What is divorce?

  • Divorce is your wife ripping your heart out of your chest and stomping on it.

  • Divorce is discovering your ex-wife talked shit about you behind your back to her family, friends, and co-workers, for years before you separated.

  • Divorce is finding out your ex-wife thought you were physically repulsive for the final few years of your marriage.

  • Divorce is listening to your kids cry at bedtime about how they want daddy and mommy to get back together, and how they miss mommy when they're with you, and they miss you when they're at mommy's, and you're choking down tears because there's nothing you can do about it other than to hug them and tell them it's going to be ok.

  • Divorce is missing your kids on a nearly constant basis whenever they're not with you.

  • Divorce is your ex-wife treating you like shit (unless she needs your help with something, then she's oddly nice until she gets what she wants, then goes back to being a bitch right afterwards), even though you are always kind to her post-divorce, because you don't want your young kids to think you're an asshole.

  • Divorce is the realization your ex-wife used you nonstop for a lot of your marriage, and tossed you aside the moment she decided you were worthless to her.

  • Divorce is missing out of a lot of your kids' childhood that you will never get back. Even with 50/50 custody, you're missing out of 50% of their childhood after your separation.

  • Divorce is missing a lot of your kids' special occasions, because they might happen when they are with your ex-wife instead of you.

  • Divorce is missed opportunities with your kids. There's frequently just not enough time in the evenings for anything other than dinner, homework, baths, and bedtime. Sometimes not even that.

  • Divorce is your kids having lower grades or falling behind in school, because you can only help them but so much in the evenings, since you're doing everything by yourself.

  • Divorce is having to coordinate Christmas gifts and birthday gifts with your ex-wife, because you don't want to give your kids the same gift.

  • Divorce is living alone and having to pay all the bills yourself, when you're used to having 2 incomes instead of 1.

  • Divorce is missing your dogs, because your ex-wife kept the house with the large backyard, and it wouldn't have been fair to your large dogs to move them into your small apartment.

  • Divorce is restarting your life with practically nothing.

  • Divorce is unbearable emotional pain, because you miss the woman you married and you have no idea who this snake is that she turned into.

  • Divorce is being set back financially by decades, and realizing you might never fully recover.

  • Divorce is freedom, but sometimes it comes at a terrible cost.

Feel free to add your own.