Asking for Help After Divorce: Why I Kept Saying I’m Good
Asking for help after divorce wasn’t my problem. People kept asking me. For six months, I told every one of them I was good.
In the first six months of my divorce, people at work kept asking if I was okay.
Most of them didn’t know what was going on. I hadn’t told them. They asked anyway, because they knew me well enough to see it. Something in my face. The way I was carrying myself. I was off, and it showed before I said a word.
Every time, I gave the same answer.
“I’m good. I’m okay.”
It came out automatically, the way you say thanks to someone holding a door. I never had to think about it, and that’s the part that stays with me now.
Asking for help after divorce isn’t always asking for help
We talk about men needing to ask for help as if nobody’s offering. That wasn’t my problem. People were offering, over and over, in the simplest way people know how.
Are you okay?
I had more chances to ask for help in those six months than I can count. I turned down every one of them in two words.
I don’t think I’m unusual in that. Men may simply be less practiced at looking for, or even accepting, emotional support from anyone outside the marriage. So when that structure goes, the reflex isn’t to reach out. It’s to close the door politely and keep walking.
What “I’m good” was protecting
It kept the conversation short. Two words, and everyone could get back to work.
It kept me the guy who has it handled. At work, in the seat I’m in, that’s the job. I didn’t want to be the problem in the room.
It kept me from hearing myself say it. As long as I never said it out loud, it was still something I was managing. It wasn’t something that was happening to me.
If you’re the one asking
Some of you reading this are on the other side of it. You’ve noticed a man at work, or in your family, who’s been off for a while. You’ve asked. He said he’s good.
Ask anyway.
I didn’t take a single one of those colleagues up on it. But I knew every time that someone had asked. Asking for help after divorce is hard for the man going through it, and being asked is usually where it starts.
Don’t push for the story. Change the question. “Are you okay” has a two-word answer already loaded. Try “How are you actually doing with everything?” Then wait a little longer than feels comfortable.
And if he still says he’s good, don’t take it personally. You might be the reason he says something true next month.
What I’d say instead
You don’t owe anyone the whole story. Not at work, and not anywhere else.
But there’s a lot of room between the whole story and “I’m good.”
“Not really. It’s a hard stretch.”
That’s enough. It’s true, it’s private, and it leaves the door open instead of shutting it.
Asking for help after divorce doesn’t have to start with a confession. It can start with dropping one word: good.
If someone keeps asking whether you’re okay, they aren’t being nosy. They’re the help. You don’t have to go looking for it. You just have to stop sending it away.
That is the standard.
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#IllCarryIt
