I am not doing well.

HereInThe818 · 2026-01-02T13:24:03+00:00

I am at what seems like the very beginning of a split and divorce after 25 yrs marriage. During this tenuous time of trying to figure it out I’ve channeled my energy into a regular workout and eating right. The physical improvement helps the mental side of the equation not to mention getting to know people who work out in the gym at the same time.

Hang in there and channel your negative emotions and energy into self improvement and loving yourself again.

Jimmy2Tim · 2025-12-30T20:43:29+00:00

Two months after he left home, it's still difficult, but we're keeping our heads up. The gym has been an incredible outlet for me. No alcohol, do things you're passionate about, or find other activities. We'll all get through this fucking mess together.

Ok-Guidance6491 · 2025-12-30T09:33:30+00:00

I am still drinking too much 2 years on, but I can feel it changing. It’s not about her anymore anyway. It’s about habits. Walking does help a lot.

Immediate-Story2562 · 2025-12-29T02:52:13+00:00

It's ok to not see a way forward right now and don't be sorry.
Feeling overwhelmed with feelings? Write it out in a journal to help process it.

Here is a game of life for you:
Feel like you need a drink? Go for a walk. Still feel like a drink? Make yourself some healthy food at home.
Still? Exercise.
How about every time your mind thinks about a drink, drop down for 20 pushups in the kitchen.
You can continue this exercise on your own with any chores or budgeting or whatever needs to be done.

Focus on the basics of life and the rest will start to fall in place if you are disciplined.

Content-Class1259 · 2025-12-29T01:59:59+00:00

Drinking seemed like the answer, it wasn’t! Drank way too much, just to feel numb, while not getting any better. 401 days without a drink right now, life is so much better.

Accurate-Pilot-5666 · 2025-12-28T19:17:40+00:00

I decided to get ripped and rich. I may not have the purest of motives, but they are keeping my off the booze and in the gym or grinding away at my business. I don't even care if she ever finds out what I was capable of. I am enjoying finding out what I'm capable of.

Bassface04 · 2025-12-29T00:46:43+00:00

I’m right there with you. I’m about 2 weeks in. Sitting there at night alone with your thoughts and memories is torture. I’ve also turned to alcohol and coke a lot to numb it. I know the rest of these comments say don’t do that but I’m just telling you, you’re not alone in thinking these options can help soothe. It hurts. It’s odd. I felt a sort of relief getting out of a loveless marriage but it’s still depressing to think of all the time wasted on someone and something that never had a future and what you could of been.

ExtraLettuce555 · 2025-12-28T21:52:40+00:00

Hey man I’m sorry. My world blew up back in October. I was so destroyed I could barely move some days. It’s been a little over 2 months and numerous depression anger numbness cycles. Literally just keep going eventually it’s going to hurt less. In the meantime survival mechanisms for me were forcing myself to spend time at the gym.

Do not drink when you’re sad . You don’t want to associate that with the hurt so that later down the line when you can have fun and not trigger sadness.

Put items on your schedule Errands, a hike, meeting with a friend.. You need things to look forward to even if just things to get done.

If you have any friends that you’ve fallen out of touch with, reach out and wrangle them in for coffee. I spoke to my brother for the first time in a year because I had a whole lot of “fuck it” in me.

You’re gonna make it through

r1muwu · 2025-12-28T21:29:04+00:00

Alcohol is a depressant so drop the drinking. Spend time in the sun go to the gym all the basic self improvement stuff

Jwoot1111 · 2025-12-28T19:49:42+00:00

Stop drinking. Do anything else.

Feisty_Elderberry_96 · 2025-12-28T19:05:42+00:00

Use this pain to do something. Take a walk, run, lift weights, build something - anything to take your mind off of her/it.

When I was at my lowest I did two things daily. 1) I worked out - and made a spreadsheet where I typed out what I was doing the next day (walk, run, lift/chest, whatever - it was something for me to look forward to). 2) Do anything other than drink or drugs.

curtdogg47 · 2025-12-28T18:55:22+00:00

The Pain sucks! Just remember drugs and alcohol won’t solve or fix the pain. Yes they can make you feel better for a moment. And to be honest when I was going through my divorce and healing after there were some nights I just didn’t want to feel the pain. So I got stoned or drunk. I Always did so knowing tomorrow I had to pick back up the pain and get back to healing!

Looking back those nights were I smoked weed and had few beers and allowed my mind to be shut off for a few hours where in away a really good break for me.

I do see how getting high or drunk can become a problem for people so I don’t recommend this. Because when you come back down or sober up the next day you have to get back to dealing with the problems and pain.

Car_fixing_guy · 2025-12-28T18:08:03+00:00

We’re all going through this together. We’re at different stages of it so we can lean on each other for help. If you need someone to talk to message me.

Outside-Jicama-8468 · 2025-12-28T17:08:48+00:00

A hard truth i faced is, never turn to alcohol. Alcohol numbs the pain, but the pain will always be there. Face that pain head on and defeat it man. You got this.

Heavy_Guitar_4848 · 2025-12-28T15:36:04+00:00

It never gets better if you choose to stay where you are. The lowest points should lead to the biggest changes. I drank way too much this past summer and started crashing out too. Write down what you want, start small and starting moving towards it

koskesh122 · 2025-12-28T14:19:59+00:00

Well bud, join the club.

50% of all marriages end in divorce. 2nd marriages have 60% divorce rate and 3rd marriages 70% divorce rate.
90% of all divorces initiated by the women. • Child support, Alimony, your pension + retirement savings, government support + housing incentivizes them leaving you.
90% of custody awarded to mothers.
False allegations of abuse are prevalent in family courts. • You will be called abusive in order to stress you out so you give in to their unjust demands.

What to do now?

Settle your case ASAP. • The leeches (Judges, Lawyers, Therapists, Legal system will want to bleed you dry by leveraging your kids against you) The system gets paid by you fighting for you children.
Find a hobby.
Focus on your career/start a side hustle/Make more money.
Hit the gym daily.
Stay away from SINGLE moms at ALL costs and anyone who claims their ex was abusive. Do NOT raise another man’s child. You may end up being on the hook financially (Child support) for their kid if you leave.
Travel once a year.
Read books like No More Mr. nice guy
Open up the New Testament and start reading daily + listen to Charles Stanely on YouTube. • Learn to forgive your ex. This will set you emotionally and mentally free so you can begin enjoying life once again.

Seabrook76 · 2025-12-28T12:36:39+00:00

I’m about five months into my divorce and what I can tell you is that when you feel bad your vision tends to be skewed and you tend to believe worst case scenarios. Just keep working on yourself and I’m not preaching but really try to stop drinking that alcohol. There’s not a problem in your life that that will not make exponentially worse. I wish you the best in your journey brother.

Own_Maybe9468 · 2025-12-28T11:36:16+00:00

Talk to a friend. If you have no friends, talk to strangers. Alcohol only helps you to relax temporarily. What I realise now is that you dont need an alternative life path. You just need some time to adapt to single life. Do some exercise, do some yoga or breathing exercise. You need something to help you mentally and physically. I dont like to be alone as that often drives me to depression and self blame easily. Go to a studio, you dont have to talk to others, just enjoy their presence and exercise. Time really makes things a lot better. You can do this. You will lift yourself up like the rest of us. I will pray for you.

AccomplishedTwist831 · 2025-12-28T09:05:09+00:00

Before you read my comment watch this YouTube link from Deion Sanders. No, I don’t care about how anybody feels about Deion, or his sons, or his coaching. 🙄 Because Deion is talking about more than football. He’s talking about going through his second highly contentious and public divorce, losing custody at one point, and attempting suicide even though he was in his prime (no pun intended) Other facts that some may not know is that this man was jumped by his then STBXW and friend while he was sleeping in front of his kids. There’s a picture of him and his sons filling out a police report in his house. I can’t imagine trying to commit suicide, getting jumped by my ex wife, and losing my kids for a while. If he successfully killed himself he would have never known that he ended up winning custody later and that he would go on to be Coach Prime:

https://youtu.be/1dN-PI9hjqA?si=4ujw6-OWRNW_Onjb

The biggest favor you can do yourself is to put the bottle down immediately and never pick it up until you’ve actually healed enough. Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant. Not only to your nervous system but to your mood, behavior, and decision making. If the alcohol was the cure we’d all be flat drunk right now. So please brother stop drinking. You can’t drink what you’re going through away and it makes things worse.

There are other things you can consume. Things that I need to work on too. I’ve felt low as you feel and I think most of us all have before. I tried to fight it and figure my way through it. I tried to “see the other side” too. But the truth is during the worst parts of this thing you can’t see a thing. You can only see what you’ve got right in front of you and that crap show won’t make sense either.

The best advice I got is to sort out what you can and try not to dwell on what you can’t. If you try to see the full path without the full path being laid out yet you’re going to depress yourself more. All your body and nerves are going to do is panic and then depress itself because it couldn’t escape what you’re going through.

The best thing you can do is accept. “I know what I wanted but I can’t have that. This is my reality now so I’ll stay here. What I have now is real. What I wanted is just a fantasy.” As for the future it’s “I’ll do the best I can to prepare for any outcome, but I can’t control the future.”

When I refuse to accept I become abysmally sad. When I accept I start to pick myself up some more. Then I even start planning on how to rebuild. The rebuilding process can’t start without acceptance. The acceptance process can’t start if you keep building on what’s now a fantasy.

This kind of grief I’ve never experienced before but grief, is grief, is grief. There are different magnitudes to grief but it’s all grief. And the bigger the magnitude the more intentional you have to be.

Drug abuse will not heal you. Alcohol abuse will not heal you. Sex addiction will not heal you. Financial irresponsibility will not heal you. Self harm will not heal you.

I believe that Christ will. Even if you’re not a Christian there are far better options than any of the things that I listed.

Proper medication helps. Intense therapy helps. Friends and making friends help. Exercise helps. Meditation helps. Imagining what a better life looks like from here helps (can take a while to get to this point. I’m not fully there yet but I know it’s possible).

Also if you’re like me there are too many other examples of men in my life who have got through this thing happy, even remarried, more successful than ever. There are a bunch of Deion Sanders out there that you pass by every single day but they’ve regained so much joy in life that you wouldn’t know they were once in your very spot. They found the path and you’ll find it to! But it’s not at the bottom of that bottle. Chuck it. Trash that stuff. Get rid of it for now. At some point you’ll have to face this head on and it’ll be so much harder to do it drunk.

—-

What I do like is “I’m not doing well.” That alone shows that you’re not yet at the worst place. You’re heavily damaged but critical condition sounds more like “I’ll never do well” or even “I don’t want to do well.”

“I’m not doing well” is perfectly fine. “I’m not doing well” is a baseline.

Now the task is finding out what “doing well” looks like. That can take time but you figured out what it’s not which is where you are. That’s 1/3 of the pie. It’s not how things were being with your ex because acceptance means we know that’s simply not reality anymore and never was going to be forever (because if it was meant to be reality it would still be). That’s 1/3. So now we have to figure out that last third.

For me it’s getting the next promotion and going for my next degree. It’s showing up as a dad however I can and whenever I can. It’s getting back into shooting for sport. It’s adopting a child that nobody can take from me because I adopted him/her. I’ve got an outing coming up with a beautiful woman from Hinge. She knows I’m a dad. Doesn’t bother her. I don’t even get many matches at all whatsoever. 😂 But evidently she’s interested enough to spend a few hours getting to know each other.

For you it may look a little bit different but your best start is to sober up and focus purely on acceptance. This is what’s happening. This is what it is. What’s gone is gone. I will make something new.

Relevant-Key4610 · 2025-12-28T08:45:33+00:00

Listen man, life is not always fun. I don't know your story, and I don't know your situation...but I am here to tell you, that you are not alone. There's no man on this planet that should feel alone. Stay away from alcohol and drugs, they're just illusions...you'll end up hurting yourself accidently and you don't need that. Stay with folks, go to the gym, take a walk, go to an isolated place cry your heart out if you wish, scream or slam a few punches to a boxing bag...do what you need to do, let it all out...and get back on your feet. Tomorrow is a new day, you can choose to stay in bed and do nothing or stand up and get your life in order. Choose the latter...if you have kids choose them and show up for them. If you don't have kids get a dog

Anothercluelesshuman · 2025-12-28T08:29:58+00:00

Get off the alc and feel it. Make sure you have a few people you can reach out to if it gets to dark. You have to feel it and get out of the spirals in a healthy way. Start by visualizing your life one day and one week at a time and work from there. Make a plan for tomorrow

Title	I am not doing well.
Author	MstrRoshi2232
Upvotes	40
Comments	28
Date	December 28, 2025 8:21 AM UTC (7 months ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/Divorce_Men
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/Divorce_Men/comments/1pxm9tz/i_am_not_doing_well/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/Divorce_Men/i-am-not-doing-well.1569856 https://theredarchive.com/post/1569856

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