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Dealing with Divorce

Divorce can be a devastating event in life as you experience the loss of all the things that are involved in a marriage, including your dreams for the future. Even if you are the one who initiated the divorce, it is still a huge adjustment, involving the same stages of grief that are involved with any loss, including a death.

In their book, Rebuilding: When Your Relationship Ends, (Atascadero, CA, Impact Publishers, 1981) the late Dr. Bruce Fisher and Dr. Robert Alberti, who conducted groups for those going through divorce, make valuable suggestions for dealing with the stages of grief for those in the midst of divorce. Remember, you are an individual and unique, so everyone’s process will be slightly different. In addition, because we are human beings and not a book, we don’t go through the stages neatly, one after another—we go back and forth, sometimes over long periods. You may think you are really over the divorce and then find something like a birthday, a rainy day or a song plunges you back into an earlier stage. This is a kind of “recycling” and is normal. If it feels that you get stuck in one of these stages, it may be a time to get involved in therapy. In general, however; you will find the painful episodes will be less frequent and less intense as time goes by. Here are some suggestions made in Rebuilding to help you deal with the aftermath of divorce.

Stage 1: Denial
Keep a journal—write down both positive and negative feelings. It’s important to know what you are feeling and what helps you move from one emotion to another. Knowing yourself better is a way to help yourself in moving away from problem behavior patterns. Feelings become more powerful if you try to bury them—and besides, it doesn’t work! Give yourself permission to cry and yell at appropriate times.

Stage 2: Anger
Make an anger list—it’s easy to fantasize that your former partner and the marriage were wonderful and feel it is unbearable to lose it. An anger list will help you be more realistic. Three phases of dealing with anger described in Rebuilding are: 1—accepting that it’s okay to feel angry, 2—learning how to express anger constructively and 3—forgiveness. This last is a tricky one, but it is important to realize that forgiveness is for YOU, to release you from the burden of carrying the anger around. It also means forgiving yourself for any part you played in the relationship problems.

These authors state that divorce anger needs to be “vented and released.” Some ways to do this include using humor, telling a friend, fantasizing about your revenge, physical exercise, screaming, swearing, talking to am empty chair as though it were your former partner, etc.

Stage 3: Bargaining
You feel you would do anything so things will go back to the way they were. I have heard people say “I just want my life back.” Try to see this for what it is—just another stage, not a signal to reunite.

Stage 4: Letting go
This can be very difficult, because it may come with a recurrence of depression and even suicidal thoughts. It is also the stage when you can focus on finding new meaning in your life and making new choices. It may be a good time to be in therapy or join a support group.

Stage 5: Acceptance
You come to some sense of comfort with what has happened and find some new understanding and meaning in your life. You may find that you have more energy to do some things that you’ve always wanted to do: travel, try a new hobby, join a special interest or spiritual group or volunteer in some capacity. If you want to do so, you may be ready to think about a new relationship.

The good news is that recovering from a divorce can be a time for dealing with past pain in our lives that may be unresolved and may have contributed to problems in the marriage. What does that mean? As we go through our lives, we all develop “working models” about ourselves, other people and how the world works. We have running narratives in our heads about our lives. Some of this we are aware of and some of it we are not. Sometimes, especially if you grew up in a dysfunctional family, there are distortions in these ideas that may cause pain to us and interfere with our ability to have healthy relationships.

How this might work:
If you, for example, developed a need to “help” others, you may have married someone needy, or, if you have a tendency to be over-responsible, you may have married someone under-responsible. If you grew up with a critical parent, you may have married someone you feel the need to criticize as a way to keep that critical parent voice outside instead of inside, or you may have married someone highly critical.

These recognitions are essential for choosing and maintaining healthier relationships. Therapy can be helpful in clarifying these patterns. To work on your own, Fisher and Alberti recommend that at first you just notice how it feels for you to make some slight changes in your behavior. You are just in the information-gathering stage.

Some examples:

  • If you are over-responsible, ask someone to do something for you
  • If you are under-responsible, take on a new task
  • If you are a perfectionist, leave something undone
  • The most important task—be kind to yourself. If you find that you have made mistakes in your life (and who hasn’t!), try to remember that you did the best you could with what you knew at the time. Difficult times often provide us with an opportunity for tremendous emotional and spiritual growth. This can be the unexpected gift that evolves during the aftermath of a divorce.