Emotions are a very normal part of divorce, and may include grief, frustration, guilt, shame, and anger. You may be angry about what happened during the marriage, the way the relationship ended, how your spouse has behaved since the divorce began, or simply because you are dealing with a divorce you never expected or wanted.
You may also reasonably expect an apology from your spouse and feel angry that this doesn’t seem to be happening. While both anger and the desire for an apology are normal in divorce, they are also things that can cause a lot of challenges throughout the process-including the effects of anger when it comes to the decisions you are making during divorce.
The Anger Trap
Divorce requires an incredible number of decisions, and some of them can affect your finances, children, living situation, and future plans and goals. When anger is driving those decisions, however, the focus quickly shift away from creating the best possible outcome and toward making sure the other person does not “win.” A reasonable settlement may feel unacceptable because your spouse gets some nice benefits in the deal. A compromise that could end months of expensive conflict can feel like giving in, and something that really isn’t particularly important to your future can become critically important simply because letting it go feels like they are getting the win.
This is where the desire for revenge or vindication can become a very expensive emotion. There is nothing wrong with wanting someone to be held accountable for their behavior, particularly when that behavior has caused significant harm. Unfortunately, the divorce process is not designed to provide emotional justice.
Courts can divide property, establish parenting arrangements, determine financial obligations, and resolve legal disputes, but they generally cannot give you the acknowledgment that you may want from the other person. Trying to use the divorce process to obtain an apology from the other person can keep you fighting even if a reasonable settlement offer is on the table.
Why Am I Fighting?
One of the questions I encourage people to ask themselves during divorce is, “Am I fighting for something that will improve my future, or am I fighting because I need the other person to lose?” That can be an uncomfortable question because, in the middle of conflict, those two things can feel very similar. You may genuinely believe you are standing up for yourself when, underneath the surface, part of what you really want is for your spouse to finally understand what they have done, admit they were wrong, or experience some of the pain you have experienced.
Anger can also make it much more difficult to recognize opportunities. When you become focused on proving that you are right or your spouse is wrong, solutions to ending the conflict can be easily overlooked. There may be a creative financial option that meets your long-term needs, an opportunity to exchange something your spouse values for something you value more, or a way to resolve one issue so that your resources can be focused on something significantly more important. If every potential solution is evaluated through the lens of whether the other person is getting too much, you may walk away from an agreement that actually works very well for you.
Positions Versus Interests
Understanding the difference between positions and interests is so important in divorce. A position might be, “I am keeping the house,” but the interest underneath that position could be stability for your children, financial security, fear of another major change, attachment to the home, or even the feeling that your spouse should not be able to force you out of it. Think of positions as what you want, and your interests as why you want it.
Once you understand what is driving the position, you can begin to look at other ways of meeting that underlying need. You may ultimately decide that keeping the house is absolutely the right decision, but now you are making that choice because it supports your future rather than because anger has convinced you that giving up the house means your spouse has won.
Expectations can create another layer of anger that is particularly difficult to recognize. You expected your spouse to behave differently during the marriage, and maybe you expected them to behave better during the divorce. You may have expected them to put the children first, negotiate reasonably, tell the truth, recognize everything you contributed to the relationship, or acknowledge the damage their choices caused. Every time those expectations are not met, the anger gets another opportunity to take center stage, particularly if you continue to expect something from a person who has repeatedly demonstrated that they are either unable or unwilling to provide it.
Stuck Waiting for an Apology
People often say, “I just want them to apologize,” but when we really think about what an apology means, most of us want far more than the words. We want acknowledgment that the other person understands what they did and recognizes the impact it had on us. We want them to take responsibility without excuses, minimizing, blaming, or immediately explaining why their behavior was somehow justified. We may also want reassurance that they understand why it was wrong and perhaps even some indication that they regret the choices they made. That is very different from simply hearing two words.
The difficulty is that the person who caused the hurt may never be willing or capable of giving you that kind of apology. When your ability to reduce your anger or move through your grief becomes dependent on receiving and apology, you can unintentionally remain emotionally connected to the very person you are trying to separate from. Without realizing it, you have created a situation where your ability to move forward depends on whether someone else develops the insight, courage, or willingness to acknowledge what happened. You may absolutely deserve that apology, and you may never receive it. Those two realities can exist at the same time.
Letting go of the expectation of an apology does not require you to forgive, forget, or rewrite history. It means deciding that you no longer need another person’s agreement about what happened to trust your own experience. You can recognize that something hurt you, acknowledge the impact it had, learn from it, and decide what you want to do differently in the future without requiring the person who caused the harm to validate any of those things.
The hard truth is that you may never receive the apology you deserve, hear your former spouse admit that you were right, or experience the moment of vindication in mediation or family court that you once imagined would finally make everything feel better.
What you can do is decide that none of those things are prerequisites for moving forward. You can recognize opportunities, choose which conflicts genuinely deserve your resources, let go of the ones that don’t, and make decisions based on the future you want rather than the past you wish had been different.
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