Making Lemonade and the Challenge of Single Parenting

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How Long Need a Divorce Disrupt Our Lives?

--by Sarah Adams

No one has ever said divorce was easy. In fact many people live for years in a painful and dead relationship because divorce just seems too difficult even to contemplate. People sometimes fear judgment of others, fear being alone, fear that their children will be damaged irreparably, fear economic hardship, or fear that they will forever continue to hassle and haggle with their ex so that life will be intolerable. Certainly the decision to divorce can be an act of courage, or it can be a fact of life over which one has no control. Either way divorce takes an emotional toll that can be as traumatic and life-altering as the death of one's nearest and dearest. Why is it, then, that some people can survive a divorce, recapture their emotional stability and get on w ith their lives within a relatively short time, while for others the disruption of divorce goes on for years and years?

From my experience over the past twenty years working with clients who are in various stages of divorce, I think most people's first response to that question would be, "It depends on the person one is getting the divorce from." I hear such complaints as, "He is the most selfish person I have ever known," or, "She won't recognize that I have another family to support and that it is not possible to pay as much as she wants," or, "Why should the kids have anything at all to do with him after the way he treated me," or, "He is such a terrible role model that I cannot bear to have the children around him," or, "I hate him so much I cannot even tolerate the idea of my child caring about him," or "It galls me so much to think he can take the kids off to Disneyland or some exotic vacation with him when I can barely afford to take them to a movie." The list of reasons why we must keep this war raging goes on and on.

In reading the last issue of Solo I was impressed both with the article about the eleventh commandment "Thou shalt agree that the welfare of the children supersedes all personal agendas" and with the P.A.C.T. (Parents and Children Together) suggestions. I would recommend that every divorcing family go through some sort of program as the one described in the P.A.C.T. article. However, until we are willing to do a lot of internal emotional work to solve our own hurts and disappointments, to forgive ourselves as well as our former spouses, to come to terms with the altered circumstances of our lives, and to change the stories we carry around in our heads about the other, we are not going to be able to follow the eleventh commandment. Not only will we be unable to put the children's needs first, we will not be able to embrace our own singleness and see that there can be new possibilities and new adventures in store for us.

It is no wonder that we find moving through divorce so difficult. In our culture we are taught how to acquire things both material and non material (what little child does not know how to win mom's or dad's praise?). But we are not taught how to lose or to give up things both material and non material. Few of us have role models of how to grieve and move on. In fact the grieving widow has been mythologized and viewed as loyal to the one who has departed, rather than a person moving through a stage in her life. Perhaps one can learn to look at divorce as a stage in our development and begin to think of our children's father not as an ex-spouse, but as one with whom we have a business relationship. Of course, that is easier said than done, but let me make a few suggestions for how we can move beyond our emotional reactivity to ex-spouses and get on with our lives.

First of all we need to change some of the beliefs we carry around in our heads about who this other person is, for it is our ideas that create our emotional reactions. It is natural for us to assign motives to another, to blame, and to focus on what the other is doing rather than to focus upon ourselves. If a spouse is late to pick up a child, we assume he does not care or that he is doing it just to get even or to exert his power. If a mother says she needs money for something or the other, her ex may immediately react with anger remembering that she never could control her spending habits. If a father says he has to work late and cannot see the children a certain night, the mother is likely to become vindictive and reply that he cannot see them at all that week. The examples go on and on of how we become rigid and unbending because we do not trust the goodwill of the other. We rarely look at ourselves to see how we contribute to the ongoing battle.

When I was a child and often fought with my brother and sister, my grandmother who lived with us and brought us up used to separate us and say, "It takes two to make a fight." She was not interested in who did what to whom or who started it. As much as I hated hearing her say we were both responsible for the altercation, when I knew I was wronged or the innocent party, I did learn something from her admonitions. When there is conflict of any sort, we need to look at our own part in it. We need to look at the dance we do together and try to see what our own dance steps are. We cannot change the other, but if we change ourselves the other has to change in reaction to us. Most of us cannot get to that simple truth when we are still nursing our wounds and carrying around stories in our head about how we have been wronged and abused by our ex-spouse. As long as we feel self-righteous, we cannot move forward in letting go of the past and forging a workable co-parenting relationship in the present.

I've often thought about how we learn to give up our self-righteous stance and become more objective. Certainly we cannot become objective if the wounds of our split have not been healed. This takes time and it involves a lot of emotional growth. I think we can help ourselves through this process if we concentrate on the small exchanges or activities that can bring us pleasure each day. We need to reach out to get support from friends or family, or from others who are in similar circumstances (as long as we do not play the "poor me" game with each other.) We need to focus on how our new status in life can carry with it new adventures if we are open to looking at the positive side of change. We may need to grieve for what we have lost, but we also need to let go of the past and look toward the future, which includes establishing a workable relationship with our children's other parent.

If we are to achieve a workable relationship with an ex-spouse, another thing we must learn is to separate our feelings and our needs from our children's. Sometimes when we are disappointed we assume our children are disappointed, when in actuality they may not be. Sometimes we voice our need as the child's need; such as, "She wanted to be with me for the holidays because she is not comfortable with her father's family." Then we proceed as though we are protecting the child.

In addition, we make all kinds of judgments about the way we think that the other spouse is teaching the wrong values to the child, and the child "will grow up to be just like his mother (or his father)." In extreme cases our fears may be justified, but in most cases we are getting our own feelings and needs mixed up with those of the child's.

Finally, if we are truly to move on with our lives, we must make strides to become financially ind ependent. Economic dependency gives rise to all sorts of conflicts and is often the primary cause for the ongoing war between ex-spouses. This may sound like a radical idea to some people, especially to women, but wouldn't it make more sense to invest in oneself than to spend years in court fighting over spousal or child support? Instead of getting stuck in "it isn't fair" and fighting for years to make it "fair," we have another alternative. This is to admit that sometimes life is not fair, and then go out and do the hard work that it takes to become financially independent. This may mean that we have to put the children in day care or that we have to work at a job that is not our first choice, but by making certain less than ideal choices, we may help ourselves to get on with our lives instead of getting caught up in a battle that saps our energy and leaves us little room for creative and joyful living.

Sarah Adams is a family therapist and family life educator.