Mindset & Faith · Boundaries With a Sense of Humor
Everyone becomes a divorce expert the moment they hear you're getting one. Here's how to survive the advice without losing your mind — or your manners.
Researchers who study advice-giving have found something that will surprise absolutely no divorced woman: people often give unsolicited advice to relieve their own discomfort with your pain, not because they actually have a useful answer. Giving advice makes the giver feel helpful, competent, and briefly in control of a situation they have zero actual control over. Which explains, scientifically, why your coworker who has never been married felt qualified to tell you that you "should really just try harder to co-parent peacefully."
What the research actually says: Unsolicited advice is often less about you and more about the advice-giver's own discomfort — giving advice makes the giver feel helpful, competent, and briefly in control of a situation they can't actually control.
If you have been on the receiving end of a truly staggering amount of unsolicited wisdom since your divorce — from family, friends, coworkers, your hairdresser, and at least one stranger at Target — this post is for you. We're going to laugh a little, because you've earned it, and then we're going to arm you with real, graceful ways to protect your peace without becoming the villain of anyone's Thanksgiving story.
Before we get practical, let's take a moment to appreciate the sheer creativity of the advice out there. If any of these sound painfully familiar, you are in excellent, exhausted company:
"Have you tried the apps? My cousin met her husband on there in like two weeks." (Said to a woman who has been divorced for eleven days.)
"You just need to co-parent better." (Said by someone who has never co-parented with anyone, let alone the specific person you're dealing with.)
"At least you don't have kids together." (Said to a woman who has three kids with her ex, apparently after skimming the situation rather than reading it.)
"Maybe if you'd just communicated more." (Said with total confidence by someone who wasn't in the marriage and doesn't know what "more" would have even looked like.)
"Everything happens for a reason." (True, sometimes. Deeply unhelpful three weeks after signing divorce papers.)
None of these people are villains. Most of them love you. They are simply doing what humans do when faced with someone else's pain: reaching for a tidy solution, because an untidy, unsolvable feeling is uncomfortable to sit with.
And then there's the advice-giving Olympics that seems to activate specifically around the holidays. Thanksgiving alone can produce an entire season's worth of material: an uncle who wants to know "what really happened," a cousin who insists you should be "further along by now," and at least one relative who will, without fail, ask if you're "seeing anyone" directly in front of your children. Divorced women deserve hazard pay for the average family gathering, and if nobody has told you that yet, consider this your official acknowledgment.
There's something about the word "divorce" that seems to unlock a hidden reservoir of confidence in otherwise reasonable people. Part of this is genuine care poorly expressed. Part of it is that divorce touches something almost everyone has feelings about — their own marriage, their parents' marriage, a friend's marriage — so your situation becomes, without your consent, a screen onto which they project their own unresolved opinions.
Understanding this doesn't make the advice less irritating in the moment. But it does help you stop taking it personally, which is half the battle. Most unsolicited advice isn't really about you. It's about them, wearing your situation like a costume.
There's also a generational layer worth naming. Older relatives who came of age when divorce was rarer and more stigmatized sometimes reach for outdated scripts, not because they're deliberately dismissive, but because it's genuinely the only framework they have. Someone who's never seen a healthy, amicable divorce modeled may default to assuming yours must be a crisis requiring urgent intervention, simply because that's the only version of the story they've ever known. It doesn't make the comments less exhausting, but it can make them feel less like a personal judgment and more like an outdated map being applied to unfamiliar territory.
You don't need to argue with bad advice, defend your choices in detail, or educate every well-meaning relative on the nuances of your custody arrangement. You need a small toolkit of graceful exits.
The Grateful Nod: "Thanks, I'll keep that in mind." (You will not keep it in mind. This is fine. This is allowed.)
The Redirect: "I really just need to vent right now, not solve it. Can you just listen?"
The Humor Deflect: "Wow, if I had a dollar for every time someone told me to try dating apps, I could actually afford a really nice vacation instead."
The Firm Close: "I appreciate you caring, but I've got this handled my way."
The Topic Change: "Anyway — how's your garden doing this year?" (Underrated. Works more often than you'd expect.)
The Compliment Pivot: "That's such an interesting take — hey, I love that sweater, is it new?" (Disarming, flattering, and almost impossible for the other person to redirect back to the original topic without seeming rude.)
None of these require confrontation. All of them let you exit the advice loop while keeping the relationship intact.
A quick note on delivery: tone does about eighty percent of the work here. The exact same sentence — "I've got this handled my way" — lands completely differently said with a warm smile than said through gritted teeth. If you can deliver these lines lightly, almost breezily, most people will take the hint without ever feeling rebuffed. Save the firmer, more serious tone for situations that genuinely call for it, like a boundary that keeps getting pushed after multiple gentle attempts.
The relative who won't stop bringing up reconciliation:
"I know you love our family and want it to look a certain way. This is decided, and I need you to trust me on it."
The coworker who treats your divorce like a group project:
"I appreciate the interest, but I keep work and my personal life pretty separate these days."
The friend who gives advice about your ex based on one story:
"It's a lot more complicated than I have the energy to explain right now — I mostly just need support."
The stranger or acquaintance who overshares their opinion:
A polite, closed-lipped smile and "Interesting perspective!" has ended more unwanted conversations than any argument ever could.
Your own parent, offering the advice they've been giving since 1994:
"I know this is how you've always seen it. I'm handling it differently, and that's okay."
Not all advice deserves the deflection treatment. The trick is learning to tell the difference quickly. Advice is usually worth genuinely considering when it comes from someone with real relevant experience (a therapist, a divorce attorney, a friend who's actually been through something similar), when it's offered gently rather than insistently, and when you asked for it, even implicitly, by bringing up the problem to that specific person.
Advice is almost always safe to deflect when it comes from someone with no relevant experience, when it's delivered with more confidence than the situation warrants, or when it starts with "well, if it were me" from someone who has never, in fact, been you.
There's a helpful two-second test worth developing: before reacting to advice, ask yourself privately, "Does this person actually know my full situation, or are they responding to the two sentences I just gave them?" Almost all unsolicited advice fails this test instantly, which is usually all the permission you need to smile, nod, and move on without a second thought.
The goal here was never to become cold, defensive, or isolated from people who genuinely care about you. It's to stop absorbing every opinion as though it carries equal weight or requires equal engagement. You can love your mother and also not discuss your dating life with her. You can appreciate a friend's concern and also not owe her a debate about your parenting choices. Boundaries and warmth are not opposites — the healthiest relationships usually have both.
Give yourself permission to laugh about the absurd advice with someone who gets it — a fellow divorced friend, a support group, a coach who has genuinely heard it all. Humor doesn't minimize the frustration. It makes it bearable, and it reminds you that you are far from the only woman fielding well-meaning nonsense on a near-weekly basis.
Consider keeping a running, private list of the best (worst) advice you receive — half venting exercise, half comedy collection. Years from now, that list may become one of the more entertaining artifacts of this season, proof of both how much unsolicited wisdom you survived and how far you've come since you needed any of it. Several women in coaching programs report that revisiting their own "worst advice" list eventually becomes a genuinely funny, bonding exercise with other women who've collected nearly identical entries.
Take Back the Narrative
Tired of managing everyone else's opinions about your divorce? Jennifer Johnson's coaching and courses give you real tools, real scripts, and a community that actually gets it — so you can stop defending your choices and start living them.
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Jennifer built As She Rebuilds™ from lived experience navigating divorce — financially, emotionally, and personally. She helps women move from survival mode into stability, clarity, and renewed purpose. Learn more →