different.
Take the lesson.
Leave the punishment.
And Please Celebrate the Tiny Things
The first night you realise you're okay.
The first time you laugh properly.
The first holiday.
The first thing you buy entirely because YOU love it.
The first Sunday you wake up and don't feel that knot in your stomach.
The first time you walk into your home and think:
This feels like mine.
The first time you catch your reflection and realise the woman looking back at you isn't broken.
She's changing.
That's worth celebrating.
Maybe You're Not Starting Again
I really dislike that phrase too.
Starting again sounds like everything before it was wasted.
It wasn't.
You lived it.
You loved.
You learned.
You got things wrong.
You got things right.
Maybe you raised children.
Maybe you built a home.
Maybe you shared twenty beautiful years and three bloody awful ones.
Whatever happened, those years existed.
They're part of you.
You're not going back to the beginning.
You're moving forward with considerably more information.
And probably better eyebrows.
So no.
I don't think divorce automatically means failure.
Sometimes divorce is heartbreaking.
Sometimes it's necessary.
Sometimes it's mutual.
Sometimes it's messy as hell.
Sometimes it's the best bloody thing that ever happened to you.
And sometimes it's several of those things at once.
But if you're standing on the other side of a marriage wondering:
Who am I now?
Don't rush the answer.
Go and meet her.
Take her somewhere.
Buy her dinner.
Ask what she wants.
Let her change her mind.
Let her be selfish occasionally.
Let her laugh.
Let her flirt.
Let her rest.
Let her make mistakes.
Let her wear something ridiculous.
Let her discover pleasure again.
Let her build a life that doesn't require her to disappear in order to belong.
Because perhaps divorce isn't about finding the woman you were before the marriage.
Maybe it's about discovering the woman you never had the chance to become.
And that doesn't sound like failure to me.
That sounds like a bloody adventure.
Women who refuse to suffer politely live here.
Welcome to Menopause Monday, Moos.
Sometimes the ending isn't the tragedy.
Sometimes it's where the really good bit bloody starts.
Love from Missy Moo x
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