Embracing Freedom: Letting Go of Guilt and Shame After Your Marriage Ends

Ending a marriage ranks among the most intense emotional experiences in life. The aftermath can often be clouded by guilt and shame, which can linger long after the separation or divorce is finalized. These feelings can become heavy burdens, making it hard to move forward and start anew.

Whether you feel guilt and shame because of how you behaved during the marrigae or whether it's because you chose to end it, hurting others in the process, or whether it is for both reasons, the reality is that guilt and shame are two of the most useless emotions we can retain within the emotional body. They serve nothing other than to hold us back and cause ourselves further pain.

Understanding Guilt and Shame

Guilt and shame are powerful emotions that can keep you stuck in a cycle of self-blame. Understanding them is the first step toward release. Guilt typically arises when you believe you have wronged someone or failed to meet expectations. In fact, studies show that about 80% of people report feeling guilt after a breakup.

Guilt and shame are rooted in the belief that you are fundamentally flawed or unworthy of having love, happiness, joy, success or for putting your needs above expectations or wants that others have for you.

Recognizing the difference between guilt and shame is crucial. Guilt can motivate positive change, pushing you to make amends. Conversely, shame can create a negative self-image that hampers growth.

Acknowledging Your Feelings

Healing begins with acknowledging your feelings without judgment. Grant yourself permission to experience sadness, anger, guilt, or shame.

Journaling is an effective outlet for processing these emotions, I recommend my divorce journal here to help you process these emotions out of your psyche and rewrite them. Writing about your experiences can help clarify your thoughts. For instance, you might discover recurring themes in your feelings, like regrets or fears. This clarity can lead to meaningful insights about what you need to heal and feel whole again.

Challenging Negative Self-Talk

The inner critic can be relentless after a marriage ends. It's common to hear thoughts like “I should have done this or not done that” or “I’m unlovable.” Such negative self-talk can be damaging.

A powerful question to ask ourselves here is to reflect on whether your behaviour/decisions happened because of the dynamics already existing in your marriage or to reflect on whether your behaviour was the sole reason why your marriage failed?

Owning your part in the marriage ending is important so that we don't stay in the same karmic cycle and play out our patterning and behaviour into our future or next relationship but always remember this truth...

It takes two to make a marriage fail.

Own your part.

But don't carry all the parts if they're not yours to carry.

Seeking Professional Support

Navigating the aftermath of a broken relationship shouldn't be a solo journey. Seeking support from a coach like myself is an important and significant step toward healing.

And it is necessary because unhealed emotions when left stored in the emotional body can manifest as illness and disease, not just hold us back from moving forward with our lives in a positive manner.

Consider joining a group for those going through divorce like my Rising Beyond Separation & Divorce program here. Research shows that joining a community or group that understand what you are going through because they've been through it themselves can reduce feelings of isolation by up to 60%. These communities provide shared understanding and camaraderie, allowing you to realize you are not alone in your struggles. Hearing others' stories can validate your feelings and inspire hope.

Practicing Self-Compassion

Self-compassion means treating yourself with kindness and understanding. It allows us to see our own humanness and accept that we did the best that we could with what we knew at the time.

It is easy with hindsight to wish we had shown up differently or behaved differntly, chosen better even, but it is the truth of life experience that we learn through experience and that we can't learn any other way.

The power in this understanding is the choice to not repeat our behaviours into the future. It's to become a better, more evolved version of self as a result of what we've been through. Again I recommend my Rising Beyond Separation and Divorce program here to help you process this and fully move on.

Releasing the Past Does Not Happen With Time It Happens With Inner Work & Self-Processing

It’s essential to actively release emotional baggage tethering you to the past. Time doesn't heal or make this happen automatically on it's own, inner work and self processing does.

I see too many people hold onto this concept that time heals. But it doesn't. Time softens the blows maybe, but the bruise and emotions lay under the surface, only to be triggered again in another future situation. I see this reflected in client regularly who are years past their marriage ending, who didn't heal in a deep way, who rode forward with their life, only to find themselves attracting more wounding into their life because subconciously they are still wounded on the inside.

Overcoming emotional challenges after a marriage ends is a daunting process. Our emotions can be caught in a looping cycle of negative self-talk, negative emotions, interspersed with moments of feeling happy, high, free.

Clearing out the negative emotions, including guilt and shame, is the path to your ultimate freedom and best life after a marriage ends. It is a process of literally unpacking them from your mind and no longer needing to pick them back up because we have replaced them with something else.

Please view my Rising Beyond Separation & Divorce program here and join the community of over 300 woman inside this program rewriting their stories and life.

If you are a man walking this inner journey please view my coaching container for men here.