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Bad Advice I Have Received
A listener recently asked about bad divorce advice I have received.

Tom asks \u201cYou have mentioned several times on your podcast that you received a lot of bad advice during the divorce process. Could you tell us what that bad advice was and how you dealt with it?\u201d

Well, the most prevalent piece of bad advice I received as well as most of the people I have had the opportunity to work with was just to get back out there and find somebody. This is generally given with good intentions. Family and friends do not want to see you hurting and the know that a new relationship would ease the pain. Unfortunately, the pain relief from dating too soon is short lived and the pain that comes from another broken relationship just adds to the hurt you are already facing.

The right course of action is to wait. Wait at least a year and maybe longer to being dating. In my years of working with divorced people I have never had someone tell me the regretted waiting but I have had many people tell me that they started dating too soon.

Closely related to this is some terrible advice my wife received early in her divorce process. She was asked if her ex had a best friend and then encouraged to date him for revenge. Similarly, she was also given advice to seek out one-night-stands and have no strings attached sex. Both of these are really bad advice on so many levels but the people giving the advice were very serious.

Anything done for revenge will not help you in the healing process. Data your ex\u2019s best friend would only complicate matters and keep the level of hostility at an unnecessarily high level. This will keep you angry far longer than you need to be. Likewise, no strings attached sex may feel good in the moment but will only delay healing. Plus, you expose yourself to STD\u2019s and the potential of an unplanned pregnancy.

The final piece of bad relationship advice I received was to not ever even consider marrying again. This came from someone who experienced a very bitter and hurtful divorce and who never completed the healing process. As a result, he had become a very bitter man. I knew almost immediately that I wanted to be married again someday and God finally brought a woman who is perfect for me into my life.

On a spiritual level I had people tell me that God would restore my marriage if I had enough faith. The problem with that statement is that my ex did not want the marriage restored. If God were to grant me my request, it would have meant forcing her to do something against her will. The way I read scripture God gives us free will to choose whether to do the right thing or not even though He could. He would not force her to return to the marriage against her will.

Finally, I had someone tell me that God was punishing me. Now, I do believe that God corrects those He loves and that correction can sometimes feel like punishment, but I don\u2019t think that God would ever use Divorce as a punishment. There are far too many people who are negatively impacted by divorce. It would not be punishment for just one person but a large group of innocent people. Kids, extended family, friends etc. all suffer because of divorce.

That being said, divorce may be a natural consequence for the bad behavior of a spouse. If you cheated, were abusive, or in some way abandoned the marriage divorce may be the outcome of the law of sowing and reaping.