‘Divorce’… what do you think of? Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton? JR and Sue-Ellen Ewing? Me too. People with dramatic stories. People whose lives had gone visibly and spectacularly wrong.
But my ‘first’ divorce didn’t look like that.
A short marriage, I was in my late twenties, with no children, and the break-up wasn’t fuelled by betrayal or a huge row ending in a slammed door. It was quiet. A dawning realisation that our lives were pulling in different directions, and that this marriage wasn’t going to hold our shared hopes and dreams. What we’d promised each other wasn’t going to survive real life.
There was sadness, of course. But there was also dignity. We kept it simple, negotiated everything ourselves (there was only a house, minimal savings and an oversized navy-blue damask sofa that nobody wanted - it was the 90s!), and tried to end it kindly.
If you’d told me then that I’d divorce again - and that the second time would feel like being put through an emotional mincing machine - I would have laughed. And then probably cried. Hysterically.
Because the second divorce wasn’t quiet. It was loud: fear, exhaustion, money, and the constant throb of adrenaline that comes from trying to keep your children steady while your own world is falling apart.
It changed me. In some ways, it broke me. In other ways, it put me back together - stronger, happier, and closer to what I now recognise as the true me.
‘We’ becomes ‘me’ overnight
Divorce is often described as a single event: a noun rather than a verb. A decision. A conversation. Eventually, a court order.
In reality, it’s a long, disorientating process. There’s a particular loneliness in the early days, especially when you’re used to being part of a ‘we’. You notice it in small moments: the apparent bliss of other families, long weekends alone, walking into a room and realising there’s no one to tell the little things to.
It’s not the big, cinematic loneliness. It’s the small, repetitive kind. The kind that quietly chips away at you.
Therapy taught me how to be alone
After my first divorce, I went to therapy and did something I’d never properly done before: I practised being on my own.
Not in a glossy, Eat, Pray, Love way. In a very real, uncomfortable way. I forced myself not to make plans on a Friday night - which, at the time, felt like emotional free-falling. I ate in a restaurant alone, pre-smartphones, with nothing to hide behind. I took myself on a mini break, alone. I went to the cinema alone – a habit I still maintain, and love.
None of it was glamorous. Some of it was excruciating. But it did something important. It taught me I could survive my own company. That I could be safe in myself.
I didn’t realise then how much I would need that lesson later.
My second divorce was a different kind of grief
My second marriage started with a whirlwind romance. Life can accelerate very quickly when you’re in that heady, hopeful place – especially if you’re carrying the weight of an earlier, ‘perceived’ failure. You tell yourself: I’ve learned from my mistakes. This time will be different.
But it began to fall apart. And for a while, I pretended I could manage it. That if I just tried harder, smoothed things over, stayed calm, stayed capable, it would settle.
It didn’t.
It reached a point where I knew it was going to be dangerous for me and the children to stay. That sentence still lands heavily when I write it. When you get to that point, you don’t leave because you’ve got a strong support system and a five-year plan. You leave because you must. With no plan at all.
The admin nearly finished me
There are moments of divorce that are obviously painful: the conversations, the realisations, the grief. But there’s another kind of pain that creeps up on you. Paperwork.
I still remember Form E as a kind of cruel joke – every bank statement, every payslip, every premium bond, every receipt. Tracking down the entire history of a life while you’re trying to hold yourself together in the present. I cried more than once.
Then there’s the way the process separates you from the one thing you need most: communication. Instead of two adults trying to work things out, you become opposing sides, each behind a wall of legal emails, every phone call and document carrying a cost.
My friends had to scrape me off the floor at times. They looked after the kids while I trekked into town to see my lawyer. They bought me a hole punch, a stapler – and wine – when I had to start putting together my own legal bundles to save money.
That’s what I mean when I say divorce isn’t just emotional. It’s logistical. It’s relentless. It’s a full-time job when you’re already trying to do three.
Dating in my 50s – comedy or courage?
Fast forward, and there I was: divorced, older, saggier, wiser in some ways, shakier in others – and back on the dating scene.
Dating in your 50s is a very specific experience. You’re not starting from a blank page; you’re starting from a whole library. You have children, history, patterns, preferences and scars. You also have the confidence that comes with age – and a much sharper awareness of what you don’t want to repeat (and so do the people you are dating).
I did something that still makes me smile. I hired a dating coach. It wasn’t about trying to ‘win’ at dating or reinvent myself into someone smoother and shinier. It was about getting my confidence back, understanding the new landscape, and being honest about what I wanted.
James Preece helped me with the practicalities – apps, profiles, first-date etiquette – but the bigger shift was internal. It was the reminder that I was allowed to start again without apologising for my age, my life or my past.
And yes, I tried speed dating. It was honestly the best fun ever – and thank you, Lisa, for coming with me.
Sex after divorce
Most people don’t talk about the quieter parts of rebuilding – the intimate bits. But rather like I got on the school bus aged 15 and announced to everyone that I’d finally started my period, I pretty much held court at work when I had sex for the first time after my second divorce.
The telling was more cathartic than the act itself.
There are, of course, logistics. The children live with me full-time and my ex had moved away – so no alternate weekends. Being divorced and living in London means I live in a very small house. No noisy sex here. The thought of being a few feet from my sleeping or gaming teens (yes, sex came a long time after the split) meant taking my fancy underwear, bikini wax and condoms on the Tube to his house.
Preparation is expensive. But surprisingly, it wasn’t the passion-killer I thought it might be.
After divorce, you don’t just learn to date or have sex again. You learn to trust again. You learn to be seen again. I didn’t emerge as some fearless goddess. I emerged as someone very capable on her own, but who missed – and was scared to share – the intimacies of life again.
Being strong, independent and capable is great. But being intimate is probably better.
What divorce changed
Divorce changed my life. It changed my career, my relationships, my social life. Everything.
During my second divorce, I knew I had to get back to work – for sanity as well as financial necessity. My background in counselling psychology enabled me to set up a therapy practice specialising in relationship breakdown. Eventually, that personal mission became amicable, the couples’ divorce and separation service I co-founded with one of my best friends, Pip.
I couldn’t accept that families had to be chewed up by a system that so often profits from conflict.
But this isn’t an article about solutions. It’s about what it feels like when your life splits in two, and you have to find your way through the middle.
I don’t romanticise divorce. It’s brutal at times. Lonely, often. But it is also a transition – not a failure. And if there’s one thing I know now, in my 50s, it’s this: it’s never too late to rebuild a life that actually fits you. Maybe it’s not the life you thought you were meant to have.
But it will be a life that’s true.
Kate Daly is founder of amicable, host of The Divorce Podcast and author of Amicable Divorce: Your Practical Guide to Divorce Without the Drama
