Redeeming Divorce Series. An article for MEND Collective– from a Men’s Divorce Dinner, Charleston SC, mendcharleston.com
This month, I bought a table— the first big piece of furniture I’ve purchased since my divorce. Last night, I had the opportunity to sit around that table with eight other men who were going through or had gone through divorce. Many still fresh in the midst of it all.
I found myself wondering, where else in all of Charleston is there a gathering like this? Men. Divorce. Food. Real, raw stories. Honestly, where else? I can’t think of too many spaces where men who have gone through one of the most traumatic experiences of their lives—divorce, the loss of connection with the person they loved—can come together and find unity and shared connection through their experience. This was truly significant. I realized I was sitting in a moment of impact.
Last night, one of the questions we explored together was, “What are the hardest things you faced in divorce?”
I want to share some of the themes that emerged, along with a few of my takeaways.
The hardest things men described facing in divorce included:
– Losing everything. Stepping away from or watching things we built, pursued, acquired, and accomplished, leave. Often, much personal sacrifice in the process.
– Experiencing the children hurting. Seeing our own kids hurting through the process is deeply painful.
– Losing relationships. The loss of community, especially friendships, that we experience in divorce is awful, isolating, and lonely.
– Financial damage. The cost of legal fees, attorney’s fees, and everything that comes with the process can leave massive financial damage.
– Loss of a best friend. Permanently losing connection with the person who was intimately your best friend is crushing.
– The loss of identity. The disruption that happens to ourselves in the process and wondering, “Who am I really?”, and “What do I do now?”
Emerging from all of these things, I began to see one common theme: loss.
In divorce, a man’s perspective is often shaped by the losses he is experiencing and incurring, which come with many layers of grief. But I wondered if maybe there was more to discover underneath the experience of these losses– how have they been shaping our character? How have we learned through loss? The perception of having and holding something, and then seeing it go, can lead men in different directions.
The loss experienced through divorce is formative. I began seeing many great gains in the stories of the men who share what they’ve learned through the experience. Greater character. Learning. Patience. Endurance. Humility. Self-reflection and self-awareness. Stronger faith. The many positive things they found themselves growing in through the terrible experience of divorce begin to significantly tip the scales away from loss.
In this gathering, I learned a lot from men’s stories of messiness, mistakes, and hardships. And as I left the table, I found myself wondering, could the way loss has shaped us be the greater story behind loss in divorce?
-Alex Gerber
Author’s Note:
As I finished up this article, I happened to be reading Romans chapter 5. This jumped out and I wanted to include it. It fits with my story. In divorce, I was utterly helpless. Yet, what I gained was greater than anything I have known, and it can never be taken away.
“We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.” Romans 5:3-6