Divorce can often adversely affect your daily life and job. People are bound to feel very upset, angry, anxious, and stressed during the time of the divorce. These feelings can continue to dominate a person’s mind long after the divorce is over. It is not easy to let go of a marriage that you thought would last forever and accept failure of your marriage so easily. Therefore, it is common for people to brood about the circumstances.



Some people keep thinking about what they could have done differently so that their marriage would have survived. Dealing with all these thoughts is not easy. Consequently, when people reach their offices with such kind of a mindset, it becomes very hard for them to concentrate on their work. Even when they want to focus on their work, their thoughts keep going back to the past circumstances and events.



There is some amount of stress involved in every job. However, during or after a divorce, the usual job stress also becomes very hard to handle because a divorced person already feels a lot of stress due to divorce and change of living conditions.



If the divorced person is a custodial parent, he or she is bound to feel more responsible for the children because he or she needs to take care of the children all on his or her own. You may have shared the responsibility of your children all this while but all of a sudden, taking care of your children’s homework, whereabouts, and their lives becomes your duty. This can be a very daunting task. Consequently, you are bound to spend more time and energy in household tasks than at work.



Most single fathers struggle to get their children ready for school, make their breakfast, pack their lunch, and drop them off to school Therefore, by the time they reach their offices, they begin to feel tired already. After all, running a household by yourself and taking care of the children is no child’s play. The entire morning energy that used to be concentrated on office work alone gets divided between office work and household work. Therefore, it is highly likely that their productivity at work will be adversely affected.



If you are a single mother who has just started working, life can be no easier for you either. Getting into the job market after a long gap can be an intimidating task. In the beginning, it is important to make your mark at your new job to show that you are the best person for the job. This may require long and hectic hours at work. Coming back from work and managing your house can seem like a stretch for most part of the week.



Many people feel that they need to spend more time with their children after the divorce in order to make the children feel comfortable about the new living arrangements. Therefore, it is not uncommon for people to give up job promotions that require them to put in more number of hours at work or job movements that require them to relocate to other cities. Therefore, the career graph of divorced people cannot make an upward shift during and shortly after the divorce process because of their personal commitments.



Once people settle down in their lives with their changed set of circumstances, they are bound to immerse themselves in their jobs. Diverting their energies towards their jobs helps people beat stress and think about future goals and achievements rather than failures of the past.

How to Minimise the Effects of Divorce on Your Career and Day-to-Day Performance?



Most people have a very tough time coping with the challenges posed by their careers during this time of crisis. Therefore, we have come up with a few tips that can help you minimise the effects of divorce and maximise your job performance.

• View your job and your work as an outlet for relieving stress rather than a source of it.
• Seek professional help if you are unable to let go of the bitterness associated with the divorce.
• Socialise with your colleagues and friends at work. This can prove to be a good stress buster. Once you start to enjoy doing that, you will look forward to coming to work.
• If you are unable to strike a balance between your personal life and work life due to long hours or additional responsibilities at home, ask your boss if you can work from home till the time things get sorted out.

Why is the UK drawing so much attention? Divorce rates are high in a few other West European nations too. What is drawing statisticians down here is the rapidly changing demographic contours of the nation. The statistics reveal a people moving through a time of great flux. The very fact that this data is being considered as an important matter of study is itself an indication of the opinion of a generation.

A History of the Relations



Only 2% of men and women born before 1930 cohabited before marriage. By the 1960’s, the number rose to 50%. Around the middle of the 1980’s, the attitude towards cohabitation changed massively. This was when we were poised at the brink of the digital age, the concept of retail was changing, home businesses were beginning to flourish, and the children were becoming more neglected. Cohabitation was previously considered a preamble to marriage. But now cohabitation began to come up as a solution for divorcees to turn over a new leaf, avoiding a second brush with marriage. For young people it became an alternative to marriage itself. Now there is no doubt that it is a strong trend for long-term partnerships.



Divorce, in the meantime, has become quite commonplace. The divorce rates rose steadily over the years, before slumping in 2005, and it is hoped that the slump will persist. However, this is not a result of a sudden spurt of successful marriages all over the country. In fact, the number of marriages solemnised in 2005, has reached an all-time low when compared to the statistics for the past decade. So the best way to avoid getting divorced is not to get married at all.

Divorce and the Elderly



It is stunning but true, divorce rates among the sixty plus group have been on the rise for the past few years. More 55+ men and women are also getting married than ever before. The concept of the old man in ‘slippers and pantaloons’, shaking a disapproving finger at young women who leave their husbands, get a divorce, and then leave the child at home to go to work is a thing of the yester years. In fact, a jolly old granny, still working and glamorous, may start a new affair at 65. There is much support being offered on the part of the elderly where their grandchildren are concerned. More than 75% of grandparents in the UK are in favour of granting visitation rights to them too when their children divorce, and are ready to help the grand children tide over the troubled times under their care. However, most fight shy of providing continued financial support to the divorced offspring or to grand children.

Divorce and the Middle Aged



If we take the 40 – 55 group as middle-aged, the ruling trend is divorce, followed by remarriage. People of this age group are at the peak of their career, have children, and are earning well. They also divorce the least, and remarry quite often. Child care tendencies among them are also highest, and four out of five divorced mothers have voiced the opinion that they are willing to go out for work if they only had access to proper daycare for their children. Poverty among single parents is a major problem in this sector, and there are couples who are actually dragging on with a marriage because they know they won’t be able to give their children all that they need if they separated. The middle-aged group seems to be having the greatest variety of opinions as well, and survey results are highly uneven, suggesting that attitudes changed over localities, economies and cultures within the nation.

Divorce and the Young



Young people, 25 – 35, are losing faith in marriage. So divorce is not on the horizon. Those who do get married early are splitting soon. Divorce rates have been the highest among the 25 –29 group for five years now.

Divorce and Children



They are the worst-hit, and most neglected, despite all the awareness campaigns and support groups. Divorce, for them, is only pain and confusion from the unfair world of adults.