25 Years

 

If you have been married 25 years or longer, you should not expect that your decision to divorce your spouse will erase your emotional pain. Your decision, once you finally make it, will feel like decades of problems have been lifted off of your shoulders. In reality, you will experience bouts of deep sadness and grieving in the months (and possibly years) to come. Understand that being emancipated from a rotten marriage is still an emotionally-fraught, painful process; an unavoidably sad process that should rightfully be grieved.

Know that when you are overcome by grief, in its many forms debilitating in your day-to-day life, that a smile will eventually emerge. It is ok to cry and then, it is ok to smile.