Happily divorced
When a marriage is over, few people find it profitable. On the contrary, most people feel that their entire life is only characterized by losses: they lose their partner, their plans for the future, their everyday lives. Some lose their children, the apartment or the house, some lose mutual friends and not least also money.
Life after a divorce is a life of "nothing more". You do not go back to the Italian, you do not shop for the weekend. You do not celebrate Christmas together, do not go on holiday. Very few can imagine shortly after a separation that this "no more" also has the potential of a big "not yet".
If a couple decides to split up, because the bad days prevail and the good ones are just memories, they both have to re-establish themselves. That takes time, especially for those who have been abandoned. The loss of a spouse paralyzes. No guide books or tips from friends help: Do not smoke, do not drink, do sports, go to the air, look for a new hobby. But how can you do that if you can barely get up to get out of bed in the morning?
It takes at least one to two years for most people to reorient themselves until their lives are no longer characterized by loss but by a new beginning. Even if nothing moves for months at a time, at some point you learn to be yourself enough again. Step by step, a new satisfaction is spreading. And not a few are building up a life that is more independent and richer than the former married life, and at some point can say without irony: "I am happily divorced."
Rabea Tolmein * says she was a zombie first, then a ghost, then a chewing gossip, and then - slowly - "I've turned myself back into a human being." Rabea is sitting on the sofa in her living room in a West Berlin district with refurbished Wilhelminian style buildings, she has made latte macchiato and added cookies. Nothing looks random in her apartment: the chrome frosted glass cabinet in the hallway, the Art Deco lamp on the coffee table, the round cushions on the floorboards, the modern picture on the wall in red, light red and dark red.
The last time the 38-year-old settled down the way she wanted was during her time as a student, but she lived in shared apartments and did not have much money. After graduation, she moved to her boyfriend and started working as a lecturer, two years later they got married. "The decor was not so important," she says, "that was rather rustic oak".
Rolf, she says now, is a nice man. She takes a sip of coffee and bites into a cookie, and even if you listen to her tone for a while, there is nothing ironic in that sentence. She's serious: Her ex-husband was a nice man. "I am also a nice woman", she adds and laughs, "we had a lot of fun together - especially at the beginning."
Now, when she tries to explain why - the nice man and the nice woman - she does not understand anymore, she talks about little time, a lot of work and short party evenings, she talks about two exhausted people who just stay in bed in the evening After a while, she says, "We just dwelt apart, it always sounds so stupid, but in fact it was like this: At some point we were not a couple anymore, just two more people living their lives side by side."
The quarrels began when he, a successful business consultant, got an offer in Cologne. She, the successful editor, did not want to come along. For weeks they argued. And at some point, they realized that their jobs had grown so big over the years that there was not much room left for their love. "It was a very sad realization," says Rabea, "we had to admit that we only look at our future career, not our private life, everything was just mechanics and custom."
* All names changed by the editor
Her husband moved to Cologne, Rabea stayed in their shared apartment in Berlin. A short time later, he fell in love with a new colleague. "That was a shock," Rabea says, "I had not really understood it yet." The separation was suddenly final - and very painful.
For two weeks she wrote herself sick, did not go out for days, cried, watched TV, started smoking again. From time to time, friends passed by and consoled, listened. "My friends were really patient," she says now, "I've been texting for hours."
After half a year, she began to clean up, internally and externally. She looked around for an apartment, worked a lot, met her divorce lawyer. She seldom saw her ex-husband. They were short meetings where they screamed or did not have much to say.The divorce was rather uncomplicated, they were financially independent, there were no children, and "he was welcome to bring the oak rustic."
When she moved, she ran from one store to the next at weekends. And bought as if her life depended on it. With every table, every chair, every pillow, she tried to fill in a piece of emptiness left by the marriage. "Of course that was an illusion," she says now, "I would not advise anyone, but it has helped me for a while."
Two years have passed since then. Rabea has begun a talk therapy to better sort out her new life. The apartment is furnished, the purchase attacks has better control. She started to go fencing, met a few new people. She does not have a partner, although she has plunged into a few affairs. The separation has triggered many things with her.
"I've come to realize that some of these banal-sounding phrases sound so banal just because they've been heard so often," she says, "for example, that you need to work on relationships, or this buzzword about work-life balance ". Rabea still works a lot and still likes to, but if she "would hit one" now, as she puts it, then she would pay attention to "more life and more balance".
Monika Greschel * says she "did not live" for months after being separated. Although she moved to a beautiful three-room apartment in Potsdam, not far from Sanssouci Park, she went on to her half-day job with a tax accountant, but otherwise, "I was sitting around doing nothing and thinking nothing".
She was 57 years old, the son studied in the US, the daughter in Munich. Her husband, with whom she had been married for more than 30 years, had chosen another woman ten years younger than Monika.
"It was like a bad movie: The wife got the kids big and strengthened his back, and then he decides to start a second youth," says Monika. In Sanssouci Castle Park, the meadows are frozen and the roads icy, but she leaves twice a day for at least half an hour with the dog, a golden retriever with a thick snout and a shiny coat. She has him for three years. The divorce is now four years ago.
It had been announced for some time, even if she sees it only after the fact. They had been sleeping separately for years, and when he was at home he usually retreated to his study, he, the architect, who brooded over his journals and drawings. And she, the housewife with a half-day job, shopped and cooked and took care of the children. "I was a real mother," she says today, walking silently through the crunching snow for a while.
It was not a bad life, even he had said that. But he wanted to bloom again, drive with his new girlfriend to Rome and Barcelona, go hiking and skiing. "I was angry," says Monika, "he never tried to do these things with me, I got bored with him." He left her no choice: When he told his girlfriend, he had already decided. She cried, she screamed, she got upset, she threw him out of the house. Then came the great silence.
A friend helped her find a flat quickly. She did not want to stay in the house with so many memories. The children often called, the friends tried, but they were all married and working. Many were also mutual friends, to some she lost contact in the meantime. "Of course he was the better company," says Monika and snorts, "he already had a new life, I just sat around and howled."
For nights she sat on the computer and talked to other women whose life stories were hidden under codenames like "Buzzi69", "the broken-down" or "longing mouse". All divorced or separated, all somewhere between denial and reorientation. Monika joined in a forum in which met women who had been abandoned, many of them, like Monika, also no 30, the "old iron" was the thread.
Looking back, she says that it took about a year for the drowsiness to wane, a year at which she decided: she had to get out, literally. Her daughter came up with the idea of the dog because her mother could not even get up to go for a walk. Since the dog is with her, she has to blow twice a day. "I've always smiled at people who buy a pet because they're alone," she says, "now I understand that."
The divorce, Monika says today, woke her up. On the long walks she thought a lot. And realized that she had worked the long years above all else: she had not taken time for hobbies, had not gone to sports, had barely read. And she thought back to the young woman she had once been, a woman who danced, devoured one novel after another, dreamed of world travel. "At almost 60," says Monika, "I started emancipating myself."
Step by step she began what she calls her "third life".She is in a cooking group, goes to gym and she reads a novel almost every week. She also enjoys shopping at the weekly market, just what she likes. And she has a new girlfriend, Hanne, who also lives alone for several years. The two women meet for cooking, coffee and walking, and this spring they want to travel to Tuscany.
A bit, she says, she feels like she's in a second youth. A colleague even asked her recently how she managed to look younger and younger. But the biggest compliment her son gave her when he visited her during the semester break. She had cooked Asian, and they had been having a good time all evening. She told him about her travel plans, the sport and the books, and at some point he looked at her, astonished and happy, and said, "Mom, you've got a life of your own now!"
