Happily Divorced Quotes

Every cell in my body was telling me that he was my happily ever after.

I wanted to know what it felt like to be loved by the man of my dreams.

And they all lived happily ever after (barring death, divorce, arrest for tax fraud, that incident with the pool boy...)

Divorce = Rebirth: forget the past, replan your life, improve your appearance & REJUVENATE!

He was the one I compared all others to.

It was impossible not to fall in love with him.

It was as if we'd known each other for a thousand years.

His fingerprints covered my skin.

Choosing freedom over toxic familiarity would always be the correct choice.

We were living rather happily, to the rhythm of the sun. It was a simple life, but peaceful, without electricity or running water.

I could live without chemistry but not without kindness.

Lighting the lamp is an art. A ritual. A discipline. Lighting the lamp became my anchor, and my focus, a deliberate act, and a resolution.

By writing what I was grateful for, I learned to look for things that made me smile.

The path of least resistance led to hibernation.

Growing up is never easy. We think it happens when you reach a certain age, accomplish a goal, acquire a house, or reach a milestone, but it doesn’t stop.

That first choice to leave an unhappy home had put me on a path strewn with more choices. Such was life. I had to accept it without looking for certainties.

Some people are happily single. Some are unhappily married.

I decided to create a home from scratch, something that would reflect my tastes and preferences with a combination of objects and energy that would add up to a safe and inviting space for the people and experiences I wanted to welcome into my life.

Back therefore we find ourselves returning. Back to the wisdom of the plough; back to the wisdom of those who follow the sea. It is all a matter of the wheel coming full-circle. For the sophisticated system of mental reactions to which we finally give our adherence is only the intellectualised reproduction of what more happily constituted natures, without knowing what they possess, possess. Thus between true philosophers and the true simple people there is a magnetic understanding; whereas, the clever ones whose bastard culture only divorces them from the wisdom of the earth remain pilloried and paralysed on the prongs of their own conceit".

After one divorce and other on the way I am seriously considering a ME-rriage now and .t's going to be epic! I will ask my hand in meTRInomy, for it will become a trigamy. And me, my higher self and third I will live happily ever after life...We will live in threesomeness!

His first job was to find some rich lady’s pedigree Siamese cat. He managed to run it over on the way to see her. The second job was a divorce case – which you may think is run-of-the-mill until I tell you that the clients were perfectly happily married until he came along… There hadn’t been a third case.

People are attracted to those who fully live life without excuses.

All I could do was what I had done each morning for all these years. Light my lamp. Every Single. Day.

The longer you perform a ritual, the more power it garners - from the act, from the faith, from the feeling.

There is change, and there is transformation.

Nothing was permanent, even discontentment.

Instead of assembling the shattered pieces of my outer existence and inner reality into an incomprehensible structure, I learned to consciously create a new life.

It wasn’t that difficult to cook. Or to eat well. The key was to do it with love, for myself and for my family.

The worst thing about your life falling apart is that the world takes no notice.

Everything you do does not need to have a practical use; it’s important to make space for beauty.

It felt important to acknowledge our small successes, to stop and observe the tiny pockets of sunshine that broke up the boredom of our monochrome days and made us smile.

Nourishment comes in many forms. So does happiness.

My writing time had been my personal oasis. A small respite each night, a private space to muse and vent. It was a restorative act, not a performative one.

What do you do when you know that staying together is not easy and breaking up is even more difficult?

For all my talk of emancipation, I had fallen into the trap of caring deeply about “what will people say,” having internalized the cultural taboo of divorce.

To gain confidence, to put myself firmly on a path to independence, I needed to practice making small choices. I decided to begin by making this cavernous house into a cozy home.

Sometimes, wishes come true in strange ways.

Moving on means getting back on track to align with the opposite of what turned you off.

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell. —Siddhartha Buddha,

Who knows what goes on in a marriage? Even my parents, who had a compatible marriage, had their points of contention. They had figured out how to disagree and how to find common ground.

Court for money, and you will live superficially. Court for virtue, and you will live prudently. Court for fame, and you will live insincerely. Court for love, and you will live joyously. Marry for money, and you will live lavishly. Marry for virtue, and you will live honorably. Marry for fame, and you will live prominently. Marry for love, and you will live happily. Divorce for money, and you will live poorly. Divorce for virtue, and you will live peacefully. Divorce for fame, and you will live miserably. Divorce for love, and you will live tragically.

From measuring my life in terms of milestones, I now tried to measure it in moments—those small pockets of time that float with great radiance even though they are embedded in the minutiae of life.

The image of woman as mother is universal, not specific to any culture. But in India, that image is elevated to iconic status by a society that puts marriage and motherhood at the core of a woman’s existence.

Music connected me with something outside myself, even if only for a moment. For that moment, it held my fears at bay and with each passing day, helped me climb up from the dark pit that had once seemed bottomless.

As Kierkegaard wrote: 'Repetition is a beloved wife of whom one never tires'. This sentence is misunderstood by almost everyone. On the basis of this misunderstanding, it is either confirmed (by those who are happily married) or criticised (by those who are happily divorced). When you read the expression, it is easy to interpret it as follows: 'The beloved wife/husband is a repetition of whom one never tires/ However, for Freud and Kierkegaard, the repetition is central, the repetition on the basis of which a partner is ascribed a particular place, and not vice versa. At the same time, repetition then had a different meaning. Nowadays, repetition has become almost synonymous with boredom. One only has to think of a children's game that is endlessly repeated and yet gives pleasure every time, in contrast with the blase adult who always wants something new, something different, something that might still rouse him from the lethargy of excess.

It took more than motherhood to move me toward meditation. I first had to lose things—my mother, my marriage, my cynicism. I had to make life-changing decisions. Yet I moved, step by step, into the unknown inner world. Hesitatingly. Skeptically. Slowly.

An empty room can be an instrument for introspection. It was a reflection of the void created by the decision to distance myself from a relationship that had defined me to others and to myself. If I was not a wife, who was I? I was removing a label that marked my place in a social system, but was I still “me” without that label?

Ha!” Baba said. “You think you’re going to feel better if you leave? You think you’re going to live happily ever after? That’s the bullshit this country tries to feed you. Why do you think half of them are divorced?” She opened her mouth to respond, but Baba cut her off. “You’re a mother. Your children come first. What about your daughters?

Changing my narrative from one of complaint and dissatisfaction to a more positive one changed my mood, but it didn’t change all the other negatives that had tipped the balance of our marital life into dysfunction. Memories of good times were a reminder that life cannot be measured in purely black and white terms. The good and bad coexist in a tenuous equilibrium that is always in flux.

The Devil and his angels have... persuad[ed]... humans that a curious, and usually short-lived, experience which they call "being in love" is the only respectable ground for marriage; that marriage can, and ought to, render this excitement permanent; and that a marriage which does not do so is no longer binding. This idea [comes from their] parody of an idea that came from [God]... Things are to be many, yet somehow also one. The good of one self is to be the good of another. This... He calls Love, and this... can be detected under all He does and even all He is... He introduces into matter... the organism, in which the parts are [set at odds with] their natural destiny of competition and made to cooperate... In... humans [God] has... associated affection between the parties with sexual desire. He has also made the offspring dependent on the parents and given the parents an impulse to support it-thus producing the Family, which is like the organism, [but] the members are more distinct, yet also united in a more conscious and responsible way... [Heavenly Father] described a married couple as "one flesh." He did not say "a happily married couple" or "a couple who married because they were in love"...

The thing about marriages, bad ones especially, is the utter disregard with which the couple and those around them treat the cracks when they first emerge. Like tectonic plates that crush and grind against each other under the surface of the earth, the damage does not happen on one sunny morning when the earthquake hits. When a couple splits, it is the result of an inevitable break that has been brewing for years without respite.

In the twentieth century, it was tempting to minimize the effects of divorce. Some adults in unhappy marriages imagined trickle-down happiness: They would be happier after divorce; therefore, so would their kids. But as these kids matured, “the unexpected legacy of divorce” was undeniable. Many children of divorce said they had not much noticed—or cared—whether their parents were happily married. What they did know was that their lives fell apart after their parents split, as resources and parents became stretched too thin.

One of the few stable statistics in our fast-changing world is our rate of divorce, which has hovered between 40 and 50 percent for the last thirty years. Any two people who marry face a grim 50 to 60 percent chance of survival. And if that weren’t sobering enough, one needs to ask further: Of those who remain together, how many do so happily, as opposed to those who stay for external reasons, like their children, finances, religion, or fatigue? Conservatively, we can estimate that at least one out of three, perhaps one out of two, of those couples left standing do not relish their lives together.

When we get down to potential versus reality in relationships, we often see disappointment, not successful achievement. In the Church, if someone creates nuclear fallout in a calling, they are often released or reassigned quickly. Unfortunately, we do not have that luxury when we marry. So many of us have experienced this sad realization in the first weeks of our marriages. For example, we realized that our partner was not going to live up to his/her potential and give generously to the partnership. While fighting the mounting feelings of betrayal, we watched our new spouses claim a right to behave any way they desired, often at our expense. Most of us made the "best" of a truly awful situation but felt like a rat trapped in maze. We raised a family, played our role, and hoped that someday things would change if we did our part. It didn't happen, but we were not allowed the luxury of reassigning or releasing our mates from poor stewardship as a spouse or parent. We were stuck until we lost all hope and reached for the unthinkable: divorce. Reality is simple for some. Those who stay happily married (the key word here is happily are the ones who grew and felt companionship from the first days of marriage. Both had the integrity and dedication to insure its success. For those of us who are divorced, tracing back to those same early days, potential disappeared and reality reared its ugly head. All we could feel, after a sealing for "time and all eternity," was bound in an unholy snare. Take the time to examine the reality of who your sweetheart really is. What do they accomplish by natural instinct and ability? What do you like/dislike about them? Can you live with all the collective weaknesses and create a happy, viable union? Are you both committed to making each other happy? Do you respect each other's agency, and are you both encouraging and eager to see the two of you grow as individuals and as a team? Do you both talk-the-talk and walk-the-walk? Or do you love them and hope they'll change once you're married to them? Chances are that if the answer to any of these questions are "sorta," you are embracing their potential and not their reality. You may also be embracing your own potential to endure issues that may not be appropriate sacrifices at this stage in your life. No one changes without the internal impetus and drive to do so. Not for love or money. . . . We are complex creatures, and although we are trained to see the "good" in everyone, it is to our benefit to embrace realism when it comes to finding our "soul mate." It won't get much better than what you have in your relationship right now.

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Clearly, the “midlife crisis” genre draped a veil of narcissism over the entire enterprise of individual development. In the era of Levinson’s Jim Tracy, an individual problem, “I’m unhappy with my wife,” gave rise to an individualistic solution, “I need a divorce.” But the resulting critiques leveled against “individualistic marriage,” “consumer marriage,” and “expressive divorce” were also problematic; in their effort to protect children from their parents’ misguided seeking, they shortchanged people’s authentic emotional longings. The “heroic” midlife crisis genre wrongly characterized the connection of individuality and intimacy, by suggesting that we develop ourselves by casting off relationships we’ve done little to change. But if we’ve learned anything from the profusion of research on marriage and emotions, it’s that emotions are not best managed by simple suppression. Staying married by stifling individual needs isn’t a solution either. Happily,

Through the rain, Daisy could see another life, a life where she lived out here full-time, with Beatrice, and Diana nearby. Where she could walk her dog on the beach every morning, with her friend, and spend her days cooking in a restaurant. Where Diana could spend time with Beatrice, where Beatrice could go to public school and figure out for herself who she wanted to be, if she wanted to go to college or not. Maybe Daisy could even help at the restaurant and give Diana and her husband time to travel, to see the world. Maybe she had gifts she could give them, ways to repair the damage, and stitch up what had been torn. The only thing she knew for sure was that there was no way forward with Hal, not knowing what she knew about what he'd done. Her life as his wife, Daisy Shoemaker, was over. I divorce thee.

Pamela had been thoroughly divorced for some years now. "Happily so!" she would declare gaily if asked. Sometimes she said, "Best thing that ever happened to me!" with equal exuberance. Neither statement was particularly true, but she was a great believer in exclamation marks.

At the reference to our marriage, we both went quiet. “Do you miss being married?” I asked, though all the possible answers made the hibiscus flower in my stomach feel like it had tentacles. “I don’t know how to answer that. I miss you, Ally, for sure. I don’t miss the fights, though. Being together started to amplify all the negatives—the anger, the worry, the frustration.” “That’s true,” I said quietly. “I have to admit it.” “And we’d be dishonest if we claimed Kylie’s challenges caused all those things. The problems were always there, even when we were sincerely happy with each other. We just thought if we ignored them they’d go away.” “Also true.” “I’ll always love you,” Matt said. “But . . .” He put his arm over my shoulder. “No buts. I’ll always love you. It’s not the same kind of love as when we were happily married. It’s more of an appreciation for that time, for what we once had.” “Does the other stuff—the fighting and anger and tears—does that stuff make you hate me a little?” “I hate what we became. That bickering, sniping couple that made other people become uncomfortable in their presence.” I took a breath. “So we need to get a divorce, don’t we?” “We do.

don’t know what my kids’ lives will look like, but I think that at least I’ve offered them glimpses at new ways of seeing themselves. I threw a party in the spring of 2022. It had been a long, cold pandemic. But my children were finally vaccinated and I wanted to have people over. I made a vat of spiked cider and filled mugs for my friends. The very same mugs my ex had hidden away in the basement of our home so many years ago. Now they were filled with booze and joy. I tried to match mugs with personalities. The house was full, and people were shouting. Cheese and crackers were stacked in platters on top of the long table that I had paid for with a story I’d written about my divorce. I thought about how hard I’d worked to get here. To a house filled with friends and wine and happiness. The song “Crowded Table” by the Highwomen is one that always makes me cry; it speaks of community and love and filling our homes. “If it’s love that we give,” they sing, “it’s love that we reap.” “This is going in the book,” I told my friends, shouting over the din of conversations. “It’s going in the end. Because this is my happily ever after.” And maybe it was too earnest, but I thought of all the different kinds of love there are in the world. And I knew that when the party was over someone would help me with the dishes and wiping the counters, and I wouldn’t have to ask.

Novah just enjoyed not having to pretend to be interested. She settled on hanging around nearby, happily reading away on her Kindle, checking every once in a while to see what progress they made. She was so unbothered about not having to help with puzzles that she went ahead and bought the ten thousand-piece puzzle she’d threatened to divorce him over.

I’d thought my love for romance novels would have died with my parents’ divorce. Instead, it made me crave them more. I was going through two books a week. I could not get enough. It was like, if love couldn’t exist in reality, at least it was alive in fiction. Between the pages it was safe. The heartbreak was contained. There was no aftermath, no shock waves. I mean, there’s a reason all books end right after the couple gets together. No one wants to keep reading long enough to see the happily ever after turn into an unhappily ever after. Right?

yourself.” “Maybe we should analyze it. Maybe a little discovery is in order.” “Maybe a little getting under the covers is in order. Baby?” “Yes?” “Are you going to take off your overcoat? Feels like making it with a flasher.” “Good point. Jesus, Pep,” he sighed soulfully. “Keep taking off the coat. That’s it. Now how about the jacket? There you go. . . .” “Six months ago I was happily married.” Pepper rolled her eyes. “Married, okay. Happily? Let’s look at it. But could we maybe be in the now instead of the then?” “Sorry, I’m so damned awkward sometimes. Do you like the top or the bottom?” Pepper stared. “This ain’t summer camp, and I ain’t a bunk bed. Now look here, Chiefy, we are two grown adults, we are colleagues, we have discovered a mutual attraction. We are neither of us cheating on anyone, inasmuch as our spouses filed for divorce. We are both heterosexual—” “What’s that supposed to mean?” “It’s a statement of fact intended to differentiate myself from your prior partner for the purpose of putting you at ease so as to . . . oh, c’mere . . . initiate foreplay . . .

Washingtonians are a bunch of cultured, egotistical, lumpen-elitist snobs who live in their own dream world completely divorced from the rest of the country. Everything they do had to show that they The Bureaucrats are superior to the poor miserable souls in the rest of the country who only exist to pay for their masters’ existence. To ensure this, the government provides cultural events galore for its workers. One need only visit the city and see all the galleries, theaters, orchestras, ballets, and other centers of artistic creation, happily supported by government grants, to discover how true this is.

An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up. —Proverbs 12:25

Lord, thank You for simple pleasures . . . beautiful friends . . . and joy in sorrow.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean that we take away the consequences of our offender’s actions, nor does it mean we forget. I believe that forgiveness allows me to say that although someone’s actions hurt me very much, that person and those actions will not dictate how I feel, live, or think, either now or in the future.

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. —1 PETER 4:8

a Conscious Uncoupling is a breakup or divorce that is characterized by a tremendous amount of goodwill, generosity, and respect, where those separating strive to do minimal damage to themselves, to each other, and to their children (if they have any), as well as intentionally seek to create new agreements and structures designed to set everyone up to win, flourish, and thrive moving forward in life.

Buddhism and other religious and ethical systems, however, have long recognized and sought to correct this prejudice in favour of the self. A scholar of Judaism, commenting on the Torah, wrote: ‘In morals, holiness negatively demanded resistance to every urge of nature which made self-serving the essence of human life; and positively, submission to an ethic which placed service to others at the centre of its system.’6 It would be naive to expect that all men could be persuaded to place service to others before service to self. But with sufficient resolve on the part of governments and institutions that influence public opinion and set international standards of behaviour, a greater proportion of the world’s population could be made to realize that self-interest (whether as an individual, a community or a nation) cannot be divorced entirely from the interests of others. Instead of assuming that material progress will bring an improvement in social, political and ethical standards, should it not be considered that an active promotion of appropriate social, political and ethical values might not only aid material progress but also help ensure that its results are wisely and happily distributed? ‘Wealth enough to keep misery away and a heart wise enough to use it’7 was described as the ‘greatest good’ by Aeschylus, who lived in an age when, after decades of war, revolution and tyrannies, Athenian democracy in its morning freshness was beginning to prove itself as a system wonderfully suited to free, thinking men. A

Thomas Paine says, "Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

Bill's" wife became a Mormon after they had been happily married for years and had several children. When he wouldn't convert to Mormonism, the local LDS leaders assisted "Diane" in divorcing and relocating in Utah, where she was quickly married to a "righteous" LDS widower. When attempts by both the husband and Diane's family were made to see the missing children, the LDS family disappeared to Alaska.

Finally, we must note The Great Divorce, a highly imaginative book which Lewis composed in 1944. Tolkien described this book as “a new moral allegory or ‘vision’ based on the medieval fancy of the Refrigerium, by which the lost souls have an occasional holiday in Paradise.”[513] Lewis has been much criticised by Catholic theologians for his obviously faulty analysis of medieval theology at this point.[514] Indeed, The Great Divorce is clearly best regarded as a “supposal”: if the inhabitants of hell were to visit heaven, what would happen? Lewis initially titled this work Who Goes Home? but was happily persuaded to alter the title. The work is chiefly remarkable on account of its use of an innovative imaginative framework, similar in some ways to The Screwtape Letters, to explore a series of very traditional questions—such as the limits of human free will and the problem of pride. Perhaps the most important feature of this work, however, is Lewis’s demonstration—by art of narrative rather than by force of argument—that people easily become trapped in a way of thinking from which they cannot break free. Those in hell, on exploring heaven, turn out to be so comfortable with their distorted view of reality that they choose not to embrace truth on encountering it. Lewis deploys familiar cultural stereotypes of his day—such as the career artist who is obsessed with the avant-garde, or the theologically liberal bishop infatuated with his intellectual fame—to challenge the lazy and unevidenced Enlightenment assumption that humans recognise and accept truth when they see it. Human nature, Lewis suggests, is rather more complex than this trite, superficial rationalism allows.

We are happily married. She is happily, and I am married.

Meditation didn’t work any miracles. Miracles happen in an instant of faith. The skeptic in me demanded proof.

Meditation made me sick. Meditation made me mad. Meditation made me sad. Meditation gave me hope. Meditation pointed toward a way. Meditation showed me not just how to live my life but also how to think about life itself.

When logic failed, I could choose to sit, close my eyes, and wait for guidance. Often, the solution would present itself without great struggle. The trick was to still the conscious mind and allow myself to be led. The answer usually flowed in the lower subconscious depths. If I let the ripples settle, the answer rose to the top. Things would unfold exactly as they needed to. And with that knowledge, the tentacles of stress around my neck and shoulders eased.

Dates marked on a calendar are like babies: innocent and untainted. When we assign significance to one particular date—a wedding day for instance—we expand its notional value, even if it is precious only to us. The value of a day (or a baby) increases in proportion to our attachment to it.

It was a day filled with relief and grief in equal measure. I mourned for the fact that we would not create memories together. I mourned for the fact that we would not create memories together. I rejoiced for the fact that we would not create more memories together. I cried because both of those opposing states were true.

With my divorce, I had to keep both my grief and relief private. No one, not even my closest family members, could comprehend the complicated feelings that washed over me. No one I knew had experienced this kind of loss.

There was no social ritual to indicate that I had undergone a major life event. No forty days of rest as after childbirth, no forty days of mourning after death. There was no symbolic act of closure. Like the divorce, the absence of closure would be a unique cross for me to bear.

Wedding vows, in any culture or language, speak of being together in sickness and in health. There is an assumption that you will receive love and thrive in the constant presence and support of the person with whom you are joined together in matrimony, no matter the weather or circumstance. By committing to spending your life together, you are promising one thing: to be around.

I had lived within the confines of familiar social mores, not overthinking the consequences of my choice of name in a future I could not foresee. I didn’t get to pick any of my names, but I could decide what I, the person who bore the name, did with them.

The story of my marriage and motherhood is not unusual: a life defined by a name, a name conferred by someone other than me. Most women I knew had taken on their husband’s name either at the time of the wedding or after the birth of their children. A few had retained their maiden name, with a handful agonizing over the decision.

A name after all is a label as personal as “sweetheart” that a lover may use or as distant as a “hey you” that a stranger in a crowd may call out. But a name is more than a label. It is an inheritance that is uniquely your own. It is the primary way in which you respond to the world and the lens through which the world sees you. It defines you, shapes you, and grounds you. It is the one right you take for granted from the time you start interacting with society.

Change happens as it inevitably does.

I am more than the combination of words by which I am addressed. My personal identity is more than just my name.

The memorable days are few. Most days are a blur of chores and errands and activities that don’t really add up to anything significant. But there is value in savoring the simple joys that each day brings. There is power in being able to choose not just your home and its contents but how you see your life and its context.

With no step-by-step guidance or role models, I had stumbled and fallen and picked myself up. I had survived. I had thrived. All along, I had moved one day at a time, one considered step followed by another, one morning followed by another night. Each day had been an improvement from the day before.

I wanted to grab this moment, which was light and precious and fleeting. I could have done it all along, but it had taken me this entire journey to figure that out.

The country was as much of a mystery to me as the man I had married.

Fire is an important component of Hindu traditions. From the sacred fire around which you walk during your wedding tot he final lighting of the funeral pyre, it occupies center stage at significant life events.

Diamonds are forever, more reliable than husbands.

Change is gradual, like the seasons, and our bodies, like the inside-out change that my life had undergone since the divorce.

Every single person deals with their own special trauma—there is no hierarchy of pain that makes one’s suffering superior to that of others. We work from our own baselines, moving up in our understanding of how it all fits together.

The light at the end of this seemingly never-ending dark tunnel that I had entered, was on the other side of understanding. The clarity I was seeking was within my reach.

I could reassemble my life by picking up only those pieces that I wanted. There were no guarantees, but there was peace in knowing that I would be able to face the next detour when it arrived.

Sometimes silence, more than words, can provide solutions.

Walking didn’t solve the problem, but it gave me a way to keep moving. Walking didn’t bring me to a destination, yet it gave me a way to negotiate the unknown. By holding space for my doubts, walking rescued me.

Although the days seemed interminable, I became comfortable inhabiting an in-between space that was full of possibilities.