Q: After years of anguish, bitterness and disappointment, I think that I can say that I have finally come to terms with my divorce.
It was not the divorce, per se, that was the problem. I think that both of us knew that our marriage had run its course, that once the honeymoon phase of our time together was over, we did not have enough in common to keep us interested in each other.
The divorce was inevitable.
The problem was the way in which it happened. My husband took the lead in our separation, but he did so by going behind my back and talking to our neighbours, friends and family before he talked to me.
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I had no idea what was going on. But everyone else in our little town did and when I finally clicked into what was happening, I was just sick.
The whole town knew more about my private life than I did. It was awful, and for many years I held a grudge against my former husband for spilling our private lives into the gossip network inflaming coffee row.
But then one day our son said to me, “maybe Dad went about that whole thing wrong, I don’t know, but the real question is, what should he have done differently?”
When I think about it, I don’t know what the answer is. I do not know how my former husband could have handled our initial separation in a better way.
But I am thinking that there is a better way.
A: Like you, I think that your husband could have handled your divorce a lot better than he did. I will use the following to make some alternative suggestions.
But before I do, I want to be clear that in what follows we are talking about relationships that may have run out of steam We are not referring to those relationships marred with either physical or sexual violence or abuse. The rule of thumb for violent relationships is that if a person is in a violent relationship he or she should find good counsellors and good lawyers and do what they can to terminate those relationships.
Usually in relationships that are not working anymore, both persons know that as a couple they are in trouble but often as not only one person will take the initiative and call for a separation.
That would be the divorcer. The question is what can the divorcer do to end the relationship with as little disruption to their personal, professional and family lives as possible?
That is a hard one. The problem is that it is almost impossible to end a marriage, or any long-term intimate relationship, without inflicting some level of hurt and disappointment. For many the hurt is devastating, almost as devastating as is the guilt in which the person who took the initiative to call an end to it carries.
If a person is ending a relationship, he or she would do well to prepare for it, to know that the next while is going to be loaded with guilt, anger and pain, and to have counsellors, friends, and close family members on hand to get some support while going through the misery. You cannot avoid the difficult times but you can make them more tolerable.
1. A difficult marriage is one in which both people are struggling to find moments of self satisfaction. If your marriage is not working, it means that either you or both of you are not growing along the path of personal growth. No one is getting the support from the marriage to fulfill his or her personal attributes. Divorce means new opportunities. Try not to get caught in justifying why your marriage was bad or otherwise. It just was and things stand to get better after the divorce.
2. Try not to get caught in the blame game or become defensive. No one is perfect. Both parties in an intimate relationship practise any number of mistakes in the name of intimacy. There is no point to blaming one person. And no one should be running around the neighbour-hood blaming the other person for problems at home. The marriage did not work out and while anyone can learn from their mistakes, burdening the self with guilt and anger is not the path chosen by most people to carry them into personal growth and development.
3. Divorce works better for everyone when it is clean and simple. Don’t pretend to hang on to each other. You cannot be good friends, at least not for the first few years. But you can say goodbye effectively. You separate, give yourselves time to grieve the loss of your marriage, the loss of your partner, and you start rebuilding what is left.
I do not believe that any relationship is as complex or challenging as a marriage or a long-term intimate relationship. Right now the statistics for marital success are running about 50 percent.
Those are not great odds. Of course we are going to have separation and divorce. That is not the end of the world. They are just steps along the way to even better relationships sometime in the future.
