Therapy for men going through divorce

Section On this page

Where most men are when they call

Almost nobody calls me on the worst day. They call about six months after it, once it’s clear the feeling isn’t going to pass on its own.

Usually the job is still getting done, and the people who see you every day have no idea what the last half year has been like. That gap is what makes calling seem unjustified. Nothing is wrong enough to warrant it, and something is wrong. You don’t have to be in crisis to start.

If you haven’t decided anything yet

You don’t have to have decided anything about the marriage to start. A lot of men come in before there’s a decision. You’ve stopped picturing yourself married in five years and haven’t said so to anyone, especially your spouse.

You don’t have to bring your partner for this to be about your marriage. We can do serious work on a marriage with only one of you in the room, and that’s often the work that has to happen first anyway. I don’t have a preferred outcome. The job is getting clear enough to make the decision yourself, and then to live with having made it.

What are sessions like?

We meet by video, weekly or every other week. There’s paperwork before the first session and some history early on, but neither takes long. I’m not silent, and I’m not neutral in the blank-screen sense. I say what I think, and I’ll tell you when two things you’ve told me don’t fit together. Sooner or later that includes your own part in how the marriage went. Most men already suspect it, and nobody has said it to them plainly.

Clients tell me the useful part is an honest read from someone who has no stake in the outcome and isn’t going to see your ex at a barbecue. We often end with something small to try: a conversation to have, a message to not send, an hour to protect.

If you’re deciding whether to call, the first conversation is 20 minutes, and you can tell me as little or as much as you like. Request a consultation

The first six weeks

The first few sessions get the shape of it in front of both of us: the timeline, who knows what, where the legal process is, what’s happening with the kids, and what you’re most afraid of. Part of it is finding what got left out of the version you’ve been telling.

Around the third or fourth week, the thing underneath usually shows up. For a lot of men it isn’t sadness. It’s a flat, humming anger with no acceptable place to go, or a specific shame about failing at the one thing you were sure you’d do properly.

By week five or six we’re usually on something concrete: the conversation with your spouse you’ve been rehearsing for months, what you tell your children, or the fact that you can’t sleep. The goal isn’t resolution yet. It’s that you stop white-knuckling it alone.

Anger with nowhere to put it

Anger is the emotion men in divorce have the most of and the least permission for. Aimed at your spouse, it makes things worse, often in writing. Aimed at your kids, it’s off the table. Telling your friends means explaining the whole thing. So it gets held, and held anger comes out sideways: at work, at the person in the next lane, at whichever child is closest when it finally goes.

Much of the work is learning what your anger is about, which is rarely the thing that set it off, and finding something to do with it that doesn’t cost you what you can’t afford.

Talking to your kids

If you have children, this is usually the part you care most about and are least sure of. The pull to explain yourself, to have your kids know it wasn’t all you, is enormous. Acting on it is one of the few genuinely damaging things a decent parent can do in a divorce.

We work on the difference between being honest with your children and recruiting them: what to say at each age, what to do when they ask a direct question about your ex, how to handle handoffs, and how to be a real person in front of them without making them responsible for how you’re doing.

Your attorney and the mediator

Most men either hand the whole process over and feel steamrolled, or try to run it themselves and spend $400 an hour on emails.

I’m not an attorney and I don’t give legal advice. What I can help with is the part that’s yours: knowing what you want before the meeting, going in without relitigating the marriage, and noticing when a decision is about winning rather than what you want your life to look like in three years. Clients often book a session before or after a mediation for exactly this.

Therapy, a divorce coach, or a mediator?

They do different jobs, and plenty of men use more than one.

• A mediator helps you and your spouse agree on the terms: the parenting plan, the money, the house. A mediator is neutral and works for neither of you.
• A divorce coach helps you run the process: the paperwork, the decisions, getting ready for the next meeting. It’s practical and forward-looking.
• Therapy is for what the divorce is doing to you: the anger, the sleep, the kids, and the decision itself. I’m not neutral the way a mediator is. I’m on your side of the conversation, and I don’t give legal advice.

If what you need is one of the others, I’ll say so in the first conversation.

Telling your friends

Men in divorce lose social ground twice: the couple friends quietly sort themselves, and men’s friendships rarely leave an obvious slot for this. Rebuilding some support is slow and it isn’t optional, and who you tell is a regular part of this work.

Divorce in your 50s and 60s

When a marriage ends after twenty-five or thirty years, it’s often called a gray divorce. The problems are different from the ones at 38 with a toddler at home.

The kids are usually grown, so custody is off the table, but they aren’t out of it. Adult children have opinions, some of them take sides, and some call for the first time in months to tell you what they think. Without handoffs and school pickups to organize the week, the house can go very quiet.

The money is more tangled. A settlement at 58 splits a retirement plan you won’t have another thirty years to rebuild, and the house you meant to grow old in may be the first thing to go.

The harder part is often identity. You may have been a husband longer than you’ve been anything else, including whatever you do for work, and the last time dating was a live question you met people in person. A lot of this work is figuring out what the rest of your life is organized around, now that it isn’t the marriage.

The part that comes after

A lot of my clients aren’t in the middle of it. They’re two years out, supposed to be over it, and not.

A long marriage takes far longer to metabolize than the legal process does, and the culture allows about six months. This work is less crisis and more identity: who you are outside that relationship, what you want the next decade to be about, dating, and the version of yourself from the marriage that hasn’t fully retired. My own divorce was in 2017, and a good deal of what I understand about that stretch I learned the long way.

What changes

Most men don’t feel better in a straight line, but some things usually shift. The replay of the argument at 2am gets shorter. You send fewer messages you’d regret. Anger starts to have somewhere to go that isn’t your inbox. You can be in the room with your kids without carrying the case around in your head. Over months, you may notice you’ve stopped bracing every time your phone shows your ex’s name. None of this arrives on a schedule, and some weeks it doesn’t arrive at all.

How I work

I describe my approach as relational-eclectic, drawing on systems counseling, relational-behavioral work, and depth psychotherapy; there’s more on theoretical orientation. Many of my clients are neurodivergent, and divorce puts particular pressure on executive function and on routines that were holding things together; see therapy for neurodivergent adults.

Is this you? is the shortest version of who this practice is for. If the hard part is the years after, see co-parenting after a divorce.

“Marcus has a curiosity about people that is unmatched.”

Aubrey Lane, MS, LMFT, clinical director of Larch Counseling. Endorsements

Questions people ask

Can I start therapy before I have decided whether to divorce?

Yes. Many men come in before there’s a decision, and I don’t have a preferred outcome. If you haven’t decided anything yet describes how that works.

Will you testify or write a letter for my case?

No. I don’t do forensic or court work for either side, and what I don’t treat has the full list. If that’s what you need, ask in the consultation and I’ll say so plainly.

How long does therapy for divorce take?

It depends on what you bring, and I can’t give you a number. We meet weekly or every other week, and some men come through a decision while others stay for the years after it. The first six weeks describes the early stretch.

Do you work with men in their 50s and 60s?

Yes. A divorce after twenty-five or thirty years has its own problems, and I’ve given them their own section: divorce in your 50s and 60s.

Someone sent me this page. Do I have to be sure I need therapy?

No. Someone who knows you thought it might help, and you don’t have to agree with them to have one conversation with me. You can call without telling them.

Is therapy by video as good as in person?

I can’t promise it suits everyone. Some men like that it happens from home, the office, or a parked car, with no building to walk into. If you’d rather sit in a room with someone, who I refer out to says so.