As much as you want to be there for your children forever, when divorce feels like the only way for you to live, there are a lot of questions about your continued devotion to your children. You don’t want anyone to question your competence as a parent, but you don’t want to stay in an unhappy marriage, either. Stay in your child’s life without ruining yours. Here are some tips from other parents who have been through divorce:
Acknowledge that You Need Help
Divorce feels a lot like shouldering the responsibilities of two parents after losing their spouse. Especially if you have full custody of the children, there are suddenly more things for you to do by yourself. Any parent in Colorado would not want to disrupt the life of their child even as they navigate the complexities of divorce or communicate with a divorce attorney in Colorado Springs.
The best-case scenario is that you and your spouse set your differences aside to co-parent your children or at least have some help on days when you just need a break. If that’s not possible, you still have your parents to help, or perhaps you and your former spouse can discuss grandparents’ rights so that the children will not feel like they are losing everyone.
Take Some Time to Heal
Your relationship with the people around you and with your own children may have suffered throughout the divorce proceedings. This contributes to that feeling of being alone with everything resting on your shoulders. A new relationship will not fix things if you haven’t gotten to the root of the problem, which is that your bond with other people weakened. Before you work on adding new relationships in your life, take the time to prioritize yourself.
A small vacation with the children can give you some time to relax while also reinforcing your bond with them. Being away from the stressful home situation might just be what you need to start over. Of course, the vacation should be within the limits of your rights as a parent to prevent new problems from developing.
Put Yourself Out There
You don’t need to be looking for a replacement for your spouse. Simply allowing yourself to receive attention from new people may help you feel better about yourself and your current situation. That attention helps you see that your former relationship did not fall apart because you were not worth it. You can only blame yourself so much; your spouse had something to do with the marriage’s failure, too.
Accepting that you’re not solely to blame might be hard when even your children blame you for not being the “fun” parent. The presence of someone who will remind you of your value and your positive attributes might just be what you need to discover that you can do it by yourself and that you deserve your freedom.
As sad as it is to accept, marriages may fail, and it could be your marriage that’s next to go down. However, you can still move forward without feeling like you’re worthless.