Divorce recovery is tough enough without our making it unnecessarily difficult, isn't it? Aren't the losses we endure quite enough to deal with without adding more imagined losses to the pile? The obvious answer to these questions is, of course, "Yes." However, we routinely ignore the obvious when dealing with the fallout from our divorce and increase the difficulty of our recovery by assuming imaginary losses to be real.

1. Our Emotion-Based Reactions to Divorce Exaggerate Our Perceived Losses

Divorce brings distress over what we have lost. It also brings a fear of an unknown future. These heightened emotion-based reactions cause us to exaggerate what our actual losses are. Minor issues become huge problems. The real issues get lost in the fog of perception and imagination. Our vision of the situation gets distorted and it becomes virtually impossible to see and solve the divorce recovery problems we are facing. Thus, we routinely think we have lost much more than we have. This makes an already difficult situation even more difficult. It doesn't need to be this way.

2. Intangible Losses Are Harder to Grieve than Tangible Losses

Loss comes in two types – tangible and intangible. Tangible losses hurt. Losing the house, car, financial security, or the comfort of the daily family routine is not fun. But at least the nature of the problem is clear and how to solve the problems is known. It is the intangible losses in the form of lost hopes, dreams, and cherished beliefs that cause the most havoc. They are not as clear cut, or obvious and, therefore, are most vulnerable to exaggeration and distortion.

For example, some of the most common laments I hear from recently divorced folks are, "I will NEVER find true love again. I will ALWAYS be alone." "My best years are BEHIND me." These people have assumed that their original dream of living a fulfilling life with someone they love and want to grow old with is now utterly IMPOSSIBLE. The loss feels overwhelming. A typical reaction is to jump to the conclusion that we will NEVER realize our hopes and dreams without our ex as our partner.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

3. A Personal Experience with Unnecessarily Grieving an Imagined Loss

I carry around a picture album in my head with all of my hopes and dreams for the future. We all do.

Several years ago, I was married to Anne. I had a picture in my head of what my retirement was going to look like. There was a cabin on the side of a mountain in North Carolina with a huge porch overlooking a big valley with a clear-water stream running through it. Anne and I are sitting in rocking chairs watching three of our grand kids jump on and off the porch, on and off our laps. A pretty picture.

Then reality struck. One afternoon Anne came home and announced, "I want a divorce." I was devastated, partly because a divorce meant I would never realize my dream of a picture-perfect retirement cabin in North Carolina.

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