Divorce: There's No Shame in Moving On

Statistically speaking, divorce has been more "popular" over the last couple of decades than ever before. It's so prevalent, in fact, that many people have come to view the very institution of marriage as something passé. Dwelling on this fact, though, has perhaps created more distress and worry than is necessary for men and women both.

It's all right for any experience - marriage included - to run its course. We don't think of our tenure in High School as a failure simply because we graduated; why, then, should we consider a marriage a failure because former partners moved on with their lives? Divorce can oftentimes bring a breath of fresh air - and the space to breath it - into one's life. Energy can be reclaimed that for a long time was poured into a stagnant situation that could not be revitalized.

No one who has been through a divorce would deny its often-ugly aftermath. There may be hostility where once there was tenderness, loathing where once there was love. Partners leave the union angry because each believes that the other implicitly promised them the Fairy Tale. They might suddenly feel like they never knew each other; the mate they shared so much with has suddenly become a stranger. When children are compromised in a separation they are grieved for because they, also, had been given the unspoken promise.

Sometimes there is damage done to one partner or the other's self image. Are they no longer attractive? They may wonder if all the qualities their mate used to appreciate about them are gone.

Perhaps the reality is somewhat different. In our culture, the old models of behavior don't serve as trusty guideposts for either sex anymore. For decades now, women have been questioning their true role in society and men have been questioning what it really means to be men. Ours is an era of searching and experimentation; and if a relationship was an experiment then the simple fact that it ran its course does not make it all for naught. Men and women are going through intense growth processes, and often it happens in a marriage that one starts moving in a different direction from the other - or both diverge at roughly the same time.

Partners in a relationship that is disintegrating have the opportunity to honor their time together and all that they enjoyed about - and learned from - their union. Then they can move on, with lightness in their hearts, knowing that they'd simply reached a fork in the road and discovered that each preferred a different route to take them into the future.