Divorce is tough. But often neither the beginning nor the climax of a crisis. But its end.
It was one of the most beautiful days of my life: My maids of honor, who are my oldest friends, were sitting in elegant clothes to the left and right of me at the set and decorated table. I smelled their familiar perfume. They had brought presents and bouquets of flowers. From a cloudless, ice-blue winter sky, the light blond sun shone through the windows of the fully occupied "Café Paris", just one street away from Hamburg City Hall. Even the grains of dust glittered festively in the beam of light. In the background the clink of glasses, laughter, the babble of voices.
Everything starts over, back to the big lot!
We raised our glasses with cold crémant: "Good luck! To you!" Said one. "Thank you for being there," I replied euphoric and touched at the same time. We toasted and drank. There was so much love and intoxicating light-heartedness to be felt, and that was not only due to the unfamiliar intake of alcohol in the morning. A hopeful future fanned out and gave me a breath of fresh air: Everything for a new beginning, back to the big lot! I felt like I was in my early 20s, as if everything in life was still possible for me, no, better: as if I had already made the really important decisions – job, children, friends – and now the rest of my life mainly as a playground for me. Lots of new first times: everything was possible between silk painting and sex. The bell struck twelve from the nearby town hall tower. The bronze clock above the entrance portal represents the beginning and end of life; the child on his mother's lap strikes the quarter of an hour, death then the full. How fitting! The court hearing had been at 10 a.m. I'd been a divorced woman for two hours.
Once I wore a big white and saw black, today a little black and looked through the pink glasses at my future life of its own. After 20 years of marriage and two teenage children, I felt like I had finally come back to myself.
Yes, the years before the separation and the eternal process of the divorce after so many years together, accounts and children were terrible and extremely painful. No, I hadn't wanted it that way either; had married out of love and after the end had fought, argued, cried and mourned for her. But now I was happy to have made that decision. Better to downsize your lifestyle than continue to downsize. Because between the death of a marriage and the real death there can still be an eternity. Seriously: How many old couples do you know who you think are still happy with each other and do not have the greatest mutual dislike? Yes, that you assume or even know that they are still having sex, and that with each other too? I personally know three – and I know a lot of people!
Gender gap in marriage
Very few women get married on a whim because they were just drunk and happened to pass a wedding chapel in Las Vegas. Nobody marries, however, in order to increasingly lose their own life, while they work alternately in the job, household, in the relationship and on the hormonal balance of the husband. In addition, there may be the needs of children who can never be met. The "Fathers Report" by the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs showed that only 14 percent of parents actually live a family model based on partnership.
A study on "Equal Care Day" 2019 confirmed: In contrast to mothers, fathers generally do not lose sleep or careers. This is where the gender gap begins: the man pulls away, the mother, who has just had equal rights, stays at home "for the time being" with the unpaid care work for the future pensioners, on which the entire economic system is based. The best example: Who is currently feeling responsible for homeschooling in the Corona crisis? Right – 82 percent women. From potential millionaire to dishwasher. Out of love. You get so much back! Just no money, no retirement provision, no respect and a place in kindergarten anyway. There's this cool rock'n'roll resolution: "It's better to burn out, than to fade away". Long-term wives and mothers easily manage both: to have a burnout and at the same time to fade more and more. Of course, they continue to function. They want to keep the pack together, at least until the kids are out of the house.
Every third marriage is now divorced, most marriages after an average of 15 years. They split up when children come and then again when the children leave you. Seven out of ten divorces are filed by the woman. And that, although in Germany after the wrongly thought and poorly made maintenance reform of 2008, wives who put back a long time professionally in favor of raising children and unpaid and unappreciated family work are financially much worse off. A current study shows that every third single is at risk of poverty, and this is especially true for women who earn almost 30 percent less at work in Germany and also raise the children free of charge that their parents say their parents alone up to their 18th birthday Federal Statistical Office cost an average of 130,000 euros. And then there's training on top of that.
Finding yourself – the way into your own life
Since women are more or less aware of a happy partnership and family as their task, a separation or even divorce often seems like personal failure to them. Therefore, they permanently work lonely overtime in relationship work. Only when their needs for loving connection, support and emotional understanding have been frustrated and eroded over many years do they eventually start to think like the ex-wife of the former "Spiegel" editor Jan Fleischhauer, who named his marital reappraisal book after his wife's final sentence: " Anything is better than another day with you ". And while husbands, masters of magical wishful thinking, even after decades of quarrels, pleadings, silence, tears and attempts at therapy, "never saw their wives' final wish for separation coming" and after the first shock they look for a replacement for their wife to avoid being looked after Having to move into a home, ex-wives also find their dream woman after the separation: themselves!
According to a survey conducted by American couples therapist Jennifer Garvin among divorced women, one in three had doubts even before marriage whether this was really the only "right one" among the four billion men currently available worldwide. If women think no but say yes, it is due to the panic at the end of the day, the expectations of their social environment, the desire to wear a beautiful wedding dress like the girlfriends, and a biological clock that shows five to pregnant. One shouldn't let the fear of loneliness dictate the answer. "If you have any doubts, leave it alone!" Advises the specialist.
Fortunately, however, it is never too late to let it go. I went to a mothers' class reunion a while ago. We all got to know each other when our first children came together at 1b in elementary school more than 15 years ago. At that time we were a homogeneous, privileged group with husbands, one to three children, a second car and a dog. There were only two single parents among the mothers, exotic women, who were more likely to keep to themselves, as if it were contagious. The first divorce broke into the familiar Shire like a tsunami in class 2b and washed away a weekend house, an apartment, a wine cellar, a pony and a Porsche, among other things. The rest of the herd saw it with horror and vowed never to let it get that far. Almost 15 years later, a good 70 percent were divorced or separated. Many had come by bike or bus – more for economic than ecological reasons. At first I didn't recognize some of them, but in a positive sense: Although almost all of them lacked money, they had gained a lot of joie de vivre, attractiveness and charisma. Our children were on their way to their own lives – and so are we.
I have often seen women look ten years younger after losing 90 pounds of husbands. Once you've been married, fear of being alone is no longer an issue. Most divorced women are capable of living, independent, practical, have a much better social network than men and know from painful experience that you can never be more lonely than in an unhappy marriage. In contrast to earlier generations of women, who had hardly any alternatives to enduring and tolerating an unhappy marriage, the generation of women between 40 and 55 know a different life. You can still remember your premarital independence, your travels, your job, your ambitions, dreams, your own money. Freedom. All of this is saved on your hard drive, you just have to find the folder again. You are an updated, sustainable version of yourself.
Don't be afraid of being alone
Even if divorces are currently popular culture as the ultimate reinvention of yourself in midlife (and are a constant topic on Netflix, HBO and Co.) and the before-and-after effects are remarkable in many ways: Hardly anyone agrees to the bond of life with the resolution to get divorced for moody lifestyle reasons. They have married, loved, hoped and suffered to the point of no longer. Most feel lonely and abandoned for many years before they finally break up. Women walk slowly – but forcefully. Then the divorce is not a failure for them. But, like for me here on this day, an alternative happy ending. A reason to celebrate.
Karina Lübke Know: Since women see a happy family as their job, divorce feels like personal failure to them. It doesn't have to be like that.
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