5 Surprising Reasons Most Women Feel Zero Regret About Their Divorce, Says Clinical Psychologist
The empowering reasons many women feel relief, not remorse, after ending their marriage.
Ilona Kozhevnikova | Shutterstock Many men in internet comment sections believe that women deeply regret divorcing their exes, but, with a few exceptions, this is not the lived experience of the large majority of women. There are multiple memoirs out recently, like This American Ex-Wife and All Fours, that corroborate this. Of course, most men also don’t usually regret divorce, either, and the overarching fact is that most people move on without regret after ending their marriage.
Here are five surprising reasons most women feel zero regrets about their divorce, says a clinical psychologist:
1. Women are the preoccupied attachment/pursuer partner
More men are the avoidant/distancer partner. It is extremely stressful to pursue someone for closeness as they pull away, and when women get out of this cycle, they feel much calmer and healthier. Often, perimenopause (aka a woman in her 40s) leads to hormonal changes that help the woman distance herself from her avoidant husband instead of begging him to spend time with her.
As her caretaking hormones drop, she cares less about whether he spends time with her, and this is often the beginning of the end of the marriage. When she finally leaves, she feels a huge weight off her back and can find more emotionally present men to date, which can feel transformative after an emotionally barren marriage.
2. Women are more often the primary caretaker
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Men are doing more childcare and housework than ever, especially among more educated men. However, I have never heard a man tell me in session that they were unable to get a break from the kids before divorce, but are only able to now. I have heard this often in the inverse.
This means that whatever time the man has custody is the first break many women have had from childcare in their marriages. Of course, this dynamic is co-created, as often the woman is an overfunctioner, but it remains that women do more hours of childcare and more often feel that split custody allows them time for hobbies or socializing for the first time in a long time.
3. Women have more friends
This means that when they divorce, they can spend time in a supportive network of other women, whereas men struggle more to recreate a social network. For extroverted women, divorce allows them some child-free time to hang out with other women that they may not have had if their role in the marriage was primary caretaker, and they have more friends that invite them to hang out.
4. Women have a lower drive in monogamy
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As I often discuss, women’s drive drops more than men’s in long-term relationships. This means they often haven’t had what they consider amazing intimacy in many years, especially if there has been marital conflict or intimate incompatibility issues in addition to the more normal decrease in drive over time. The scene in episode 2 of Scenes From a Marriage, where Mira discusses her feelings (left purposely vague so as not to be spoiled), is very similar to how many women feel being intimate after divorce.
Men’s drive stays higher for longer during the marriage, so they don’t tend to wonder if they have possibly grown asexual throughout the marriage, only to be reinvigorated again by the honeymoon stage hormones post-divorce.
But this is something many of my female clients have wondered at points in their marriage! Since divorce leads to a resumption of good intimacy (and often better intimacy than ever as the woman is more confident), women who are still invested in their intimate self-concepts are glad to feel this part of themselves again.
5. Women go through menopause
On the other side of the spectrum are women who feel completely done with intimacy after menopause. These women are very relieved to be done with the stage of being asked for intimacy and having to choose between painful or at best, unpleasant intimacy or disappointing or even angering their husbands.
They are happy to be on their own and be able to choose bodily autonomy and move into another phase of their life. Instead of having to pretend to still value intimacy and dress and act in certain ways that their husbands prefer, they become post-intimate and focus on careers, friends, hobbies, and/or grandchildren.
Of course, divorce is very hard on all parties involved, particularly if you have children in the home. I encourage everyone to try their hardest to work on their marriages before considering divorce, and of course, marital counseling can be transformative.
However, if you have tried everything I recommend including couples and individual therapy, and you are deeply unhappy and the children are seeing conflict, and you are only staying in your unhappy marriage out of fear that somehow it will be worse to be alone, this post can help you level set and understand reality vs internet fear-mongering.
Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten, aka Dr. Psych Mom, is a clinical psychologist in private practice and the founder of DrPsychMom. She works with adults and couples in her group practice Best Life Behavioral Health.
