Getting past the anger

wparo · 2025-12-09T19:32:56+00:00

I was fine after 6 months

thanksvitalik · 2025-12-09T06:20:04+00:00

Man. What she is presenting you is my dream life... Enjoy the holidays with her and the kids, live your life the rest of the time.

ClippedWinng · 2025-12-08T16:04:26+00:00

I'm dealing with similar. She wanted the breakup but she also joined us for Thanksgiving and also thinks morning wrong about joining my family on Christmas. Since we're cohabitating and nothing is final, I'm playing nice. I dont like it, but it should be the last time she attends an event with us.

Odd-Zone-2635 · 2025-12-08T02:38:06+00:00

I hear the raw pain and anger in your words; what you're feeling is absolutely normal and it's a huge step that you're in therapy. Let's get strategic about setting boundaries to protect your healing process right now. Your ex living in a "fantasy land" about doing holidays and vacations together is an attempt to manage her own feelings, not yours, and you do not have to participate.

This is where your boundaries come in. You need to transition into a parallel parenting model, where communication is strictly limited to logistics and facts about the children, not emotional discussions or "family pretend" events. When she proposes joint holidays, you need a Court-Safe refusal. Respond neutrally, citing the schedule, and refuse to discuss the matter further. For example, you can use a version of this template: "The parenting schedule for [Holiday Name] is clearly defined in Section [X] of the order. The schedule will be followed as written. This matter is considered closed." This refusal helps you get past the anger by removing the conflict—you're focusing on the documentable facts and the future, not the past. It gets better when you fully embrace these strong boundaries and focus entirely on your own healing and connecting with your kids during your time.

suspicious_bag_1000 · 2025-12-08T00:49:50+00:00

You’re always gonna miss your kids, so value and be present when your work them. Don’t let them see you upset over the divorce or transfer anger to them. If you can look in the mirror and say you did all you could to make things work, then forgive yourself and her. Granted, there’s always something more or different you could do, but let go of the anger. The hardest things to except is that if someone doesn’t want to be with us, they don’t have to be, regardless of the reason. That’s the same for men, women or whoever. So keep focus on your kids, don’t take what your old lady did personally and pay some attention to making yourself happy. You’ve got this

Upstairs-Pizza-1843 · 2025-12-07T21:03:00+00:00

Contemporaneous with filing for a divorce, my ex said, "I will always love you" which immediately caused me to experience white hot rage. Talk about being tone deaf and delusional! I said, "Love? You are a cheater. We aren't even friends. Never say that to me again. It's manipulative and I don't believe it for a second." And that was that. Never spoke to her or saw her again in my life.

Paddle_Pedal_Puddle · 2025-12-07T15:14:52+00:00

I’m still disgusted with her after her cheating, especially since she’s still seeing him. But the real anger is from how she continues to selfishly put herself before our kids and makes co-parenting impossible. I now communicate with her as little as possible and avoid her at all costs at our kids’ events.

Candidate_Worldly · 2025-12-07T13:54:52+00:00

So with you on the anger and disgust bit. I've totally lost respect for her for destroying our family . I'm disappointed in myself for believing her bullshit about reconciliation earlier in the separation. Luckily our daughter is 12 so no real reason to meet my ex. My kid walks between our two flats.

I never want to lay eyes on her again, if I ever see her in the street Ill cross the road.

For me I turned a major corner about 10 months in but still have a lingering feelng of emptiness. Best thing I did was no contact, which has tha added benefit of pissing her off.

I lost so much and it has given me a negative outlook on women and relationships. I;m hoping this won'tt last.

Good luck man., this shit is brutal, no two ways about it.

Tvelt17 · 2025-12-07T13:23:29+00:00

Holding on to that anger isn't going to help you. I get it. It sucks when you put in the work and did everything as right as you could and you still ended up divorced. You need to focus on you now.

Most importantly, work on forgiving her and letting her go. She doesn't deserve to live rent free in your head.

It definitely gets better. You're going through stages of grief and its important to move through them.

What helped me on days that I didn't have the kids was to make sure I had something to do that evening. Even if it was watch hockey or pro wrestling. Have something to look forward to. Concerts were a great event to have on the calendar too. Plenty of recreational sports leagues around, too.

Once you're ready, going on dates on those days without the kids is also nice. Divorced men tend to do pretty well dating. It really helped me.

Totesmagotes24x7 · 2025-12-07T10:53:59+00:00

I feel ya on this. I'm currently cohabitating until the divorce is finalized (7 months in, another 8-10 to go) and if there's one thing this divorce has been helping me control is my anger. She was done with us when I wanted to fix things and it absolutely devastated me. The feeling of betrayal hurts so bad. However, in this 7 months I've managed to build up quite a bit of resiliency. I don't think she would ever be stupid enough to think we could be friends after this but if she did I'd shut that down real quick. I have 11 years of child support and once that's done I truly hope I will never have to see or hear from her ever again.

I hope therapy can help you get through this. I've heard multiple times that divorce with someone you love can feel like dying, because a part of you is. The important part is picking yourself back up and putting one foot in front of the other. Do it for yourself and for your kids. Do whatever you can to build a better you. I'm rooting for you and all the other guys that are going through this bullshit. Good luck bud.

OkEducation9522 · 2025-12-07T08:37:17+00:00

Yeah, my ex treated me like shit (affairs, manipulation, emotional abuse, smear campaigns, etc) for the last 3 years of our marriage. Then when it was ending she said something like “I think we’ll be better friends when we’re not married.” I remember thinking how absolutely delusional that was. If any friend of mine had done even a fraction of what she’d done they would never hear from me again and I definitely longed for for the time I’d never have to see or talk to her again.

Turns out they were right when they say time heals (or at least teaches you how to cope). It’s been about a year since my divorce and I’m back to living my life for the most part. Don’t think about her much unless we need to coordinate something (4 awesome kids). I see her somewhat regularly, but now she’s just the crazy neighbor I had kids with. Weird how that happens. For now, just take small steps when you need to. One day at a time. It’s okay for you to be angry and you are definitely entitled to a boundary that it’s only logistics between you. If she wants more she shouldn’t have given up.

serkovavantgarden · 2025-12-07T08:22:33+00:00

It gets better when both parties have moved on.

You clearly haven’t.

Your relationship is dead however your ex wants to have her cake and eat it.

The guy who’s banging her nowadays will be getting told about how she has an ‘awesome’ relationship with her ex hubby and they still go on holidays together and stuff.

But it’s just her trying to control the narrative and mitigate any red flags for a potential suitor.

From now on, grey rock and communicate only about the kids

Time to harden up bro. She’s treating you like a shmuck.

Title	Getting past the anger
Author	Ok-Anything-3605
Upvotes	36
Comments	32
Date	December 7, 2025 7:56 AM UTC (7 months ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/Divorce_Men
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/Divorce_Men/comments/1pgcw0g/getting_past_the_anger/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/Divorce_Men/getting-past-the-anger.1568252 https://theredarchive.com/post/1568252

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