How to Rebuild Your Life After Divorce as a Man
Divorced and starting over? Here's how to rebuild your life after divorce as a man, in the right order: your body, your money, your kids and your guys.
By Your Bro · · Self Improvement
Remember Mrs. Doubtfire? Robin Williams plays Daniel, a funny, loving dad whose wife has finally had enough, and after the divorce a judge tells him he gets to see his kids once a week until he can hold down a job and keep a decent place to live. So he scrubs his dump of an apartment and lands a job, and then, because it's a 1993 comedy, he puts on a rubber mask and a dress to sneak back into the house as the nanny. You should skip the dress part. The rest of it is a pretty good blueprint for a guy whose marriage just ended.
So you're divorced, or the papers are on the way. Maybe you saw it coming for years, or maybe you came home one day and found out she'd been planning her exit since the summer. Either way, you're probably sleeping in a place that doesn't feel like yours, eating cereal for dinner and running the same movie in your head every night about where it all went wrong. That's normal, and it won't last forever, but it will last a lot longer if you just sit in it.
When everything falls apart at once you can't fix it all at once, so I'd go in a specific order. Body first, then money, then your kids, and then the guys. Each one makes the next one easier.
Start with your body, because it's the one thing nobody can take in the settlement
She might walk away with the house and half the 401k, but she can't walk away with your health, and that's the fastest place to see a win when the rest of your life feels like a mess. Divorced guys tend to go 1 of 2 ways. Some stop eating and turn into a hollowed out ghost, and others move into the recliner with a case of beer and a pizza place on speed dial. Neither one is going to help you. Get in the gym 3 or 4 days a week and go to bed at a normal hour like a grown man. I've ranted before about how the dad bod hype is a lie, and it goes double now, because the man who shows up to mediation rested and in shape carries himself very differently than the one who rolled off a buddy's couch.
Pro tip: lay off the booze for at least the first 90 days. A few drinks feel like relief at 10 PM, and then at 2 AM you're drafting a 9 paragraph text to your ex that you'll regret for a year.
Get honest about the money
Divorce is expensive, and a lot of guys handle that by refusing to look at the numbers at all, which is how a bad situation turns into a disaster. Sit down this week with a legal pad and write down every dollar coming in and every dollar going out, support payments included. It will probably sting. Do it anyway, because you can't make a plan around numbers you're afraid to read. Cut whatever you can for a year and build a small emergency fund, and quit buying toys to make yourself feel better. If you need the basics, I laid them out in Money: How to Get It, Keep It, and Grow It.
And whatever you do, don't trash her about money in front of anybody, especially the kids. Pay what you owe, on time, every time, and let your bank statements do the talking if it ever comes to that.
Show up for your kids like it's your job
If you have kids, this is the one you can't screw up. They didn't ask for any of this, and they're watching you closer than you think to figure out if they're going to be OK. Be on time for every pickup. Know their teachers' names and their friends' names. Make your place feel like a real home with their own beds and their stuff on the walls, even if it's a 2 bedroom apartment over a dry cleaner. You don't need to compete with their mom's house or turn every weekend into Disney World, you just need to be the guy who's always there when he said he'd be there.
One more thing on this. Never, ever make your kids the messenger, and never ask them what Mom's been up to. It puts them in the middle of a fight they're too young to carry.
Find your guys again
A lot of married men wake up after the divorce and realize their whole social life ran through their wife. The couples you hung out with pick a side, and it usually isn't yours. That's a lonely place, and loneliness is when guys make their worst decisions, like rebound relationships or crawling back to someone who treated them badly. If that's where your head is going, read Why You Should Never Return to a Toxic Ex before you send anything. Then start rebuilding your circle on purpose. Text 2 old friends this week and put 1 standing plan on the calendar, whether that's a Tuesday basketball run or a Saturday morning ruck, so you're not starting from scratch every weekend. I wrote a whole playbook on how to find male friends after 30, and it works just as well at 45.
Quit rehearsing the worst case
At night your brain will try to convince you that you'll be alone forever and that you blew the only shot you were ever going to get. I wrote a Bro Chat called Your Brain Is Practicing What You Fear about this exact habit, and the gist is that every time you replay the disaster you're getting better at expecting it. Catch yourself, get out of bed if you have to and give your head something useful to do. Hold off on dating for a while too. You've got a life to put back together first, and the right woman is going to want the rebuilt version of you anyway.
A plan for the next 90 days
If you want someone to hand you the daily structure while your life is upside down, take a look at The Strong Men System. It walks you through the habits and discipline step by step, so you've got a plan for tomorrow morning instead of another night of staring at the ceiling. Daniel figured it out eventually, too… he cleaned up his act and ended up seeing his kids every single day.