How do we humble bloggers do it? We come up with these really insightful lists of things that are meant to aid you, in very simple steps, through a very difficult time in your life: divorce. They serve as cue cards to life when you forget your lines. Ten questions to ask your lawyer. Five ways to avoid conflict with your ex-narcissist. Seven ways to know if you are ready to love again. Well, I feel like I have enough experience to add my hat into the ring. But I will keep it simple. I have two things you can do which will make your divorce easier.
1. Don't drink the cheap wine. An expensive bottle of wine is savored. You'll have a nice glass with a meal. You'll share the expensive bottle of wine with a friend. The expensive bottle of wine is the one you buy when the divorce papers are signed.
The cheap bottle of wine has an allure all its own. You just dropped the kids off with their dad. You have a night free. The fatal flaw in your plan is there is no plan. You drive to the grocery store with the intention of making a healthy dinner for yourself, but, really, you eat the vegetables because you want your kids to eat the vegetables. What you really want is stress foods: salt, sugar, fat, and alcohol. The cheap 5 dollar bottle of wine with a name like "Desperado Diva" beckons you from the bottom shelf. Okay, that may not actually be the name of a wine, but soon enough some marketer will come up with something along the line of "this is the cheap wine you buy yourself to drink by yourself". They'll put a pink label on it and maybe a small package of bath salts so you can luxuriate in the bath tub.
It is easier to justify drinking more than you intend when you drink the cheap bottle of wine. It's so cheap! Alone with your thoughts and your half of the cd collection you can play the soundtrack of the love you've lost. It all starts to spiral after that. Maybe your thoughts wander to good times, sweet memories and the tears come. Maybe you replay the last argument you had with your former partner. You start discussing it with your dog, such an understanding soul. But a wag of the tail is not the comforting council you need.
2. Don't drunk dial your ex. This is the result of drinking the cheap wine. You are an adult. But with a little (more likely, a lot) of cheap wine all inhibitions and good intentions of remaining an adult disappear as quickly as cheap wine. First, anything you want to say to your ex will not come out the way you intended because you drank the cheap wine. It may have a small slur to it. Your thoughts might be garbled enough that whatever you wanted to say sounded perfectly reasonable in your head and completely antagonistic once you say it. You may not want to hear what your ex has to say in response to your great moment. Worse case, you will forget exactly what you said only to have your ex drunk dial you some night in response.
Given our modern age, I would also add do not drunk text, email, post anything in social media. This is just a bad moment your having. It too shall pass and you don't want a digital footprint to remind you.
We can all list the regrets we have when we go through divorce. We may regret what was said in the heat of an argument. We may regret that we stayed as long as we did. We may regret that we gave up so much of our "self" to stay with another person. Drinking the cheap wine doesn't just leave you feeling crappy the next day, it can give you something else to regret. So be kind to yourself. If the cheap wine begins her siren call down the wine aisle at the grocery store, take your cart and go to the salad bar. If you really need to drown your sorrows maybe just do it with a little ranch dressing.