Women who have gone through a divorce, what are/were some judgments you had received from others about it?

6 comments

1. **Contributions are courtesy of an old church friend who recently got divorced and spent a lot of time talking to me about the comments she received from the congregation and family;**

   “why didn’t you try harder to forgive him? It was a silly mistake”

   “you realize the dating world is awful, why would you give up a whole entire marriage based off this”

   “think of the kids. If you do this you will be causing *them* pain and ripping their life apart”

   “women are meant to be submissive and gentle, you must have been acting too masculine if he was looking elsewhere”

   “were you giving him enough sex?”

   “just don’t fleece him for all he’s got ok? He worked hard for the money he made for his family”

2. When I divorced my husband of 22 years, it came as a shock to relatives and friends. I kept the issues we had private from them and my children for so long because I didn’t want to break up the family, but the truth is that I was only hurting myself in the long run.

   Some of my relatives told me that I should work to save my marriage since we had been married for so long and that it would be wrong to throw that away. I had already tried for years to improve things but much to my disappointment, my ex husband refused to change to which they had no idea about. I was tired and made my decision final.

3. I married young and divorced young. I didn’t receive much judgement got divorcing him because everyone knew he was abusive. Many years later when I remarried I received judgmental comments from my family, “should you really be having a big wedding when you’ve already had one”? I guess none of them thought about my spouse who had never had a wedding before and wanted one! Also, what’s the problem with any type of celebration?

4. My mother was very judgemental about it, as if my getting divorced was hurting her somehow.

   Other than that, no issues that I have been able to tell. If anybody has had judgements about me because of it, I haven’t known about it.

5. First, I told very few people about my divorce until it was final, so that short-circuited the “concerned” folks who would have interfered and tried to talk me out of it. Highly recommend if you can manage it. It was super effective.

   After the divorce was final, very few people felt comfortable enough to voice any judgments where I could hear them, but the few who did just gave vague religious nonsense, said that they didn’t believe in divorce, or considered it sad that I would “give up” on my marriage. Clearly those people didn’t know me well enough to understand the reasons for the divorce, and I didn’t feel beholden to try to change their minds about it, so I just ignored it and moved on with my life.

6. When I was divorcing my bully of a husband, a colleague at work stopped talking to me which I thought was odd. I pulled her up on it and she said she couldn’t believe I’d walk away from a marriage so easily( she obviously didn’t know the details). She told me her husband had always been abusive and yet she stayed because he wouldn’t have let her take her children. She was bitter at the fact I had walked away. I felt it was a very odd response.