Expect that it will take at least a year before things begin to feel at all normal again after a divorce.
For most of us, depending on the length and the nature of our previous relationship, it will take two or three years. This may seem like an eternity, but in reality this is a wonderful opportunity to find out who you are at this stage of your life as an unattached individual.
A word of warning is in order: don’t expect to re-involve yourself with someone else immediately! You are on the rebound. To attach yourself prematurely in a love relationship is unfair to you and to the other person. You are necessarily dealing with tremendously important personal issues when your previous love relationship comes to an end. Living through the transition and exploring these issues can be very painful, and falling in love again may seem like the perfect way to end the pain. But the other person in this case becomes a replacement, an object, and that is not what a healthy relationship is about. You will carry into this replacement relationship the same issues which helped to lead to the demise of your former relationship … and the same things may very well happen again.
Your real goal is to discover who you are and to explore what led to the divorce.
When you are at the point of being able to have a happy and fulfilled life as a single person, then you can choose when, or even if, you should re-involve yourself again in another love relationship. When you know that you have that choice, you may be ready.
