Healing After Divorce: What a New 2025 Study Found

by gbaskerville | Apr 13, 2026 | Featured, Healing After Divorce, Public Policy & Divorce, Research & Documentation, Studies on Divorce

A Remarkable Pattern of Healing Over Time

A new 2025 study of middle-aged divorced women offers something many Christians need to hear: the pain of divorce is real, but it is not necessarily permanent. In this longitudinal study, women returned to about their baseline level of life satisfaction within roughly 3 to 4 years after the relationship ended, on average.

Why This Matters

When you are in the thick of divorce, especially after betrayal, abuse, neglect, or addiction, it can feel as if the grief will last forever.

You may think:

“I have ruined my life.”
“I will never feel normal again.”

But this study points in a different direction. For many women, the pain was followed by recovery and long-term improvement.

The Most Surprising Finding

What surprised me most was this: the divorced and separated women did not merely recover.

Their average life satisfaction eventually edged past that of the control group of women who stayed married. That crossover happened about 13.5 years after dissolution.

Read that again! After 13-to-14 years, divorced women on average had greater life satisfaction than women who remained married (the control group).

What is unexpected is not merely that the divorced women recovered. (A lot of divorce research already shows that women recover to their normal level of life satisfaction within a few years, on average.)

What is unexpected is that this paper found the divorced/separated women eventually slightly surpassed the matched women who stayed married or partnered. The authors themselves say this contrasts with earlier control-group studies, and they suggest one possible explanation is post-traumatic growth.

Post-Traumatic Growth

Post-traumatic growth can happen after a major crisis: some people gain insight, gratitude, a stronger sense of self, and more authentic relationships. I also find that many Christians see their faith grow during divorce. This was also found in a Southern Baptist Lifeway Research study of churchgoing divorcees. They found that nearly 7 in 10 said their divorce brought them closer to God.

I am not trying to sell people on divorce. I believe in marriage. That is partly why this finding surprised me so much: although I had seen this level of healing in my own life and in others, I never expected the research to find it was the average, not just in a handful of exceptional cases. I always thought I was unusually happy, but it turns out that doing well long after divorce is more common than I thought.

Who Was the Control Group?

The control group was:

women who stayed married or partnered.
matched to the divorced/separated group for comparison
not a group of obviously miserable marriages

In fact, those control group women showed stability and slight increases in life satisfaction over time.

So this is what makes the finding so striking: the divorced/separated group was not outperforming a dysfunctional control group. They eventually edged past a group that was doing fairly well.

What Helped Women Recover Best?

The biggest factors linked to better recovery were:

strong social support
a sense of control over life
enough income to manage

In Plain English, That Means:

safe people who believe you to lean on
some control over your own decisions and daily life
enough money to make it

One More Unexpected Result

Remarriage was not a significant predictor of a better life-satisfaction trajectory in this study.

That Means:

Happiness did not mainly hinge on:

remarriage
re-partnering
“finding someone new”

That rings true. It’s not about “grass is greener” and finding “someone hotter.” It’s about a supportive friend, a safe church that believes you and encourages you, a counselor who does not minimize your pain, the freedom to make decisions, and enough income to cover the bills can make an enormous difference.

A Word for the Early Days

If you are in the early stage, please hear me: the shock you feel today is not proof that you made the wrong decision.

Sometimes it is simply the first stage of leaving a painful reality behind.

Citation:

Arcangeli, O. J., & Ejova, A. (2025). Does time heal all wounds? Life satisfaction trajectories in Australian middle-aged women before and after relationship dissolution. Journal of Happiness Studies, 26, 41. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-024-00853-5

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The Life-Saving Divorce is about divorces for very serious reasons: a pattern of sexual immorality, physical abuse, chronic emotional abuse, life-altering addictions, abandonment, or severe neglect. This book will give you hope for your future, and optimism about your children. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.