TAKE THE SHAME OUT OF DIVORCE

A friend of mine who’s a widower feels sorry for divorcees. As he tells it, everyone feels compassionate towards someone who’s lost a spouse through death, whereas those who have split from their partner receive a lot less empathy.

Part of it is the stigma and shame that still surrounds marriage breakdowns. I know, it took me a good three years to process feeling like a complete failure after my separation. Why couldn’t I save my marriage? To what extent had we damaged our children?

Five years on I’ve learned to let go of the shame. It took a lot of work and I did a lot of reading but ultimately it was some reflections from the philosopher Alain de Botton that helped me see things differently.

Break-ups, he says, are not a tragedy because they taught you something. Indeed, he points out that we’re wrong in thinking the only viable relationship is one that lasts forever. As he says: ‘‘We wouldn’t apply that standard to other things. For instance, the best holiday is not one that goes on forever and the best meal doesn’t go on forever.’’

He says relationships are opportunities for us to learn from another person and just as children naturally outgrow the family they are born into, we should sometimes take the same view of romantic relationships.

He points out that a marriage that lasts 22 years should be cause for celebration “because presumably you saw and you learned”. He also advises against comparing ourselves to other couples whose lives we imagine are perfect. Their levels of happiness are typically closer to ours than we think. ‘‘We need to stop torturing ourselves,’’ he says. ‘‘We need to stop seeing a relationship breakdown as a failure. That’s too punitive.’’