Five Ways to Manage Time after a Divorce
After going through a divorce, you’ll find it hard to manage your time at first. Being with someone for many years can set a routine that’s difficult to break. You’re used to doing things a certain way and, after this experience, all this goes away. Thus, date nights or walks in the park are things of the past. Now, you have a lot of free time and don’t know what to do it with it.
This is hard. Especially if your friends are also your ex-partner’s friends too or you didn’t have the time to nurture your friendships. Although this is very common, it can be solved if you learn how to manage your time after a divorce.
1. Work on your self-esteem
As stated in the article “Perception of divorce in divorced women”, a divorce can hurt your self-esteem and your self-identity. This is why you need to work on your self-esteem now that you have enough time to work on yourself.
Register in workshops to learn how to maintain and manage your emotions. Go to lectures that talk about self-love and how to appreciate the positive things in life. To work on the latter, start writing a journal that reflects the things you’re thankful for. In your saddest times, reading your journal will help you get a new outlook on any problem.
2. Plan your “me time”
At the beginning of your week, write down everything you want to do. For example, you want to go to a book fair, visit a museum, walk around town, work out for an hour every day, etc. When you plan your “me time” like this, you won’t feel lonely spending dead hours thinking and feeling sorry for your divorce. Besides, it’s important to spend time with yourself, whether going out for a walk, running, or going to the movies by yourself. A divorce is an excellent opportunity to embrace your solitude.
“Until you get comfortable with being alone, you’ll never know if you’re choosing someone out of love or loneliness.”
3. Make your dreams come true
When learning to manage your time after a divorce, you can consider chasing after those dreams you once abandoned. Traveling, going on holiday, going back to school, starting a business, writing a book, etc.
Now, after your breakup, you’ll have plenty of time and zero excuses to start working on yourself. Do everything you once thought about doing. Keeping yourself committed to yourself will help you improve your self-esteem and enjoy your own company.
4. Catch up with your friends
Catching up with your friends will be a great way to strengthen your social circle. However, you need to be aware that your friends may feel abandoned. In addition, the people that were once part of your social circle may have moved on or are busy on something else.
“Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt-
5. Meet new people
The last tip of the list has to do with making your social circle a little bit broader. It’s important to reconnect with old friendships, but some may have spouses or children and this makes it harder to plan a date night with them. That’s why meeting new people in the same situation as you can be a great step to take.
Signing up to groups and working on workshops will make it easier for you to create new bonds. These new friends can make it easier to withstand the emptiness you’re feeling now. They won’t do the job for you, but they’ll help you rebuild your life again.
Learning to manage time after a divorce is possible if you commit to your “me time” as well as your social time. Find a balance between these two and dedicate some time to your solitude and your companions and you’ll be just fine.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Alberdi, I. (1979). Historia y sociología del divorcio en España (No. 9). Cis.
- Houle, R., Simó, C., Solsona, M., & Treviño, R. (1999). Análisis biográfico del divorcio en España. Reis, 11-35.
- Testor, C. P., Pujol, M. D., Vidal, C. V., & Alegret, I. A. (2009). El divorcio: una aproximación psicológica. Universidad Ramon Llull, 2, 39-46.
