Divorce What Happens After

Divorce, when it happens, is rarely confined to the two people signing the papers. It’s often described as a rupture within a household—but for children, especially teenagers, that rupture can extend far beyond the immediate family. The ripple effects are subtle, often invisible to outsiders, yet they can last for decades.

I was a teenager when my parents divorced. Like many at that age, I was old enough to grasp the emotional complexity, yet too young to influence any of the decisions that were being made around me. The assumption then—both mine and others’—was that the storm would pass, and relationships would eventually stabilise. In time, the adults would move on, and the family, though reshaped, would remain intact.

What I didn't expect was how the divorce would quietly redraw the boundaries of my extended family. Aunts and uncles, once warm and present, grew distant. Messages were left unanswered. Plans to meet were subtly discouraged or awkwardly ignored. What began as occasional silences turned into lasting absences. Over the years, it became clear that some relatives had quietly placed me in an emotional category I hadn’t signed up for.

It’s a difficult thing to name, this kind of exclusion. It’s not overt. It rarely comes with confrontation or explanation. Instead, it settles in the small spaces: the unreturned call, the empty chair at a gathering, the polite indifference when you reach out. There’s no open hostility—just a faint sense that your presence triggers something unspoken. Something unresolved.

I came to realise that for some family members, I had become a symbol of the past—an uncomfortable reminder of a conflict they never fully addressed. As if, by virtue of being connected to one parent or the other, I had somehow taken sides in a battle I didn’t choose. The irony is that, as a teenager, I was just trying to stay afloat. I had no stake in the politics of it all. I just wanted stability.

What hurts most is not the divorce itself, but the ongoing consequences—the way extended family can turn away, hold grudges by proxy, or retreat into silence. The sense of being cast out not for anything you did, but simply because you existed at the fault line of someone else’s fracture.

Divorce is, of course, complex. Adults have their own grief, and families carry histories that are often too tangled to easily resolve. But those histories shouldn’t be inherited by the children of divorce. Especially not years later, when those children are adults themselves, still hoping to build relationships that weren’t theirs to break.

What’s needed is a deeper awareness of how far the emotional fallout can travel—and for families to reflect on the quiet exclusions they may have justified over time. If someone reaches out after years of silence, it’s not to reopen wounds. It’s to reconnect. And it might just be time to let them.