Breakup & Divorce: What It Is and How to Recognize It

Breakup and divorce rank among the most painful experiences in a person's life. Yet Dr. Saulitis warns against the most common trap: processing the experience through ready-made templates — "single mum with kids," "twice-divorced man," "pushover husband." Behind every case is a specific person and a specific story.

What Actually Happens During a Divorce

Divorce is not the failure of a social "category." One person leaves an abuser; another seeks something better; a third stays for the children and separates anyway. The circumstances are fundamentally different, and any one-size-fits-all average tells us nothing useful about any of them.

How to Recognize That a Relationship Is Truly Ending

The real signal is not a legal status or a document. Dr. Saulitis points to something else: whether there is still something alive between the couple — mutual complementarity, energy, a sense of ease together. When that is gone and the partners no longer complement each other, the relationship has effectively ended — even if the papers have not yet been signed.

Children and Divorce: What to Watch For

Particular attention is needed when children are involved. Dr. Saulitis is direct: one cannot claim that children of divorced parents will be worse off — outcomes can go either way, depending on the specific people and the specific steps taken. What matters is that the adults consider how their conflict, or their new life arrangement, will affect the children.

What Not to Do: Step Away from the Label Wars

One of the most common sources of pain during a breakup is getting drawn into social narratives — "never date a divorcée," "all men are the same," and so on. According to the doctor, this only pulls people further from reality. What actually helps is one thing: seeing the concrete person and the concrete situation.