Marriage/Divorce
ENDING THE DIVORCE WARS
Joe stomps out the door, yelling a string of expletives at
Judy as he gets into his car. She follows him and, picking
up a baseball bat, smashes the windshield. Their
five-year-old son stands on the porch crying.
What is happening? Joe and Judy have been married for ten
years. They recently separated and now are at war with each
other.
Joe and Judy are normal people. Before their marriage
problems escalated to open warfare, they would never have
behaved like this. Of course, this is an extreme
example, but unfortunately, it is common for people to
act in stupid, harmful ways during a "divorce war".
Why? Because they are extremely upset. There is deep
hurt and a sense of betrayal. They feel guilty and down on
themselves as worthless and unlovable. They are often
worried, scared and depressed. And angry. Very angry. The
other person is seen as a contemptible, bad, awful, dangerous
individual. Each blames the other. If a third party is
involved, he or she becomes the convenient target of blame.
These emotions result from a very common but quite
unhealthy pattern of reciprocal and mutual button pushing.
When people know each other well, it is easy to say or do
something mean that will hurt and anger the other person.
The other person then strikes back, leading to further
retaliation and so on, creating a vicious circle. These
patterns tend to escalate over a period of time to the point
that it is very difficult for the parties to talk without
getting upset and angry. Thus, real issues don't get
resolved and dissatisfactions accumulate, fueling the growing
conflict. The button pushing can also escalate at any one
time, leading to the kind of senseless, destructive acts of
violence of the fictional Joe and Judy. Button pushing
can also be expressed in ways other than fighting, like the
silent treatment, or growing apart, which is really pushing
each other apart.
When marriage problems lead to talk of divorce, the
simmering feud often turns to open warfare. To fight the war, the
parties use the weapons at their disposal; name-calling,
accusations, guilt, sometimes even physical assault. But the
big guns are the money, the kids and the courts.
The man usually has the money, so he threatens to cut off
her support. The woman typically has the kids and she uses
the threat of not allowing visitation as her weapon. Both
may try to win the loyalty of the children by buying them
off, letting them do what they want or turning them against
the other parent. The battle isn’t just limited to the
couple and the children. The families and friends often get
involved in the fray.
In a divorce war, the courts often become the
battleground. The legal system is by nature adversarial, so
conflict is inadvertently encouraged. The epitome of this is
the custody battle: two people who once loved each other and
voluntarily chose to have children together now each claim
that the other is an unfit parent.
Psychologically, divorce litigation is usually an
extension of the marital conflict. Fighting legally in court
is just another way to prove who is right and who is wrong.
The parties believe they can win the war in court, but that
rarely happens. A battle may be won, but the war goes on,
often with years of suing back and forth until their
financial and emotional resources are drained.
A divorce war is the personal equivalent of nuclear war -
nobody wins. But the biggest losers are the children caught
in the crossfire. Each parent sincerely believes he or she
is looking out for the child's interests, but usually it is
the opposite. They are bequeathing their children a legacy of
bitterness and creating a polarization in the family that
forces the child to choose between the two most loved
people. That means the child is going to lose one parent
because they fear losing both.
Research has shown that the most important factor in how
emotionally damaging a divorce is to children is not who gets
custody, but how much conflict exists between the parents
after the divorce. There are certainly legitimate legal
issues, but psychologically, everyone is usually better off
if the parents can find a way to end the war.
How can a divorce war be stopped? Most importantly, by
learning how to change the intense upset feelings that fuel
it. It is common for people to be upset about marriage
problems, but common doesn't mean inevitable, or healthy.
Fortunately, people can learn emotional management skills
(EMS), which means changing unhealthy feelings to healthy
equivalents, not suppressing all feeling. For example,
anxiety is unhealthy because it is a "false alarm". Concern,
on the other hand, is healthy. These are qualitatively
different emotions because when one is only concerned but not
anxious, the "danger alarm" system of the brain is not
activated. Similarly, deep hurt and depression at rejection
is unhealthy, while disappointment and sadness are
appropriate.
Modern cognitive/behavioral psychotherapy is often quite
effective in helping people learn to run their feelings
better. The basis of this approach is the idea that upset,
unhealthy feelings are largely caused by upsetting thoughts,
not directly by what is happening. For example, the deep
hurt most people experience when they are rejected comes from
the perceived loss of self-worth or lovability, not the
rejection itself. If you see love as a validation of your
self-worth, then your “stock” in yourself will go down if you
are rejected. However, if you see rejection as meaning that
you are not a good match for the person who is rejecting you,
you will still feel sorry and sad, but not deeply hurt or
worthless.
Once the parties learn emotional management skills and are
less upset, they can come to terms with each other and reach
a healthy resolution of their marital difficulties. At
one extreme, a healthy resolution involves
"re-courting" and creating a marriage that works
for both parties. The other extreme is to go ahead with the divorce -
but not because they are upset, but
because they realize they are not right for each other due to
irreconcilable differences.
That means they will probably never agree about many basic
issues, just like the United States and the former Soviet
Union did not agree about the best form of government. But
countries and individuals can agree to disagree, opening the
way for negotiations.
Once the couple has toned down emotional upsetness and
accepted their differences, they can begin the delicate
process of negotiating a "win/win" arrangement. The one
indisputable fact is that they did agree voluntarily to make
children together, so they are stuck with each other as the
parents of their children. If they are truly concerned about
their children, they had better seek a way for the children
to have the best relationship possible with both parents.
When the war is over in their hearts, most divorcing couples
can learn to coexist in peace.
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