Why Divorce is Worse than Death

Why Divorce is Worse than Death - Click to Watch On YouTube

To say that divorce is "just a piece of paper" is dismissive and insensitive as fuck because it takes more of you than just that. If your marriage took your balls, and half your income, divorce is like the death of a loved one. I don’t use this word often—never have, actually—but this post is transformative.

Why? Because by the end of this, you’ll be able to pinpoint exactly why this pain—your pain—is killing you and discover a transformative way to begin your recovery. Believe me, you want to hear this. Contrary to what you’re feeling right now, your future is not even close to being as bleak as you think it’s going to be.

People often overlook that the only thing worse than going through a divorce is the death of your own children. That’s it. Not even the death of your parents equates to the loss you’re feeling right now. Yet, no one understands that. And I’m going to level with you: as a divorcing man, people don’t want to admit it, but you’re at a risk factor for suicide. That’s the reality. The cut is so deep that you want to disappear and never wake up because when you are awake, all you do is ruminate as your thoughts begin to eat you alive. What No One Gets is the Pain

Right now, you’ll do anything to stop the pain you’re feeling. It’s very much like the urgency a drug addict has when begging for another fix. That's how dire your situation is.

But think about the few people who’ve actually been there for you? It's probably just a handful. Thank them. Sincerely thank them by acknowledging it in the comment section. It’s kind of a neat way to validate how helpful they’ve been. After thanking them, let them know what you learned in this video, because they get it.

I know it sounds overly dramatic, but if you told them you can’t live without her, you wouldn’t be wrong, and I’m 100% on board with that because you can’t, you simply can’t live without her. You just don’t know how or why you’re saying that.

That’s because something inside you did die.

What you’re feeling right now, what you’re going through, is what psychologists refer to as an ego death. And it’s a very real thing, but I don’t have to tell you that.

An ego death is a direct psychological and SPIRITUAL event where your old self—that guy that was dying inside—died. All that shit you thought you were, how you see yourself, your environment, YOUR IMPORTANCE, self-identity—it’s all dead. The identity you lived in, the beliefs you trusted, the coping mechanisms you relied on, and the roles you carried all fell apart at the same time, leaving you exhausted to the point that even breathing seems unbearable. That bleak, heavy feeling is the grief for the former version of you. It is the emotional crash that happens when the life you built no longer matches the man standing in it. That emptiness you’re feeling is the signal that the old self is gone, and your job now is to fill the gap with your new identity.-----I became a divorce coach because the whole thing is full of irony. Here you are, right now, going through the most painful experience of your life, but when it’s all said and done, you’ll look back grateful you made it through without ever asking why it hurt that much in the first place.

We blow past the real damage like it’s trash on the sidewalk. We don’t clean it up, we don’t even sweep it under a rug or anything. We just move on and say, “Man, that was a horrible time,” and then repeat the same generic advice you’re getting fed right now to others, like, “Give it time.” “It gets better,” and maybe recommend an attorney. All under the umbrella of empathy.

Most people just don’t want to get pulled into your pain because it's an inconvenience to them, and the ones who actually care end up minimizing everything because they either don't know what to do or think that minimizing it helps. So you’re walking around metaphorically dead, and nobody’s mourning you. No one sees you dragging the dead weight of your old identity behind you like a rotting corpse.

We underestimate how hard divorce hits men. While the emotional blow is violent, the identity collapse is the part that takes you out. It doesn’t happen all at once but in stages.

• Stage 1: This is the old you. Solid. Confident. Coasting through life with a clear sense of who you are.

• Stage 2: This is when everything starts to shift. You lose pieces of yourself one at a time. You second-guess everything. You shrink. You stop trusting your own instincts. You turn into a watered-down version of the man you used to be.

• Stage 3: This is where you’re standing right now. Lonely. In despair. Lost. The hit is so heavy you can’t even put a name to it. You just feel it vibrating through your whole body.

That’s Ego Death.

People say that the world has different standards for men that are mourning, and it's probably true. But you can't change the world, and I hate it when people say that because it's the kind of generic shit an AI program would spit out if I told it to write me a script. Unoriginal and lacking any depth. It’s a lazy and surface-level approach to a problem built on a question we never even bothered to ask in the first place.

Why can't others relate to your pain? It’s that men just don’t know how to help. It’s just uncomfortable for us, and often, we’re caught off guard. No one explains that the darkness you feel is real, so we dismiss it. It’s nothing but an empty death for no one to mourn.

Ego death is painful because your ego, as you know it, is trying desperately to stay in your life at any cost. It’s survival and shows up in different areas of your life when you least expect it, like in your dreams. So you wake up at 2 am confused, angry at yourself, wanting the dream to stay and your life that’s now a nightmare to end.

In my late twenties, I went through my first real trauma that to this day haunts me. An ego death before I even knew the term. I was in my last year of medical school. I passed Step 1 and Step 2 of my boards. If you’re a physician, you know that when you pass your boards it's game over. But in a terrible twist in life, I didn't. I didn't finish. More accurately, I couldn’t finish.

To this day, I never recovered, and I’m telling you this because it’s been over 20 years since this happened, and just the other day I had a dream that the medical school exonerated me. I dreamed that they granted me my earned diploma. It still hurts. I never figured out how to cope. Not then. Not now. That’s because I scarred, and a scar is dead tissue that never fully leaves.

I see men like you every week carrying the same kind of scar. You fought a war in which you didn’t even know your enemy. The most alive thing in your life has turned its back at you. You thought you were fighting to hold onto her. You thought you were fighting to survive the divorce. But the real fight was against your own ego collapsing under the weight of everything you built your identity on. That’s where you’re at.

If you’re ready to start overriding your pain and finding your purpose today, schedule a time to speak. You don't want to scar and wake up 20 years from now wanting exoneration. You never truly recover. And if you want more of this radical truth, make sure you subscribe to the channel. But let those loved ones know and thank them in your comments. Let everyone know what you learned.

When I went through my second divorce, the pain was so heavy, so disruptive, I did something I could only describe as Darwinian. I didn’t try to love her any less, but I didn’t negotiate with the pain. I did something much more radical. I had to find a purpose.

See, most guys get stuck asking the wrong question: “How do I get over this?” You don’t “get over” anything. You override it. You outpace it. You find your own purpose.

Most people think the hardest part of a breakup or divorce is letting go of their ex. They swear they lost the “love of their life,” “the most beautiful person in the world.” That’s the story they cling to. But there’s a fundamental flaw in that way of thinking because to let go, you have to get over her. You’re not shattered because your ex was some mystical creature. You’re shattered because you continue to massively overestimate your ex.

So now, this is the pivot point of the entire video. The truth people never get. The fundamental rule behind everything I said: Your suffering is directly proportional to:

Your Suffering = How much you value your ex / How much you value yourself

You can either love your ex less, which right now is probably against nature. Or, you can value yourself more. In fact, data from the Quality of Life Survey About Life After Divorce (QoL - SALAD) Study -The Only Study to my knowledge with outcome - shows that the number one predictor of how you handle the divorce is how much you love yourself. That’s the key to a broken heart, and right now, with your ego death, that equation is infinity because there is no you.

Book a consult. I’ll give you direction in 30 minutes you haven’t found in six months