Divorce Hurts Too!

Ok, I have to get this out of my system!  I am having a hard time with a lot of the widowed people brushing aside divorce as being painless.  They are appalled that divorced people would dare to try and make any kind of comparison to us widows!  The common myths I keep hearing are that by the time you divorce, you don't have any feelings left, or it's a mutual decision, unlike being widowed, etc.  While I understand, since I have been BOTH divorced and widowed, that these are two different experiences, I have to ask why widows are so quick to point out that nobody who isn't widowed understands what we go through, while still getting all judgmental about divorced people.  Well, if YOU HAVEN'T BEEN DIVORCED, the same holds true - you don't know what it is like!  And, can I just point out, that there are many different divorce scenarios just like with widows/widowers! Divorced people grieve - they greive the loss of love, the loss of trust, loss of self-esteem,the loss of the life they thought they were going to have.  In some cases, some of my friends were suddenly dumped by their spouses because the spouse fell in love with someone else, and there was nothing the dumped spouse could do about it.  In my case I did the dumping for several very good reasons, and I truly grieved for 2 1/2 years after my divorce.  Of course it was not the same as losing my wonderful husband Stan to death, but it was just as emotionally devasting in a different way.   And what about the widows/widowers who really did not love their spouses, and who feel relieved or guilty when their spouse dies?  Being widowed doesn't make anybody a saint. Rather than being insulted when divorced people try to compare their pain with ours, why not just accept that they are trying to make us aware that they do feel some of the same pain that we do, and they are trying to be supportive?  We don't want people to minimize our pain as widows, so why should we try to minimize theirs as divorced people?  I think we need to try to be a little understanding here.   Ok, I'll get off my soap box now.