Why Being a Fantastic Divorcee in Your Forties Is Actually Fantastic

The dirty little secret of getting divorced in your forties is that it's terrific. You have the possibility for reinvention once you've survived the pain of your marriage's disintegration — and I don't use the phrase lightly. I suppose you may reinvent yourself within your marriage; however, as my marriage ended before my fiftieth journey around the sun, I won't pretend to be an expert on the subject. I am, however, experimenting with being an authoritative figure in my own life, and since the publication of my book about dating and sex after divorce, I've heard from many divorced women who feel similarly empowered and excited to be on their own.

Allow me to put the soiled laundry in the hamper first. Not every marriage ends in disaster like mine did. Some fade out, chugging along on dregs of fuel that inflict irreparable damage to one's engine until they finally break down for good.

Considering whether this makes the recovery more or less difficult is analogous to debating whether it's better to lose a loved one to a crippling illness or death from a car accident. There are benefits to both, but losing anything valuable to you — a loved one, a marriage, or a home — is life-changing regardless of the circumstances.

However, if you are forced to end a relationship because it was not your decision, you will most likely be in for a rude awakening. Recognizing that your perception of your life with your relationship is diametrically opposed to your partner's perception is startling and frightening. What does it say about my ability to intuit, feel empathy, and monitor what happens around me if I was content, rushing around to keep my family's engine blissfully humming along, and he felt like he was dying? Being confronted with how far out of touch I was in my most important relationship was like being hit by a tractor trailer. I had long relied on those traits to be a good wife, mother, friend, sister, and daughter. My previous existence has come to an end. Rebirth was going to have to happen in some way.

I got clear-eyed about the fork in the road where I was now standing once the shock had worn off and made itself at home. Turn left and play the furious, aggressive, man-hating middle-aged divorcee I'd seen in the media: a victim, a channelling of Kathleen Turner in War of the Roses. It looked like an undesirable but probably unavoidable alternative because I was entitled to that role and had paid for it with 27 years of allegiance to a man who had viciously deceived me. Turn right, despite the fact that I couldn't see what lied beyond the trail's first few steps: a precipice, a field of daisies, or a barren wasteland?

It wasn't the issue of marriage essentially — neither my own marriage nor its organization. I could parse out the fault and allocate some of it to cultural assumptions for ladies, some of it to the manners by which I compared being a decent mother with being a saint, and some of it to my eagerness to deliver myself a 1950s-style housewife assuming that is the thing that it took to get the durable family unit for which I had since a long time ago longed. I could fault my better half for ensuring he made both expert progress and a family without worry for my accomplishing something very similar and my mom for empowering me to have everything except making having everything look so damn hard.

I won't point fingers however, in light of the fact that at the core, all things considered, I fault myself. At a youthful age, I acknowledged what I thought was an extremely grown-up comprehension of the world: that having a full life implied nullifying myself, that to be great at anything, I needed to entirely give myself over to it. Imagine a scenario where I had kept on working even low maintenance while bringing up youngsters. Did I need to so cruelly pass judgment on myself for needing more than naptimes and nibble packs and outings to the recreation area?

Might it be said that i was under obligation to passing judgment on different moms, who endeavored to adjust work and family and frequently employed individuals to fill in for individual obligations? Imagine a scenario where I had faith in myself and my own monetary ability as opposed to taking the entirety of my eggs and placing them in my significant other's bushel. Consider the possibility that I had taken a gander at myself dispassionately, with a hard and cold eye, and admonished myself: "Alright, so you're a mother and a spouse, wouldn't you be able to likewise be more."

Presently that I'm here — fifty and single — I completely expect to remain here. Of course, the numbers will continue to build; I might be an irredeemable hopeful person however even I recognize that I can't stop time. My conjugal status however, that is all mine, however I take attack with the actual expression. I would rather not characterize myself by nonattendance, I don't wish to pronounce that my conjugal status is that I presently don't have one. A gift is something an individual gets, and moving from a wedded state to a non-wedded state in midlife is only that, a giving, not a removing; a membership to a dubious future wherein I reply to myself.