How to support someone going through divorce

I had an “aha” moment this morning. I was reading an article about how to support someone living with a chronic illness. I know about living with chronic illness. My son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 6. It rocked our world. As I was reading, it occurred to me that the experience of divorce has many similarities.

Disruptive Life Change

In extraordinary, highly disruptive ways, your life changes when you get the diagnosis. You have to think about things you didn’t have to think about before. With diabetes, you become dependent on insulin in order to survive. You have to change your eating habits, count your carbohydrates, evaluate your activity levels, and stick your fingers with needles multiple times a day (at least in the beginning) in order to check your blood sugar.  You need to learn how to inject insulin multiple times a day until you are managed enough to use an insulin pump. For kids, as they grow, their insulin needs shift and change.  It is unsettling and unnerving that what worked yesterday may not work today. Insulin is a hormone, and your moods shift suddenly, you can get angry for seemingly no reason, and tired and lethargic. If your blood sugar gets too low, you may pass out. Your health is at risk. And nobody really understands what you are going through.

With divorce, everything you thought you knew about your life changes. You have to think about things differently. You feel like you are all alone and everything depends on you because you don’t have a partner. Where you once had a best friend, now you have an empty space, or even worse, an enemy. You feel like you alone are responsible for your kids, their school, social life, activities, even when you have a co-parent who shares some of the responsibilities. You may lose your appetite and stop eating.  Your health may suffer.  Your emotions are all over the place. You feel overwhelmed. You don’t want to ask for help even though you may need it.

Uncomfortable Reactions

When you disclose to your world that you are getting divorced you get similar reactions to disclosing you have a chronic illness.

• Some people avoid you, as if what you have is contagious. 

• Some people are attracted to you and ask lots of uncomfortable,  intrusive questions even though they had little relationship with you before.

• Some people feel awkward and say nothing. They give you tortured looks, but avoid talking about it.

• Some people judge you.

• Some people include you in some activities, but not others. It may make you feel like you don’t matter.

Useful Advice

So what advice did I glean from the article that is useful for people going through divorce and the people who love them and live in their world? 

Talk to them!

The most transferable advice which we really can use in every situation is: 

Communicate.  

Ask questions.  

Offer specific support

Let them know they matter  

With regard to chronic illness, Lori Gottleib, the author of “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone” has it right. “You shouldn’t feel like you have to walk on eggshells around someone with a chronic condition.  If you are bringing it up too much, they will tell you.”  According to Gottleib, the bigger issue is that people with chronic illness struggle with feeling invisible when people are not talking about it and often feel like they have to hide their illness. This is also true of divorce. So often, people going through divorce feel like they can’t talk about it or are talking about it too much, or should be over it, or should be a lot of things - but ‘shoulds” are judgements, and sometimes, we are our own harshest critics. 

Specific Support

Let’s say you had a group of friends that always went out on Saturday nights. Now, they don’t include you. If you want to be included, let one of them know. And if you are one of the members of the group, ask your newly single friend if they want to be included.  Don’t make an assumption before you’ve made the ask.

So take this to heart - if you are a newly separated/divorced person and there is a friend who can offer compassion, and help with the carpool, or dinner for the kids when you have to be in three places at once, ask for help.  People don’t automatically know what you need. And if you are that friend, feel free to offer!  You built your relationships with your friends over many years, they don’t disappear in an instant because you are getting divorced.  Talk about it with trusted friends.  You may find that people you didn’t expect, will step up and become those trusted allies.

Divorce is not a chronic illness!

Divorce is not a chronic illness. You will get through it and come out the other side. Communication, compassion and caring go a long way to making the journey easier. Ask for help when you need it.  Offer help when you can, and remember you build relationships over time, the real ones will go the distance.

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