What happens when you get divorced during covid-19 pandemic?
The outbreak of novel coronavirus pandemic has led to a collective loss of normalcy and presented many couples with an unprecedented challenge. The pandemic is straining many marriages some to the breaking point. A lot of divorces and separation are taking place during Covid-19 due to various reasons.
I Got Divorced During Covid-19 (And It Sucked) shared by (Melissa U.)
Here, is a case of a couple who got divorced during Covid-19 pandemic. Her story filled tears in my eyes, and I was really disheartened by even imagining what she might be going through.
Melissa lives in USA near the heart of Phoenix’s downtown in a vulnerable community and is also a mother of two children. She is a woman filled with emotions who is trying to be strong and bold for herself and children. So, few months before quarantine disrupted her reality she and her husband got separated and filed for a divorce. She’s been through a lot of difficulties and hurdles during this period where she experienced pain and misery but later, she became a better version of herself.
Due to Covid-19 everything came to a halt, and along with it brought a complex array of challenges which had mental health repercussions for everyone, including children and adolescents. Everyone was frustrated and stressed due to Covid, alike Melissa. For her everything was drifting apart, and she was completely shattered and lonely. She misses her favorite park where she used to spend time which is right now encircled with looming fences and her beloved library is also closed. Because of pandemic, she was not able to even meet her friends or have playdates where she could enjoy and feel relaxed in a splash pad or a pool. She had a ray of hope that everything would fall back to normal, but things didn’t turn out that way. We can also see that the pandemic has affected children’s mental health, education and overall development.
Thus, the same thing happened with her children as she thought that the schools might reopen in the fall of 2020, and some did but not where she lived. Melissa’s elder daughter keeps on questioning her that when she’ll be going to kindergarten, but it seemed like it is taking forever to open. As a kid she is asking her mother multiple questions such as her future teacher, her school bus and would she get to eat lunch with her sister? It seems like kindergarten is also taken away along with her family unit when she moved into a new house with her kids as she separated paths with her husband.
She explained that she and her husband are ‘good friends’outside their ended marriage. “We knew we could band-aid the problem, letting our wounds beneath grow deeper and thereby do even more long-term damage. Or we could rip off the band-aid and experience a painful albeit healthier healing. The long-term health of our relationship was what we needed to prioritize for our individual health but also children’s health. And so, we chose divorce” she said.
She consistently asked herself that her decision to file for divorce was right? By doing this did she realised that it would mean that her children would also lose their precious and memorable time with their father which they would spent at parks, playdates or even school. She asked herself again and again that ‘ had I known about this?’. But she replied, “ I don’t know and I can’t know”.
Later on she came to the conclusion and with honesty she said that, she is thankful that she and her husband filed for divorce before Covid hit because then it would have kept them clinging to what they know was already broken in foolish hopes of easing their pain.
It’s easy to say but it’s not easy to accept the truth! She was not able to live with that guilt and she was completelydisheartened consequently she started to act irresponsible and unmindful towards her children. She started listening to her children’s tantrums and began to say “yes” to all their demands. For example, yes to more screen time, Yes to the whining and definitely yes to more toys.
She expressed her feelings, “I slowly moved from a parent to a circus leader because this SUCKED”. But then, she picked her broken pieces and mend it together in order to come out of this disturbing situation. Looking back she thinks that it was messy and painful but she doesn’t regret for a second to say yes to her children’s demands. She doesn’t regret giving them more ice-cream or letting them watch “ Mulan” immediately after “Wreck It Ralph” also letting them play naked in mud.
But she finally realised that mistakes cannot be repeated which she knew that are not good for her kids. So, it was timeshe made a shift and slowly she was adjusting and healing. And now it was time for her to acknowledge the guilt but no longer let it affect or give her power. She felt motivated because she wanted a big time change in her life so she grabbed her favourite pen and wrote a letter to herself and also to her girls. She wrote in the letter that they need to acknowledge how much they had made so far, not by celebrating it but by honouring it.
After writing the letter she felt so relaxed and also she had the space both mentally and energetically. “Just like I choose to rip off the band-aid of my unhealthy marriage, I needed to rip off the band-aid of my easy-breezy-lemon-squeezy-parenting. I needed to put my big girl pants on and be okay with being the bad guy. I needed to be okay with saying no and enforcing chores (gasp!). I needed to absolutely be okay with their feelings instead of trying to distract them from their feelings”she said.
She later on comprehended that she need to empower her girls and need to be okay with them being uncomfortable. She realised her job was to acknowledge not their immediate happiness but their long term well-being. She is trying to fix the damage that had affected both her mental and physical health as well as their children’s health.
‘She runs through her day with a smile on her face’
She carries herself with a baggage of responsibilities on her shoulders but this time she is doing it the right way which is by doing the right parenting for her daughters. But one needs to keep in mind that it can only be done by leaning into the uncomfortable spots of parenting. This time, she need to make it right so for that she needs to revaluate the long-term effects of her short-term decisions and to choose differently, in hopes of raising strong, independent, adults.
In conclusion, the outbreak of novel coronavirus hadsignificantly changed the way people live and work and has affected all of us differently in some or the other aspect. Everyone faced problems and difficulties in different areas of their life during this pandemic and everyone has a different story to narrate and tell but one should keep in mind that they need to deal and cope with it in the right way. Last but not the least it’s important to stay positive in these times and try to tune out all the negativity going on in life.
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