It should be no surprise that you will go through an entire range of emotions throughout your divorce.  The first may be denial, not wanting to accept that your marriage has failed.  At the risk of sounding like a hard-ass, I do hope that if you feel this way that you get over it quickly.  Being in denial is only going to hinder your divorce process.  It keeps you from acting accordingly and you could easily find yourself being taken advantage of by your wife and her divorce attorney.

The stress, feelings of betrayal, accusations made by your wife, everything of that sort, will most likely lead to feelings of anger.  As much as I want to say that you have every right to feel that way, you have to realize that it can easily become just as big of an enemy in a divorce.  Anger leads people to do and say things that they end up regretting.  But when you are in the midst of a sensitive situation like a divorce, it can lead to serious legal implications.  Getting angry and making threats towards your wife or talking bad about her to your children is the easiest way to get the judge to see you as the “bad guy”.  Even if you have never done such a thing in your entire life, it makes no difference in the eyes of the judge.  And once you get “the bad guy” label it is extremely hard to get rid of it, and then you will likely notice the courts will start to work in her favor more and more.

Another common emotion for men going through a divorce is depression.  And unfortunately many men will never address this issue.  For various reasons, they see it as a sign of weakness and will try to hide it as well as they can.  There should be NO feelings of embarrassment if you start having feelings of depression during and/or after your divorce.  There is NO shame in seeking help, which could be as simple as talking to someone who will actually listen.  But truthfully this is not something to play with.  It is no coincidence that divorced men are 3 TIMES more likely to commit suicide.  Their life is thrown into upheaval, they are commonly restricted from seeing their kids as much as they want, and the financial stress can be overwhelming.

During a divorce, your emotions will get the best of you from time to time.  But it is extremely important that those same emotions don’t lead you to make bad decisions.  The only person who can decide if you need to get some help in dealing with these emotions is you!  If you choose to ignore the problem altogether it will most likely come back to haunt you in one way or another.  The best that I can do is hope that you make the right choices for yourself!