by Angela Slate

Created on: October 05, 2009

Divorce can be a messy thing for both parties involved and their surrounding relations. However, particularly if there is children involved it is everyone's best interests that you stay on good terms. It need not be a hateful process. Two people that have been married, even if it has ended in such sad circumstances, have, until this point been on a journey of personal growth together and why should it stop now? Why make life more bitter than it need be?

The first thing I would advise would be to get some space from your ex-spouse first. You cannot stay friends or rebuild any sort of relationship while you are constantly trying to score points to appease your pain. Carve out your new identity. Marriage is a beautiful thing, but you may have forgotten how or indeed you are. Get independent interests. If you have children, concentrate your energies on them. Make them feel as safe and as comfortable as you can. Ask a family member for help if you are able to, as it can be hard to reassure when you are in desperate need of reassurance yourself. If you have a job, take pride in that and try to remember all the things that excited you before you were with your ex-spouse. Once you have cast your mind back do all those things, you will soon, slowly but surely start to feel like the person you were. You will be an independent self, having rebooted your system and in doing so you may have started to forget all the pain of the separation that went before.

Now you are ready to get back in touch with your ex-spouse. For the first few times you meet, feelings of anger and hurt may surge to the surface, tempting you to make comments. However, justified you might think they are, let them go. What is it going to achieve now? You are working on rebuilding a relationship in order to remain friends and any answers or reasons, whether or not you believe them, will not ease your pain and will ultimately fill both of you with resentment.

Once you have let go of all the hurt and bad feeling of the past, looking forward to the future filled with new possibilities, as the best is yet to come, friendship, or at the very least a mutual feeling and understanding between the two of you will come very easily, as you will no longer feel like you lost, but rather that you can begin a new chapter in your life.

I write this article with the premise that your ex-partner is not parading their new relationship before you. Tempting though it may be to ask about their current love lives it will not help you at all, instead leaving you feeling further hurt and looking desperate. Provided that you are comfortable that any children involved in the situation are well cared for, asking personal questions will only move you further away from your ultimate goal, friendship.

These days will get better, just remember that because your relationship with your ex-spouse has changed so dramatically, try and look upon forming a new sort of alliance with them as you would any other person that you meet, behaving cordially towards them and over perhaps not weeks or even months, but ultimately a friendship or sorts will form. Just remember your ex-partner and you have shared so many experiences together and been such an important part in each others lives, so treat them respectfully for that reason. It will honour everything that has gone before for all the right reasons.

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