Will Divorce Make Me Happier?
“Will getting a divorce make me happier?”
I know you’ve wondered about this question. Whether it was out loud or in your mind, this question is a driving force in the decision to divorce and it nags at you as you go through the process. The question, of course, stems from fear and from the unknown. You contemplate whether the current arrangement of your life — though it may be a struggle or empty in some increasingly intolerable way — may be preferable to a solo life when you are in it years from now.
Wouldn’t You love a sneak peek on Your life a few years from now? A chance To compare your happiness level now with your happiness level in the future?
What is Happiness?
In his book From Strength to Strength, Harvard professor Arthur Brooks dives into how to find happiness and purpose in middle age and beyond. It is not a book about divorce, but it can be shaped through that lens to help us do the math on whether our happiness is likely to go up after divorce.
Brooks says that happiness is the lived combination of “enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose.”
Enjoyment is a sense of pleasure plus the company you have with it plus a sense of intention about the pleasure and the company. Put simply, enjoyment is pleasure experienced intentionally in the company of others.
Satisfaction for Brooks is “the joy of accomplishing a goal with effort.” Going deeper, he notes that satisfaction comes from a life lived with more “haves” than “wants.” Essentially when you want less, you contribute to your own happiness.
Purpose or meaning is when you create a life where you feel significant and where the “everything happens for a reason” adage roots in your heart for real.
So What is Happiness After Divorce?
Brooks explains that happiness is built on how you attend to the “four pillars” that support it, namely family, faith, friends, and work. Intentional effort spent building those four pillars makes a big difference in how you experience happiness both now and in the future. Avoiding the unbridled pursuit of money, power, pleasure, and the admiration of others helps, too.
Here is the bottom line for you: Happiness after divorce does not appear for you, it is built by you.
This means you will work at creating a new arrangement of family for yourself. You will connect with something outside of yourself and develop meaningful practices to do so. You will nurture existing and new friendships to create a sense of community for yourself. And finally, you will pursue work —paid or volunteer — that supports you and contributes to the betterment of the world.
You will not land in a place of happiness. You will perservere toward it. You will experiment and fail and succeed. You will be surprised and disappointed and regroup.
So the answer is no, your divorce will not make you happier. You will make you happier by building a life that allows for happiness to thrive. I can help you walk through your divorce to give a far better chance at building that life. Hop on a call with me here to hear more.
About the Author:
Hi, I’m Andrea, a divorce coach, author, and speaker. I’m the creator of the Divorce Differently with H.E.A.R.T. model, and I can work with you to create a healthier divorce and life (even when your partner is difficult). My clients walk through divorce with a better understanding of the process, clearer expectations, defined boundaries, and useful hacks to make this most unwanted situation doable. I can teach you how to do it too! Let’s talk.
