Navigating the Stigma of Divorce

I never viewed divorce as a “bad” thing. Is it a painful experience for anyone to go through? Yes, but I didn’t judge anyone for it. Relationships are complicated and sometimes they just don’t work anymore; there are a million reasons why it can turn out that way. When I was 17 years old and my parents finally got divorced, I felt relieved and wished it would have happened years before.

When it came to my own marriage ending though, I did judge myself. When I got married, I expected it to be for a lifetime. In the end, I didn’t judge myself for leaving- that felt justified after I discovered the extensive infidelity. I was at peace with my decision to leave. What was harder for me though was reconciling the idea of being a “divorced psychologist.” Would people think I didn’t know how to have a healthy relationship? Would people think that I didn’t try hard enough? I had judgments towards myself too- not about my choice to leave, but about why I put up with certain things in the first place. I judged myself for not seeing the truth sooner. I judged myself for missing the red flags. I judged myself for staying as long as I did. I spent a lot of time journaling about these things and working on them in therapy. I worked really hard on my narrative about all of this and trying to find peace with how everything had unfolded.

Navigating the Stigma of Divorce, Rain Into Rainbowl LLC

Six months into the separation, I moved back home to Colorado where my family is. This was different territory because, for the first time in the process, I started meeting new people who had no context about the situation. Some of the first things people ask when getting to know you often involve your profession and your relationship status. I had to confront this feeling of being a psychologist who was going through a divorce. I remember wishing I could wear a sandwich board in those moments that said, “I know how to communicate in a healthy way. I tried hard. I was loyal. I was a good wife.”  I found myself wanting to over-explain what the relationship was like and why I left. I had to refrain from doing this and was working on learning to tolerate the ambiguity of not knowing what new people were thinking.

And then there was the day I went to the doctor’s office for my annual physical. I had to find a new primary care doctor since moving back to CO. The receptionist was an older woman, maybe in her 60’s. She handed me a stack of forms to complete. This was also the first time I encountered having to check off the “Divorced” box on a form. That already felt strange to do. I completed the forms and brought them back up to her. She was having me sign some disclosures at the desk while she started entering the information from the forms into the computer. She gets to the part of the form where it asks about marital status and then looks at me and says, “Young people just don’t try hard enough to stay together these days.” My stomach dropped and I froze. I didn’t say anything. I just went and sat back down. I felt hot all over. It was the first time someone made a judgmental comment to me. When I was driving home after that appointment, I thought of so many things I wished I would have said. I was just so stunned in the moment and caught off guard that I said nothing. My brain was trying to understand what she had just said to me. Part of wished so badly that I had said something in that moment and she would have seen why it was necessary for me to leave my marriage. The other prominent thought on my drive home was, “Fuck her.” She knew nothing and she had no right to judge me.

While that experience sucked and brought to life my fears of people judging me, it also became a turning point. Sure, I could have said something to her. I could have searched for the right words to capture a vulnerable and heartbreaking experience in my life. I could have tried to convince a stranger about what my reality was like, or… I could learn to not care what people like that think. With people who are close to me, I care. With them, I will take the time to provide more context. But with strangers or people I barely know, I realized the best course of action is not to waste my energy trying to get them to stop judging me or my experience. Why bother? If someone is that quick to judge with knowing zero information, then that is a projection onto you of their own issues.

Coming to terms with your own feelings about the end of your relationship is a journey that is worth putting energy into. That matters because it is the narrative that you are going to carry inside with you. So, do the work when it comes to that part. Work through your own self-judgements. When it comes to potentially being judged by others though, that often is not worth your energy. That comes from their own life experience and, likely, their own issues that they haven’t worked through. It’s not your job to straighten that out for them or to create and defend a dissertation on why your relationship ended. Is there still a stigma around divorce? Certainly, with some people, but I think more and more people are understanding that there are so many reasons a relationship might have needed to end. Only you knew what it felt like day in and day out in your relationship. So, the best advice I can give you regarding the stigma of divorce is to shift from focusing on how someone else might view it, and instead to put your energy into working on how you view it.