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Are You Contemplating a Reconciliation? |
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You miss the companionship. You want to return to your comfort zone no matter how stressful. You want your family back! Anyone who has ever been divorced has felt this way at some point in time, if not many times. But as time goes on, we tend to forget the bad and only remember the good.
My advice to you: If you’re thinking of reconciling, especially if there are children involved, tread very carefully. Breakups, and especially divorces, are hard on everyone involved but can have a devastating impact on children. Think about the far-reaching consequences of your actions before you put your children back on that rollercoaster. You’ve made a lot of progress. You’ve started to heal. Before you entertain the notion of actually going back and risking having to start that process all over again, please ask yourself these two primary questions:
1. Why do you want to reconcile?
Are you struggling financially?
Are you lonely? Are you afraid of never finding a fulfilling relationship? Are others pressuring you?
If you are reconciling because of money, loneliness, insecurity, outside pressure, or just plain old desperation, then let me tell you that these are the wrong reasons! Unless you have both done the personal and joint work necessary to change the dynamics of the relationship, you will find yourselves right back in the same situation that led to the decision to divorce in the first place.
When you have a healthy understanding of the relationship and you are seeking reconciliation for the right reason, you will recognize that the weak relationship that ended in divorce did not get there through the fault of only one of you and won’t somehow miraculously become stronger. It takes work. Hard work. Very hard work if you’ve divorced.
The divorce process in and of itself breaks something in the relationship. It will take a lot of time and attention to rebuild trust, let alone rebuild the relationship from the ground up on a more solid foundation. You have to work at the problems of the past before you can move forward in the future. Once you’ve done that, you may discover that you have outgrown the relationship.
I have learned the hard way that you can love someone, can even consider them your best friend, but just can’t make it work. My ex and I had been divorced for 5 years (with all kids out of the house), and while we are still in love, we recognize that we may not be best for each other. It took just two weeks of “dating” to realize that nothing had really changed! This brings me to my next question.
2. Has anything changed?
Have either of you done the personal work necessary in order to make the second time around any different?
If you haven’t figured out what you personally did to contribute to the breakup of the relationship, then you’re destined to repeat the same mistakes and continue the same patterns in this relationship or in any other.
Are you prepared to do the joint work to avoid the pitfalls that caused the initial breakup? When my ex and I tried to reconcile, we discovered that we had changed.
Although we had raised four children together, we were not the same people we had been 5 years before. We had grown up and apart in ways that would make going back to each other a process that requires more work than we are prepared or willing to do. If I only knew what I know now I could have avoided the heartache by asking these two little questions before beginning to “date.” If you honestly answer the above questions and act accordingly, you’re on your way to beginning to do the personal work that you need to do before you can begin any relationship.
There’s a reason why the divorce rate for subsequent marriages is higher than first-time marriages. That’s because we usually carry the baggage from the first into the second and have less tolerance for the stress and strain of a difficult relationship. Do yourself and your children a favor, don’t go backward unless you are absolutely certain you’re doing it for the right reasons. Start with the answers to the above questions.
Cathy McNeil Stein is an attorney (Director of Client Services) with Novus Law LLC and an adjunct professor in the Leadership, Ethics & Values Department at North Central College. She is a mother of 4 and resides in Chicago Illinois, USA. PHOTO CREDIT: SAM D |
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