Shaublog

Maybe the hardest decision in one’s life – the Decision to Divorce.  In my experience it is never a decision taken lightly.  Here’s how it seems to work in most cases.   You feel disatisfied or increasingly discouraged with the relationship.   After many arguments over the same thing, or attempts to get your partner to hear what is so vitally important to you, without success, the thought of ending the relationship begins to dawn.  Imagine a bright line boundary – on one side is “Emotional Commitment to Marriage,” on the other, “Emotional Disengagement from Marriage.”  You seem to bounce up against the boundary continually, but your commitment to your relationship is stong enough to keep you from crossing over.  It looks a bit like this  ……………….

You can go on for months or years, just bouncing up against that boundary.  You believe you have let your partner know that you were feeling desparate about your disconnection.  You know that you have tried.  Then, one day, something happens inside you.  Maybe it was another fight over the same thing.  Maybe it was just waking up one morning and looking at yourself in the mirror and knowing something has changed inside of you.  Whatever the spur – you have crossed over the boundary…and this boundary that for a moment seemed open enough for you to pass through has closed up.  It has become an emotional, impenetrable wall.   Now your process looks something like this:

When I start the process of divorce mediation with a couple, one of the first things I want to determine is whether one of the partners has crossed over that line.  Almost always this has occurred.   On the infrequent occasions it hasn’t, a referral to a couples therapist is always made. 

A really important lesson I have learned over the years is that once a person has crossed over that boundary they have made a decision that is unchangeable.  If you are the partner who feels left, you may experience a wide range of wrenching emotions – grief, fury, confusion, a sense of betrayal.   My recommendation is to get help with those emotions.  Seek out counseling.  Read helpful books, like Bruce Fisher’s excellent, Rebuilding.  Your life has changed – and while you may need to process through the trauma  and the deep sense of injustice you may feel, once your partner has crossed over the line they will not cross back.  While you may be drawn to do whatever you can to try to get them to do this, those efforts will amost certainly be fruitless and (here’s the important part) they will cause you deep and lacerating pain and frustration.  My hope for those who have been left is that you find the resources you need to manage the pain and direct your energy to caring for yourself and slowly discovering your path to recovery.

Our fights sometimes have the feel of a couple of siblings in the back of the car on an endless road trip. “Johnny, Susie, stop fighting!” The inevitable response is something like: Susie – “He hit me first!” Johnnie – “I did not! She kicked me.” Susie – “That’s because he took my pencil.” Johnny – “Did not!” Susie – “Did too!” Etc. Now this is not to say that the hurt and anger we feel when we are locked in painful conflict with our partner is child-like or immature. Quite the contrary – it seems to go to the core of who we are sometimes. That’s not the point here. If you look at the above scene, you’ll see a circular argument in which each person believes the other person started it…that the other person is the cause of the distress. Of course, the other person thinks that it started with you. In law, partners who are locked into this conflict will go and hire lawyers, who in turn will try to convince a judge that their side is right and the cause of the problem is the other person. I promise you, that in every case that a judge says one person is the cause of the problem, that decision will never, ever, ever convince the other disputant. He or she will just feel screwed – unheard – misunderstood. For good reason, too, because our ongoing conflicts are ultimately circular in causation. We ultimately react to the other person who ultimately reacts to us. By the time the circle is joined, the conflict has a life of its own and the start is about as obscure as trying to find the missing link in the fog of antiquity. The key isn’t who is right. Rather the key is, how can we disengage from this cycle and stop hurting each other and get back on track. Helping with this often difficult task is, by the way, one of the great services a skilled marital therapist can provide.

There really is no such thing as “your day in court.” The desire (or fantasy) that if only we had a chance to tell our story, a judge would understand the justice of our cause and the right outcome will result. I say to those people, “Forget about it.” First of all, if there are two people in a legal dispute, both of them feel that justice is on their side. The folks in the robes making the decision are going to take the argument of the other person very seriously. For years I have heard people in courthouse hallways after their day in court stunned at the decision. Sometimes they are shocked because they are so polarized from the other person that they can’t imagine anyone taking their spouse seriously. Other times, they lose in court because the judicial officer was overworked, impatient, biased, irritated at some inconsequential thing they or their lawyer did or simply weren’t paying attention. Many hearings in divorce are early in a case and seem over before they begin. You only get to tell your story in 20 pages and your lawyer only gets to talk for 5 minutes. Next time you opt for having a court decide your future, rather than sitting down with your spouse and a neutral mediator, you may want to think again.

Divorce is a process over time. It’s not an event. Many experts who have studied the divorce process believe that to fully recover from the divorce and see the world through truly renewed eyes may take as much as two years. Abigail Trafford, in her excellent Crazy Time, believes that the worst part of the process occurs in the 6-month period after separation. That’s when people may feel that their world is completely out of control. However, once we get through that wretched stage, while the going is a bit easier, it will still take a long time to: See ourselves as truly separate from our spouse; Be able to even think about committing to another relationship; Stop ruminating about the marriage – what you did wrong, what they did wrong; No longer feel triggered by what our spouse does; Actually accept the notion of our spouse with another partner; Honestly feel happy again. I think the most important message that a divorcing or depressed person can receive is that there will come a time when you will feel good again. It won’t happen tomorrow, next week or even next month – but it will happen in due course. Statements like that may be no more than seeds planted in another’s mind and heart. They will germinate in their own time. It may be the greatest gift we, living outside the world of the suffering, as we do, can offer the dispirited.