Blindsided by Divorce in Midlife – When Does Karma Kick In?

“When does karma kick in? When will he finally realize what he lost? When will he regret what he did?” I hear these questions at least once a week from women who’ve been blindsided by divorce after decades of marriage.

Here’s what I know: You’re not just asking when karma will arrive. You’re asking when you’ll finally feel like justice has been served. When will you stop feeling the burden of what he did? When will the scales balance, and you can breathe again?

I need to tell you something that might be hard to hear …

Stop waiting for him to suffer. It’s not going to set you free.

The waiting game you don’t realize you’re playing

Let me describe what I see happening, and I’m not judging you, but I’ve watched this pattern destroy too many brilliant women who deserved so much better.

Here’s an example of what I mean: You check his social media or ask your friends about what he’s up to. Maybe not every day anymore, but enough. You’re looking for signs that his new life isn’t as perfect as it appears. That he’s struggling. That the girlfriend isn’t working out. That he’s starting to look older, more tired, more… regretful.

You imagine scenarios. The moment he realizes what he lost. The conversation where he finally admits he made a terrible mistake. You’ve rehearsed your response a hundred times – sometimes you’re gracious, sometimes you’re cutting, but you’re always there in the scene and always witnessing his reckoning. This is what you’ve been waiting for!

You talk to your friends about karma. About how “what goes around comes around.” About how he can’t possibly be happy after what he did. About how, eventually, it’ll catch up with him. It has to. Because if it doesn’t… what does that mean about the universe? About fairness? About the 25+ years you gave him?

Here’s what’s really happening while you wait: YOUR life is on hold.

Not in the obvious ways – you’re probably going through the motions, showing up for work, managing your responsibilities, and getting by. But the part of you that could be building something new, discovering who you are outside of the marriage, and getting excited about what comes next is frozen.

That part of you is waiting for him to pay before you’re allowed to move forward.

What this waiting is costing you

Every morning you wake up thinking about him – whether he’s suffering enough yet, whether he’s realized his mistake – is a morning you didn’t wake up thinking about yourself. About what you want. About what’s possible for you now.

Every conversation with friends that circles back to “can you believe he did this” is a conversation where you’re rehearsing your pain instead of exploring your future. You can probably feel them getting tired of this. You can feel yourself getting tired, too, yet you can’t seem to stop because stopping feels like letting him off the hook.

Here’s the trap: You believe that if you move on, if you’re okay, if you build a life you love – then somehow he wins. He gets away with it. He walks off into the sunset with his new life, while you’re supposed to just… what? Be fine with it?

So you stay stuck in the story of what he did. You keep the wound fresh. You wait for cosmic justice because, at least while you’re suffering, there’s evidence of how wrong this all was. At least your pain proves something.

The truth you already know

Can I be honest with you?

He is getting away with it.

I know that lands hard, but he is. He’s living his life. He’s moved on. He’s not lying awake at night cataloging his mistakes. Karma isn’t keeping him up. You are keeping yourself up.

This might be even harder to hear: There’s something underneath all of this waiting for consequences that is a quiet belief that maybe, just maybe, you deserved this somehow. That if you were enough, this wouldn’t have happened. That if you’d been different, better, more something, he would have stayed.

So you need him to face consequences. Because if the universe punishes him, then maybe that proves you didn’t deserve it. Maybe that is the evidence you need that this wasn’t your fault. That you weren’t fundamentally lacking.

Here is what I know after working with dozens of women who were exactly where you are now: His consequences or lack thereof have nothing to do with your worth. NOTHING.

The universe isn’t going to deliver justice on your timeline. Maybe he’ll regret it someday, maybe he won’t. Maybe his new relationship will implode, maybe it won’t. Maybe he’ll have a moment of clarity about what he lost, or maybe he’ll rewrite the history in his head until he’s the hero of his own story.

None of that changes what’s true: You didn’t deserve this. You weren’t the problem, and you don’t need him to suffer to prove it.

What becomes possible when you stop waiting

The real justice? The actual getting-even? It’s not his suffering. It’s your freedom.

It’s waking up and realizing you went a whole morning without thinking about him. It’s making plans that excite you instead of plans that just fill time. It’s discovering parts of yourself that got lost in that marriage, or maybe never existed because you were too busy being his wife.

The real justice is you getting your life back. Not the life you had, that’s gone, and honestly, why would you want it back? But a life you design. A life where you’re not performing “fine” while secretly waiting for vindication. A life where you’re actually, genuinely okay… and then better than okay.

This doesn’t mean forgetting what happened. It doesn’t mean he was right to do it. It doesn’t mean any of this was fair or justified or okay.

It means you stop letting what he did define what you’re allowed to have next.

The work ahead

Getting here isn’t about positive thinking or self-care routines or deciding to “just move on.” If it were that simple, you would have done it already.

It’s about understanding what you’re believing that keeps you stuck in the waiting. It’s about interrupting the thought patterns that loop back to his consequences instead of your possibilities. It’s about learning to build a sense of justice that doesn’t require his participation.

It’s about stepping out of the victim’s story, not because what happened to you wasn’t real or wasn’t devastating, but because that story has an ending you don’t want. In that story, you stay stuck. You stay small. You stay waiting.

There’s another story available. One where you take what happened – this terrible, unfair, devastating thing – and you transform it into the catalyst for the most intentional chapter of your life.

Not because you’re grateful for the divorce… because you refuse to let it be the thing that stops you.

He already got away with the marriage. Don’t let him get away with your future, too.