Divorce recovery takes time. This is a fact of divorce. The real question is, "How long must I endure the upset and pain of adjusting to my divorce?" While specific time predictions are not possible, we can make choices that reduce recovery time from several years to a few months.

1. What Do We Mean by "Recovery?"

Successful recovery from divorce can mean different things to different people. By "recovery," I mean that we are no longer haunted by painful memories of the relationship. We can talk about our ex and talk to our ex without negative emotions. We can wish our ex the best in their new life. And we can go for days with even thinking of our ex. In other words, we feel content with our current life and excited about our future without our ex being an integral part of it.

2. Slaying the Myth that Time Heals Everything

Accepted wisdom tells us that "time heals everything." Tell that to my former sister-in-law. I met Faye before I met her sister, Anne, who I eventually married. At this time Faye had been divorced five years and every reference she made to her ex was critical and painful. Sixteen years later Faye died of cancer and to her dying day, her references to her ex remained critical and painful. Twenty-one years should have been enough time to heal her divorce wounds IF "time heals everything" were true. It isn't. Time, by itself, heals nothing.

What IS important is what we DO during that time.What are our choices for "what to do?"

3. What Can We DO to Recover from Divorce?

Our two main choices are: 1 - DO NOTHING and let "Time and Sympathy" cure our pain and, 2 - Use a "TARGETED PROGRAM" specifically designed to change the attitudes and behaviors that keep us stuck in our post-divorce pain and dysfunction.

I do not address generalized therapy because of the nebulous nature of the process. Some, if not most, talk therapies, both individual and group, provide little more than a safe place to vent feelings and perhaps receive "advice." Other therapies, like the divorce-specific behavior therapy program of Wanderer and Cabot, provide the client with a specific, behavior-focused program specifically designed to deal with the unique issues of divorce recovery. The first kind I lump in with the "Time and Sympathy" strategies. The second I include in the "Targeted Program" strategies.

4. Recovery Time Using "Time and Sympathy" Strategies - About 3 Years

If you do nothing, that is, if you use the "Time and Sympathy" strategies, it will take years for you to recover. Just how many years is unclear. Reports vary. Some say 1 year, others say 2 years. Some predict 1 year of recovery for each year of marriage, while others say 1 year of recovery for every 2 years of marriage.

Two major research projects generally confirm these estimates. Hetherington's study puts this time frame at 2 to 6 years. Wallerstein and Kelly found that the average time after a divorce for women to reestablish "inner equilibrium," "external stability," and "a sense of continuity in their lives" was 3 to 3½ years.

Any way you cut it, if you depend on "Time and Sympathy" to provide your recovery from divorce, you are looking at a long time.

Is there a better way? Can you recover from divorce sooner? Answer: Yes!

5. Recovery Time Using "Targeted Program" Strategies - About 3 Months

Targeted Programs" are behavior-focused and attitude-focused, structured programs that walk the divorced client through the unique issues and challenges of the divorce-recovery process. Two examples include the Divorce Recovery Behavior Therapy Program (Wanderer and Cabot) and my Smooth Divorce Recovery Coaching Program (JW Young). Even though the programs come from related, but different, theoretical approaches (behavior therapy versus transition management and dissolving resistance to change) their results are quite similar. Both programs estimate it takes approximately 3 MONTHS (not years) to recover from divorce.

In my divorce-recovery coaching experience, the shortest recovery time was 6 weeks for a person who had had two previous "let's get divorced" decisions followed by reconciliation. The longest was 5 months for someone who was stuck in the past and dealing with gut level anger at being betrayed. The typical client took 3 months of weekly, 2-hour sessions, to walk through the program, during which they dropped their fantasies of revenge, saw clear hope for the future, and were able to wish their ex well.