Step by Step Parenting

It’s inevitable. You notice the mom changes her profile picture from a picture of the family to a picture of just her. You stop seeing the family out in public together. Maybe you notice name changes, or a moving truck outside someone’s house, or the vague quotes and Facebook status updates about how “everything happens for a reason” and “God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers.”

Okay, maybe that last one is harping on a cliche. But the point is, if someone in your life is going through a divorce, you’re bound to notice. And with nearly 43% of marriages ending in divorce as of 2024 (see here), it’s not exactly uncommon.

So why are people so weird when it comes to talking about it????

The amount of times I had to fumble through an awkward explanation that my ex-husband and I got divorced, and I moved back in with my parents, and people immediately responded with, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! What happened?” is SHOCKING.

Ultimately, every person is different, and their boundaries are going to be different, too. While I’ll never directly answer the “what happened?” question because I’ve made it a point to not speak ill of the father of my child (something I talk about at length here), I WILL shed some light on some common issues I’ve seen across the board when it comes to divorce.

Communication

Being able to communicate your feelings, thoughts, and concerns with your partner is key to a healthy marriage, so it should be no surprise that lack of communication is often at the center of most divorces. The problem isn’t lack of communication itself — marriages, like all relationships, go through different phases, and having some seasons of life be tougher than others is normal. The problem is when lack of communication goes ignored for months or years, and is never addressed. Slowly, you start to notice that you never seem to be on the same page with your spouse about things that matter, like financial decisions, family goals, and parenting, to name a few. Each person begins to feel misunderstood, like they are alone or unheard. And when one or both partners start to feel like this, tiny resentments are born. These fester over time until one day, you don’t even recognize your relationship anymore, and no amount of conversation seems to help get things back to the way they were.

The bottom line is healthy relationships are the result of healthy communication, and unhealthy relationships are often the result of a lack of communication.

Loss of Identity

Maybe you got married young, and ten years later, you don’t recognize yourself anymore. Maybe you became a parent, and lost yourself in the process. Maybe one or both partners lost a job, left a religion, experienced a loss, or any other major change. All of these are just examples of ways that one can feel like they’ve lost their identity, which can be incredibly hard to navigate, both as an individual and as a couple.

This shouldn’t be a problem in a marriage. After all, “in sickness and in health, for better or for worse” … right? In a healthy marriage, yes, this is true. But the problem is if the relationship is already unhealthy, someone feeling like they’ve lost themselves can place an enormous strain on the marriage and be like the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Because before you were a wife or a husband, a mom or a dad, or whatever your job title was, you were just you. It’s okay to “lose yourself” in a sense to your different roles in life. But it’s also important to retain a sense of self, to have the confidence to know who you truly are. Without this, maintaining a healthy relationship is like trying to steer the ship with no compass.

Goals & Values Change (or Don’t)

Even harder than dealing with feeling like you or your spouse has changed is when (1) your goals and beliefs no longer align or (2) you went into the relationship hoping certain things would change, but they didn’t.

As someone who spent seven years of their life as an “ex-mormon,” I saw this a lot. If you marry someone and believe that your life will look a specific way — raising your kids actively religious, going to church every Sunday, etc. — having one partner decide that they don’t want that anymore is tough. Sometimes, one is left thinking, “Hey, this isn’t what I signed up for!” And this can happen with so many other things other than religion, such as career goals, lifestyle changes, political or spiritual beliefs, parenting tactics, the list goes on. Notice, too, that this stems back to a lack of communication. On the other hand, if you marry someone and a part of you hopes they will change — maybe you want them to convert to your religion, or you think they’ll see something your way eventually — you are likely setting yourself up for major disappointment, and that’s not fair to the person you married.

All of these are just things to consider before asking that burning question. If you still feel the urge to ask your loved one, “What happened?” then go ahead. Who knows, maybe you’ll get some juicy bits of drama! But just know, if you are having to ask rather than be told, you probably aren’t someone who is close enough to be granted all the details. Asking a divorced person why they got divorced is likely to bring up lots of bad memories, hurt, shame, and regret, and they might not want to talk about. And that’s ok.