Things go bad after a divorce and often stay that way. It is rare

“Things go bad after a divorce and often stay that way. It is rare for the parties to return placidly to a time before they met. A bitterness lingers on. Those who call this our Independence Day, fantasising of returning to a never-never time before they married, when they were free, easy, single, and master of their fate, are delusional.” — Howard Jacobson

These words of Howard Jacobson, though spoken of the realm of love and loss, reach into the deepest chambers of the human spirit. They remind us that there is no going backward in life — no return to the innocence or illusion of a past self. When Jacobson speaks of divorce, he speaks not only of the separation of two lovers, but of all the partings that wound the human heart — the endings we endure and the ghosts we carry. His tone is not cruel, but honest, as one who has seen the folly of those who mistake freedom for rebirth. For the past cannot be reclaimed, and those who try to walk again in its shadows do so only to find bitterness lingering where joy once lived.

The meaning of Jacobson’s words is clear, yet profound: every bond we form, every love we share, changes us irrevocably. There is no “before” to return to, because the very act of love remakes the soul. To imagine that one can be as they were — untouched, unbroken, unburdened — is to deny the nature of experience itself. When he calls such dreamers “delusional,” he does not mock them; he mourns for them. For they chase a phantom freedom, one that exists only in memory’s deceitful glow. True freedom does not come from the breaking of bonds, but from acceptance, from the courage to live with what love has made of us — scars, wisdom, and all.

The origin of this reflection comes from Jacobson’s lifelong meditation on love, identity, and regret. A novelist of sharp wit and deeper melancholy, he has long written of the struggle between the longing for connection and the yearning for independence. In this quote, he uses divorce as a mirror for human self-delusion — the belief that we can unmake what has been made, that we can cast off the weight of history and walk again as though untouched by its lessons. It is the same dream nations have when they seek to erase their pasts, and the same folly individuals fall into when they mistake solitude for salvation. Jacobson’s wisdom is that such things never return us to purity — only to loneliness gilded with nostalgia.

In this truth, history offers many echoes. Consider King Henry VIII, whose relentless pursuit of personal independence led him to dissolve not only his marriages but an entire faith. Each new union, he believed, would bring renewal; each separation, freedom. Yet what followed was not joy, but chaos and bitterness — not only for himself, but for his kingdom. His so-called “independence” brought him no peace. The lesson is timeless: to tear away from what once bound us may feel like liberation, but freedom without reflection is another form of captivity, for the heart cannot divorce itself from memory.

Jacobson speaks also to a universal human flaw — our longing to rewrite the past. After pain, we dream of returning to a time before pain; after loss, we yearn for the simplicity of our former ignorance. But the ancient sages taught that no river may be stepped in twice, for both the river and the man are changed. So it is with love and with life. The attempt to reclaim an earlier self is not a quest for truth, but a flight from reality. Better, says Jacobson’s wisdom, to walk forward with what remains — to weave from sorrow a new understanding, rather than to chase the ghost of what is gone.

And yet, within this harsh truth lies a gentler lesson. To accept that the past cannot be reclaimed is not despair — it is liberation of a higher order. For when we cease trying to return, we begin to grow. When we stop mourning the “before,” we can begin to honor what has shaped us. Love that ends still leaves behind its gifts: patience, empathy, depth of soul. Even bitterness, if faced honestly, can become the seed of wisdom. The wise do not seek to undo the past, but to transform it into understanding.

So let this be the teaching: do not romanticize the life you had before the storm, nor worship the illusion of the self that was untouched by love or grief. Instead, honor what time and pain have made of you. Accept that you are no longer who you were — and that this, too, is sacred. When partings come, as they always do, walk not backward toward the shadow of false freedom, but forward into the truth of what remains. For there is no “Independence Day” from the heart — only the deeper freedom that comes from embracing the story that life has written within you.

And remember, as the ancients said: the man who tries to erase his past is like the farmer who uproots the tree to be rid of its fruit. Wisdom is not to forget the bond, but to live wiser for having known it.