A New Hope

My divorce is finalized.

I did not cry as much as I thought I would. On the contrary, I feel a vague sense of relief. The worst is over. Time to move on.

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Somewhere in my flailings to maintain equillibrium, I resorted to hunting for online articles on coping with divorce. What I discovered was fairly shocking.

• A large number of divorce sites are focused on women's issues.
• A large number of the remaining sites focused on men are focused on prospective single parents, especially on how to get and keep custody.
• A large number of sites focus on legal advice, without discussing the emotional impact. This is especially true on Singapore sites.
• An overwhelming number of sites focused on divorced men maintain how one-sided the legal system is against males.
• A minority of divorce sites dedicated to men are incredibly misogynistic.

In short, I could not find many sites that could offer what I was looking for: A fair balanced view of how to cope with life as a divorced man with no kids.

So, here I am, writing again. I am doing this for three reasons.

The first is that it will help my recovery. Writing stuff down allows me to document my progress and track in a tangible fashion how far I have gone and have left to go.

The second is to address the dirth of literature in this area. I confess that I write from a fairly limited perspective. I do not know anything, for example, about what it is like to be the one initiating the splitup. Nevertheless, I am optimistic that what I write here will be comforting at least to the extent that a divorced man can know that he is not alone.

The last is based on a piece of advice that Mr Wang gave me a long time ago. Write about what you know. I know what I've been through very well. I am far from being an expert at this though. I will be writing about what I did to get through this. You mileage may vary.

I will not be writing about certain things though. Don't expect to see these up here. My communications with my ex-wife, if any, will never be mentioned. I don't think she was entirely pleased that I wrote stuff on my blog about our breakup, even though she consented to it. Hence, to be cautious, I will not be writing about it.

I will also not be writing about my dates, relationships or my sex life. I understand that these are aspects of recovering from a divorce. Understandably, I'm a little raw in this area, so I'm not entirely comfortable writing about this.

Oh, and I will still be writing whatever I feel like writing. Interesting stuff I see, shameless plugs, whatever.

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Yes, this does mean that I'm back. I will be writing as regularly as I can and probably at the frequency that I used to write while I was still in California - i.e updates once every 2 weeks if possible.

I'll be working on a post later in the week about dealing with weight gain/loss during the divorce. In the meantime, if you are interested in hearing about a particular aspect, drop me a line.

It's good to be back.