METHODS OF COPING WITH EMOTIONS AFTER DIVORCE

Maybe your spouse no longer makes you feel loved and there's no feeling that it will get better. As the divorce process unfolds, especially within the first several months, you will probably go through a series of emotional extremes, such as unsettling, uncomfortable and frightening feelings, thoughts, and emotions, including grief, loneliness, depression, guilt, frustration, anxiety, anger, and devastation, etc. Divorce is generally a stressful and unsettling event. Realize that every divorce brings about such change, and change is not always easy.

This is a life-changing event for all concerned and not just for the couple concerned. It affects children, grandparents, other relatives and friends. Divorce brings about changes. The consequences can be enormous and the whole process of divorce should not be entered into lightly.

A divorce may also signify the failure of your dream, because you’ve failed to make the marriage work. Everyone will react differently to divorce and different coping strategies and skills are appropriate to address each of these emotions of divorce. You may be able to suppress or contain it, for the most part. Some people may not even feel it. But most do. I hope that we are able to help you. By following these tips you can cope with these changes in a positive way and be better able to make a new life for yourself.

Mixed emotions after divorce

After the divorce you may find you have mixed emotions about your ex-spouse. While you may know that the divorce was for the best, you may find that some days you hate your ex-spouse, and, surprisingly, other days you miss him/her. You may be bitter that your spouse ruined the perfect family ideal you believed in and threw your life in turmoil. But sometimes you may wonder why you fell any fondness for someone you are divorcing. At these times, you may think of the good times. It is perfectly normal, and most divorced people report these mixed emotions. So how do you cope with these changing emotions? It’s easy to make your ex the villain but only one person does not hold most marriages together, and they don’t end because of one person either. So, deal with the anger you feel in a constructive way.

Prioritize

It helps to make a list of the reasons you divorced, and the differences you had. Also, make a list of the good parts of your former relationship. Many newly divorced people are so focused on the bad that they grow resentful and hold such a grudge against their ex-spouse, it is hard to move on with their lives. Everyone has some good traits and some bad. Creating a list of such necessary chores that’ll help to reduce their stressful impact on your life. Despite grief, there will be chores that need doing and bills that need paying. They may also be any number of extraordinary tasks that must be accomplished during the transition from married to single person, such as finding an apartment, which add to the general stress. The simple act of prioritizing and checking off list items helps make sure that all necessary chores get accomplished, and further helps to generate a feeling of control over the unfortunate situation.

Talk about it

Many grieving people find that their suffering is somewhat lessened when they are able to share their hurt feelings with a sympathetic person/s such as trusted family and friends and request assistance from these trusted people as they are able to offer it. Finding someone who can and will listen and allow you to vent your hurt emotions and fears and offer comforting advice often proves very helpful. Sometimes you may need a sounding board or a shoulder to cry on. Don’t shy away from seeking support and validation from friends and relations.

Keeping Journal

Keeping a journal of your thoughts and feelings as you go through your adjustment to being divorced can provide many benefits. Most pressingly, journaling allows a further outlet for emotional upset. Describing pain and the difficult, situations being copied with help you to gain a better grip and perspective on those emotions and situations

Counseling

Pain acted upon appropriately leads to growth and healing. Pain ignored or acted upon inappropriately leads to further pain and suffering. You will be astounded by the intensity of raw pain that can sweep over you, sometimes quite unexpectedly. Seeking out a professional counselor could be of enormous help even if the marriage cannot be salvaged. A professional counselor can take a more detached point of view and provide a platform for you to share your feelings and find a way to move on.

Get support.

When your marriage is in trouble, a better way of moving forwards is to reach out and ask for help. You can get help by attending support groups. Support groups are self-help meetings attended by people going through same sorts of circumstances. Generally, sponsored by community centers and religious institutions, divorce support groups provide a face-to-face forum where people come together to educate and support one another.

Take care of yourself

Self-care during and after a divorce, is a necessary if you want to maintain your health. Riding this roller coaster of emotions is tasking, so make sure you develop good self-care habits during this time, so at a personal level, making time for exercise regularly, getting enough sleep, and eating regular healthy meals, putting non-essential things on the back burner for now can help to preserve health and reduce the effects of stress.

Avoid dangerous habits

Failure to use judgment in deciding how one will cope with emotional hurt can result in negative outcomes. You may try to fill the loneliness promiscuous relationships or with endless hours of work, or with concern about the kids, or with a new relationship or gambling. You may experience the urge to revenge on your ex-spouse; your successful life post-divorce will be your best revenge.

Spend time doing things you enjoy

Most people say when they went through a divorce, it was on their mind every waking moment of their day. Take some time to do something you enjoy. This could include spending time with friends or spending quiet time alone with a good book or watching movies. Let your mind concentrate on something other than the divorce when you are feeling overwhelmed.

Explore new interests

Divorce is a beginning as well as an ending as the person you thought you knew and loved is no longer there, now replaced by some scary, spiteful stranger. Divorce can be a relief to some individuals or couples but it can also seem like bereavement. This is a perfect opportunity to explore new interests. Finding one or more causes, clubs, fields, hobbies or projects you are interested in (and wants to work in/on) is beneficial in a number of ways. New interests capture attention and bring it into the present, away from a focus on the past.

THE IMPORTANCE OF HUMOR IN MARRIAGE

                                      

 To be able to have a successful marriage couple must be grown up emotionally. Marriage is for the mentally matured. The blending of two different personalities requires emotional stability. The couple needs to be calm when problems develop. It important that they reduce stress and tension for the mind can only operate efficiently when the emotions are under control.

Your marriage will be successful if each of you brings out the best in the other. Two people loving each other and with high esteem for the other's personality are bound to get along beautifully. Talk out all problems that develop together and arrive at reasonable solutions in unity.

Ti is crucial that you treat your spouse with respect and politeness. Never let anger make you discourteous and engage in derogatory comments. Show courtesy to your partner. I

It is important to remember that marriage is a symbiotic relationship and not an parasitic one. Even though God made man the head of the family, marriage is complementary. The men should not dominate their wives. Manipulation is to control or play upon your partner's intelligence in an unfair way especially for your own advantage. How often do you find yourself scheming to get what you want?

There will be need to adjust some of your ways to accommodate the other person. This adjustment must be achieved on all levels: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

Marriage is a team work. Each partner must contribute his quota to the survival of the relationship. Do things together often and show interest in what your spouse is ding. Make all decisions that affect your lives together. Always be interested in the other person's activities and ideas. Direct your conversation to the other's interests rather talking about yourself. If you are absorbed in another's interests, he will become attentive to yours and you will have a pleasant time together. If each makes the other happy both of you will be happy and the marriage will be a successful one.

Women who nag should know that they are sending their husband out, maybe to the bottle or to other loving women. If you understand this and send him off with enthusiasm and love he will not only hurry home to be with you but will probably not go out as often. A man, who works hard, occasionally, needs to have some relaxation and fun with his friends.

Jealousy drives some partners to attempt to manipulate and control. A jealous partner does not trust his partner. Such an attitude can force a partner to be deceitful. Rather than risk the partner's wrath, he simply will not discuss where he is been or what he has done.

Cultivate the quality of being stimulating. If being with you makes your partner feel better and more alive, your partner will sought after you and your personal relation will be better for it.

Avoid being on the edge and over sensitive, so that you easily hurt. People instinctively shy away from the emotionally delicate person for fear of arousing an unpleasant reaction. Avoid the temptation to react with hurt feelings, and you will get on better with your partner. Resurrecting all your doubts about whether you would be able to put aside your pasts and differences enough to have any meaningful future, ruin many marriages. In fact, I know of a couple who blame each other for the fact that their marriage had brought them disillusionment. They had made some half-hearted attempts to enjoy each other's company, but the casual intimacies did not bring the anticipated satisfactions, so they gradually become reconciled to the idea of leading independent lives under the same roof. This is like sitting on a keg of gun powder.

Love your partner and do things for him. Perform unselfish and outgoing acts of friendship. Such sincere self-giving inevitably leads to pleasant personal relations and a great marriage.

HOW TO FIGHT FAIRLY IN A MARRIAGE

                                               

At the time a couple get married, they are usually happy and in love. Many couples enter marriage with many dreams and great expectations of an eternal joyful co-habitation. Because they love each other they believe that they will automatically live happily forever. But because there is some adjustment to make about some of their inevitable differences in personality there are bound to be problems and conflicts which however they should try to resolve amicably.

Effective communication is the key to marital stability. Each partner should give vent to his views freely. Quarreling is a means of effective communication in marriage because in polite discussions most partners are not always wholesomely frank about their feelings in a particular situation so as not to arouse the ire of the other.

Quarreling helps each partner to acquire a deeper knowledge of the other. The realization that your love is strong enough to survive a disagreement is of benefit to your marriage. Cathartic quarrels help to vent some of the tensions developed over a period of time. There are two schools of thought concerning quarreling. Some people feel that polemic encounters between couples should be avoided at all cost while the other group believes that quarreling is an unavoidable vicissitudes of marriage.

When quarreling is avoided at all cost, there is no opportunity of resolving a conflict of opinions and consequently tensions develop and disharmony set in. In this era of women liberation, quarreling is inevitable because it is clear indication that the husband and wife regard each other as equal and not subservient partner. The most important thing in all quarrels is how they are handled by the partners. It is a yardstick of measuring if the couples are building a successful marriage or a tumultuous one.

It is healthy for a couple to feel that quarreling is an acceptable part of marriage and that disagreement in opinion should not lead to separation or divorce. It should however be realized that your partner will be more honest with you if he/she knows that occasional disagreeing with your ideas will not end your marriage. A person who is well-adjusted and faces life with realism cannot afford not to disagree with her partner occasionally because she knows that sulking or brooding or being moody about problems do not solve them but only leads to discontent and sometimes to separation or even divorce.

When a woman fails to give vent to her problems and makes no attempt to try to solve them, it often stultifies what would have been an idyllic relationship. When you argue for what you believe, it helps to strengthen your marriage because then it becomes symbiotic relationship where both partners contribute to the marriage. Quarreling could be constructive or destructive. Destructive quarreling mostly involves speaking slightingly of your partner in such a way as to bring his name into disrepute, passing derogatory remarks and displaying of excess anger by one or both partners. In this case, the partners are rarely able to solve the problems and it leads to profound frustration and unhappiness.

It is dangerous to belittle your partner or mention his weaknesses during a quarrel. In some people's tantrum, they say things that hurt their mate so much only to regret saying them later. A quarrel is constructive when the partners discuss the issues of disagreement and learn to communicate with each other.

A quarrel should purge your mind of your earlier tensions, resentments, fears and anxieties. No two people can live for years without some problems, conflicts and pains. Therefore quarreling is healthy.

STABILITY OF MARRIAGE AND MOTHERS-IN-LAW AND DAUGHTERS-IN-LAW MISUNDERSTANDING

Mothers-in-law and Daughter-in-law Misunderstanding

A problematic relationship exists particularly between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, and mother-in-law has been blamed for many misunderstanding in marriage. There is a general pre-conceived notion by many wives across the world that mothers-in-law are mean, wicked and wish them dead. There have been more problems created in a home because a mother-in-law wanting to tell the couple what to do. The causes of the breakdown in many marriages have been traced to the overbearing attitude of mothers-in-law. Very few wives have ever had anything good to say about their mothers-in-law. Therefore it is apparent that mothers unwittingly bring about more difficulty in marital adjustments than do fathers.

The degree of anguish and unhappiness that an improperly handled mother-in-law may produce is tremendous. The inability on the part of a mother to become reconciled to taking second place in a child’s affection is most noticeable in the relationships between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law. The mother is still as solicitous for her child’s welfare as when the child was a child was a teenager, so out of the goodness of her heart, the mother naturally offers counsel in whatever situation she feels should be improved for the benefit of her son or daughter.

The mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law relationship is a delicate one. Because of pre-conceived notions about mothers-in-laws that many wives had while they were spinsters, many of them came into their marriage prepared for the battle that must be fought to put their mother-in-law in the right place. So if these wives have naturally loving and caring mothers-in-law, they would misconstrue everything done and said by their mothers-in-law.

Another cause of the problem is the illusion that many wives have that their husbands must dissociate from his parents and cling to them. It is natural for the son-in-law and the daughter-in-law to assume and insist that he has the primary right to the affection of his partner. Each therefore resents what he/she considers to be the selfish intention of mother-in-law to cheat him/her of the first place in the heart of his/her partner.

There are many circumstances which seem to bring tension between couples and their mothers-in-law. The tension practically always results from a tendency toward over-domination on the part of the mother-in-law and a resentment of this domination by the son-in-law or daughter-in-law, who feels that his/her home is established and the decisions affecting the family should be determined by the husband and wife, not by the mothers-in-law of either. The African mother-in-law is more domineering than her western counterpart. The African mother-in-law derives her enormous powers from cultural and traditional values.

Mothers naturally love their children and this love does not terminate when they are married. They were there for their sons while young at his most vulnerable periods and bore the burden of his upbringing when he was growing up, learning to take his first steps, during sickness or struggling. Such mothers would look to their sons for solace and want to be accepted and loved by him and his wife. When you have the confidence and competence to handle your mother-in-law with care, then you’re less likely to succumb to the stomach churning anxieties that come from not knowing how you will deal with whatever problem that may develop.

In many parts, open display of affection for a wife by her husband is often viewed as unmanliness or personal weakness so husbands watch helplessly while their mothers undo their marriages. Therefore, many husbands support their mothers against their wives even when it is clear that the wife is the aggrieved party.

But affection between a mother and a child should not be so constantly and continuously manifested that it deprives the child a fair opportunity to develop his/her independent personality. It is all right to advice people, but it’s not in order to run other people’s lives –even if they are your children. Any reasonable mother-in-law would spare herself a lot of blame if she’d she accepted the newly established home is an entity in itself and that the husband, even though her son or son-in-law is the rightful head of the house. When they become adults, they are accountable for their own lives. Children should grow up and get out on their own. Parents should teach their children to make decisions for themselves. Parents are not responsible for their grown up children. Adults must continue to honor their parents.

But a mother with a healthy outlook in will realize that a time will eventually come when her child will establish his own home and that it is best for a married child to be free from parental interference. Such a healthy attitude enables a mother to rejoice with her child at the time of marriage rather for her to enter a long period of mourning over her loss. If she understands that she a guest in the newly established home rather than a matron, she would prevent the misunderstanding between herself and her daughter-in-law or son-in-law.

A wife is expected to humble herself before her in-laws, be accommodating, tolerate and love them. Love is the foundation and the bedrock of every marriage but this love should be extended not only to the husband but also to the in-laws even if the wife thinks that they do not like her. She cannot obliterate her in-laws and should check herself to see if there are any issues within her which caused the friction. She must not be on the offensive through pre-conceived notions that mothers-in-law are evil.

The most common circumstance that precipitates these unpleasant feelings is the arrangement by which married children and parents-in-law live under the same roof. Genesis 2:24 states, “A man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” Physically moving from the parents’ home is just one kind of necessary departure for a healthy marriage. The logical way to maintain a friendly relation is for the young couple to establish their home as a separate entity so that, it may consequently be recognized by themselves and by both of their parents that the new home is discreet.

Husbands and wives also need to depart emotionally. Too many married adults have never consciously stepped away from their parents’ emotional control. The process of stepping away emotionally will be gradual, and that process is longer when strong controlling parents are involved. If the daughter-in-law also realizes the years of affection which has been built over the period of years between mother and son still exists and that the established habits cannot be easily terminated, she might be more tolerant of her mother-in-law and more patient with her husband as they tend to come to terms with the new situation. It is ironic that the same wife, who wants her husband to dissociate from her his parents in the name of clinging to her, would have her own mother in her home at every excuse. Unfortunately, some husbands who did not realize the manipulative politics of their wives aimed at creating a bad impression about their mothers, have on account of the mischievous reports given them by the wives, spoken harshly to their mothers and have alienated them.

Financial independence is another important aspect of leaving home. Leaving financially means we are free to accept financial assistance from our parents but we no longer depend on them for the funds we need. Again, many adults have not tried to achieve financial independence because they are counting on dad and mom’s money to be there for them. Achieving independence from one’s parents can be long or short, easy or difficult process. Again, departure doesn’t mean that parents and their married children will never see each other. It does mean a new phase of relationship in which parents regard their children as independent adults capable of managing their own home, their emotional lives, and their own financial situations.

Conclusion

Despite being married to their wives, some sons are still emotionally attached to their mothers or tied to her apron strings and would run to their mothers for succor at every turn. Such sons contribute to the conflict by granting their mothers the power to meddle or to interfere in their marital affairs, by their immaturity to face their responsibilities as men. A son who allows his parents to interfere in his marital affairs has set the stage for conflict which must occur if his wife resents such interference.

Complications that develop with respect to mothers-in-law can be avoided if the young couple presents a united front. How does a man cleave unto his wife without straining the relationship with his parents? Each couple must be frank about the influence parents, so that each of them will know in advance what to expect. The new couple will not make an absolute break from their parents, but they must realize that they are now a family, and they need to make their own decisions. The husband and wife must be greater loyalty to each other than to their parents.

It is not always possible to keep the obligation to parents and spouse entirely discreet and separate, they sometimes overlap. However, while there are touchy mothers-in-law who are difficult to please no matter how a wife strives, some mothers have genuine intentions and a sincere concern for the welfare of her son but the way her good intention will be received by her daughter-in-law will depend on her diplomacy. However, there should be no excuse to neglect their parents or disregard their comfort once there is decrease of their vital forces.