I Stopped Apologizing: Why My Divorce Didn’t Require an Explanation

The divorce had been finalized, but I felt like I was still living under a cloud of unspoken obligation. Every time I ran into an old neighbor, a colleague I hadn’t seen in a year, I felt this overwhelming need to preemptively apologize for my new single status.

It went something like this: I’d be asked, "How’s the family?" and my heart would seize up. I would usually start with, "Well, I’m divorced now, but it was amicable.” I had essentially condensed a year of pain and legal proceedings into a forty-second soundbite, desperately seeking validation that I hadn't fundamentally failed as a man. I realized I was treating my divorce like a bad weather forecast—something embarrassing. It was exhausting to maintain.

This compulsion to explain wasn't about respecting the other person; it was rooted in my own insecurity. I was afraid their immediate mental response would be judgment: “He failed. What went wrong?” I felt I had to justify the wreckage, to show I was still a good person, a good professional, and a fully functional human being despite the dissolution of my marriage. The silence that often followed my rushed explanations felt less like sympathy and more like a quiet jury deliberation, and I couldn't bear the thought of people concluding that I was simply a man who couldn't keep his life together.

The turning point happened at a networking event. A former colleague asked, “How’s the wife?” I just paused. I looked him in the eye and said, simply, "I'm good. We're actually divorced now. But that was a while ago.” That was it. The conversation pivoted instantly.

I realized that acquaintances don't need my life story or my emotional assurance. They need a piece of information, and then they need to know that I am stable enough to continue the conversation. I stopped apologizing for the changes in my life. I stopped trying to prove that my divorce was 'good' or 'successful' or 'not messy.' It was simply my life. By refusing to treat my single status as a social burden I had to explain away, I finally started treating it as a neutral fact. And in doing so, I took back control of my narrative. It was the last, and perhaps most liberating, lesson of the entire divorce process as it showed the power of perspective.

 Hasib Afzal