7 Ways to Heal From the Extreme Bitterness of Divorce

I used these steps to promote self-healing and alleviate my pain.

There’s one thing I’ve learned about bitterness. It’s an angry companion. It can eat you alive. I had become bitter after all my husband had done. I had forgiven him one too many times.

If the bitterness had taken years to build…

It would take equally as long to tear it down.

One day I ask my marriage counselor who is a psychologist a question. I’ve continued to go to therapy alone. My husband refuses to return. We aren’t specifically talking about my situation but my counselor says something I will never forget.

“My job is to teach a person to heal,” he says.

I understand the wisdom of his words.

I have arrived at marriage counseling hurt, angry, and frustrated.

It’s a bitterness that is enveloping me and becoming difficult to hide.

It’s a given that marriage counseling is several things. It’s a journey of self-discovery, relationship issues, communication, and emotional evolution. But it begins with discord.

The average couple isn’t going to counseling at the best time in their marriage.

Ultimately, this joint or personal journey should evolve toward healing.

The other day I’m chatting with a friend.

I’ve spent more than a decade in the counseling and research of love, relationships, marriage, and divorce. I’ve written a relationship column for many years.

I’ve become something of a relationship synonym for a priest.

People confide their emotional secrets and sins to me.

This particular friend is echoing a familiar divorce sentiment. It’s one other friends, acquaintances, and readers confide in me about. It’s the lingering bitterness of a divorce.

The bitterness that was fed and fueled in a marriage spills over into a divorce.

It’s frustrating because divorce should be the unfortunate end of love.

Not a reignition of an old battle.

But it often is. One spouse or both can’t let go of their bitterness. It could be because the marriage ended, because someone cheated, or because old issues were never resolved. It could be for many reasons.

It makes healing and dealing difficult.

Healing is impossible because the hurt has never been addressed.

And dealing is impossible because we still have to co-parent in a divorce.

7 Ways to heal from the extreme bitterness of divorce:

1. Healing divorce and relationship bitterness is a journey of one

Healing the pain and angst of bitterness is primarily a journey of one.

My ex-husband is never going to walk in the door and apologize to me.

It’s not going to happen. He’s not going to say he regrets his bad behavior while drinking those last few years of our marriage. He’s not going to say he’s sorry for the severe emotional and financial abuse he inflicted during an overly long divorce.

He’s not going to regret hiding and stealing all of our money.

He won’t have any remorse for leaving me with no ability to retire.

It’s not going to happen. There will be no closure. That is the closure. That there will be none. The marriage ended for a reason. There wasn’t an ability to reconcile or resolve the conflict.

I will have to heal from the bitterness of divorce myself.

You have to do this alone without the person who inflicted it.

2. Healing divorce and relationship bitterness is about acceptance

Healing divorce and relationship bitterness is about acceptance.

I didn’t want to divorce my husband. I did it because I had exhausted all of my options. I was miserably unhappy and had left no stone unturned. But it blew up my life and my dreams.

The decision to divorce was my new reality.

But I rejected it because I felt forced into an unwanted life path.

I had to accept divorce to make way for healing.

It’s not what I wanted for my children. It’s not what I wanted as a wife. It’s not something that is comfortable. It’s not something I felt proud of.

But it isn’t the end of the world.

It’s the grand beginning of a new one.

3. Healing divorce and relationship bitterness begs reflection

Healing divorce and relationship bitterness begs personal reflection.

I remember during the worst of my marital struggles sitting in bed one night. I was angry with God. I kept asking why. Why God? Why my marriage? Why my family?

Why won’t you give me a miracle?

Why can’t my husband care enough to save our marriage?

I realized my bitterness wasn’t just coming from my husband’s bad behavior and inability to work on our marriage. It was the sense that I was repeating history. I was the child of divorce and now my children would know that reality.

I spent my young life trying to avoid this.

It happened anyway because marriage involves two people who care.

Healing from divorce and relationship bitterness means you have to spend some time with yourself. You have to self-reflect. You have to examine and determine where all of the bitterness stems from.

Ask yourself where else the resentment stems from.

If not, you can’t address it and heal from it.

4. Healing divorce and relationship bitterness are victimless

To heal divorce and relationship bitterness you must be victimless.

I remember that night in bed crying and angry at God. I also remember for the first time in my life feeling like a victim. It felt as if things beyond my control were happening to me. My whole world felt out of control.

I felt like a victim.

Of course, I did.

Think about what I was saying. Why me? Why my children? Why my marriage? I already experienced divorce in my own childhood. Why again?

It was a litany of poor pitiful me.

Because bitterness fuels victimization.

But you don’t want to be a victim because it’s a powerless space.

5. Healing divorce and relationship bitterness involves counseling

Healing divorce and relationship bitterness can involve counseling.

I went to marriage counseling with the mindset most people arrive with.

I believed it was all about my husband. He went believing it was all about me. We don’t think we are the reason we end up in marriage counseling. If you are self-reflective and open-minded, you remain long enough to understand what you both brought into the relationship.

I remember the day my marriage counselor said, “Your husband is who he is but you made all of the choices that got you here.”

My husband was a diagnosed narcissist.

I was an enabler.

Someone who tolerates repeatedly bad behavior and stays in a bad situation too long. Is it better than being a narcissist? Sure. But enabling isn’t healthy behavior and I had to learn about myself.

My counselor was attempting to empower me with those words.

He could see the bitterness and the victimization I had succumbed to.

He was trying to replace the victim with empowerment.

Counseling can either promote or hinder healing. You have to find a great counselor. One that acknowledges your pain and injustice but that promotes emotional evolution and healing.

It has to be a journey that alleviates, not suppresses your bitterness.

6. Healing divorce and relationship bitterness might take change

Healing divorce and relationship bitterness might take some change.

I don’t like change.

I never have and I’m sure it stems from my childhood. My Dad left when I was five years old. It was an unwanted change.

But I didn’t fit into the town I raised my children in any longer. I think because the divorce was so traumatic and long and abusive it changed everything.

I don’t think I would have felt that way had I been divorced within a year.

I think my life would have been barely interrupted.

I would have happily kept engrained in that community.

My children and I did stay in our home during the five-year divorce. I don’t regret a moment of that. They needed that stability. Even with the terrible instability and unpredictability of my husband’s divorce financial abuse.

I only moved one town over but it feels like a different world.

Some people need a massive change. I know individuals who have moved several states away. I know people who have gone from suburban to urban living. I know people who have started new jobs or traveled.

Sometimes you have to take yourself out of a situation to promote healing.

7. Healing divorce and relationship bitterness may require faith

Healing divorce and relationship bitterness may require faith.

Even with all of the processes above, I could still find myself struggling.

I beat myself up for the mistakes I made and how it impacted my kids.

One day my marriage counselor said, “Colleen, you have told me you feel like everything in your life happened for a reason. You have said you never felt sorry for yourself that you were raised without your father. Did it ever occur to you that this is the path that was intended for your children?”

He was correct.

I grew up with great faith and a belief that everything happens for a reason.

I had to allow my spirituality to re-emerge.

This was a part of my acceptance. It was how I could reconcile the outcome of my relationship. It was how I could let go of being hard on myself, seeing divorce as a failure, or even an unwanted outcome in my life.

Spirituality allows you to embrace what you are refusing to accept.

Maturity and parenting and self-love mandate we must confront bitterness.

Bitterness confronted doesn’t mean we won’t have moments of upset or even anger. Divorce is complicated and human beings are imperfect. But there’s a difference between periodic angst and living with resentment.

I’ve dealt with and healed from the bitterness of my divorce.

I can retell my story factually with great emotion because it’s not pretty. It was a severely abusive divorce. I don’t want another family to experience anything like it so I attempt to hold other people’s hands while they walk it.

But I do not walk around angry.

I have moments of anger if something hurts my children post-divorce. And yes, my ex-husband throwing a six-figure wedding ticked me off since he stole every penny of our savings and retirement. I even wrote about it.

But these are fleeting moments.

Because there’s one thing I’ve learned about bitterness.

It’s an angry companion.

It can eat you alive.

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