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This is one of a series of articles in Lesson 4 - optimize your relationships. This subseries focuses on primary relationships.
This summarizes alternatives for people who are considering legal divorce,
or are already divorcing. The goal here is to consider every option
available before committing. The article also illustrates what your
kids and parents will probably need if you choose to divorce,
This article assumes your familiar with...
-
the
intro to this nonprofit
Web site and the premises
underlying it
-
self-improvement Lessons
-
this
perspective on primary relationships, and...
-
these
Q&A items about divorce and
divorce recovery
|
Premises
Divorce starts in
courtship, when wounded, unaware, needy partners commit to the wrong
person, for the wrong reason, at the wrong time. This cannot be reversed.
Mates who make three right choices CAN learn to improve their
relationship if it becomes troubled.
The
primary causes of divorce are:
-
one or both mates are
of a low-nurturance childhood; and don't (want to) know that or what to
do about it;
-
both mates are unaware of some or all of
these
- they don't know what they need to know to resolve these
and...
-
either or both partners may carry
and
not know that or how to finish it.
-
these three core problems are amplified in
typical stepfamily unions by a mix of
All
common surface reasons for divorce are based on these three or four
factors
Implication - if you and/or your mate
(a) each made three wise courtship choices and (b) are considering divorce,
your reasons for doing so are probably not your real problems!
Popular superficial reasons are:
|
arguing and fighting
affairs
lying and distrust
abuse |
money
addictions
"no time"
boredom |
sex
control
values conflicts
personal habits |
If you two are conflicted over one or
more of these and you haven't explored the primary causes above, you may be
able to avoid divorce trauma for you and any dependents.
Alternatives to Legal Divorce
What follows assumes you (a) still care about your mate, and (b) feel some
ambivalence about whether to divorce or not. If you don't, these options may
be of no value to you - other than helping you understand why your
relationship is ending. This is essential for grieving divorce-related
losses.
Choose an undistracted place and time, and check to
see if your
is
your
If
not, you may have a distorted reaction to these options. If your
true Self is not guiding you, make
your top priority.
Alternatives for All Couples
Following these options will help you defuse the first three primary
causes of divorce above.
1)
Adopt a long-range point of view. Some research studies suggest that it
can take ten or more years to fully adjust to divorce trauma. For your and
any kids' sakes, take your time working at these alternatives!
2) KEY - Invest several weeks
in doing Lesson 1 - assess
yourself
and your mate honestly for significant psychological wounds. Then ask (vs. demand) that
your mate to do the same, and discuss your
results as teammates. If s/he's not willing, consider these
options.
This assessment is the most impactful thing you
two can do to
make a wise choice about your health, your primary relationship, and any
dependent kids.
If you decide that either or both of you is a
(GWC
= ruled by a false self), then (a) decide if you're motivated to...
-
manage any
you may have, and then...
-
recover - i.e. work to free
your true Self to guide you, and
your wounds.
- Assess
your current
honestly.
If anything other than your personal
wholistic health and integrity often ranks higher than your primary relationship, that
usually suggests a false self rules one or both of you, and/or one or both
of you made unwise commitment decisions.
Doing these usually requires
hitting true (vs. pseudo)
and breaking protective denials. If you aren't ready to do that, the rest of
these divorce alternatives may be of little use for now.
Option -.use these three
worksheets to see if you
think one or both of you chose the wrong person to commit to, for the wrong
reasons, at the wrong time. If so, you can't undo that. These alternatives
can still benefit you and your family.
.
3) Read
this and
this together, and then
commit to learning communication basics and skills
(Lesson 2) - ideally a
couple. This will open up an effective way to solve your conflicts,
rather than argue, fight, avoid, criticize, debate, explain, justify,
collapse, give in, stonewall, guilt trip, manipulate, an/or give up,
Lesson 2 will only work for you and your family IF your true Selves
are guiding your personalities.-ties.
4) Do Lesson 3 together, and assess whether incomplete grief is
causing part of your relation-ship stress. Three decades of clinical work with over 1,000
typical marital partners since 1981 suggests to me that
a major cause of personal, marital,
and parental stress is
psychological wounds + unawareness of healthy
grief concepts impair the natural three-level
This inhibits for-ming healthy new pair-bonds.
Write
down specifically what you and each
dependent child will probably
if you decide to di-vorce. Then
assess what, specifically, each of you are likely to gain. Then try to
evaluate these against your long-term personal and parental goals for your old
age. If you don’t have any specific goals yet, in-vest time in visioning them
now. Authorize yourself to be Self-ish, without guilt: you are
responsible for designing your old-age circumstances!
5)
Read and discuss these
books together.
They represent the perceptions and wisdom of many relationship mentors, and
add to these divorce-alternative options. If you’re reluctant to learn from these authors, I suspect that your Self is disabled
or just weary.
Visit
http://www.smartmarriages.com, and
browse for relevant marriage-support programs near you. I recommend
"PAIRS"
as having a good track record for marriage strengthening. Also consider "Imago"
programs for couples, based on the useful ideas of Dr. Harville Hendrix.
If one or both of you aren't motivated to do this, what does that mean about
your priorities and who's setting them?
Recall - we're reviewing primary alternatives to divorce...
Option 6)
Try
marital counseling. Most
state-funded mental-health agencies offer qualified individ-ual and couples therapy on a subsidized
"sliding scale" rate, depending on your income. If you've never tried therapy
or have had poor results from it, read
this. If either of you
are taking medication for psycho-logical or sleep problems, read this
interesting research summary.
If either of
you balk at this, try using your
to unearth what’s
really in the way. Rea-lity: therapy does little
lasting good unless you each are willing to (a) learn new information, and (b)
risk
some core values and/or priorities
to get something you need. If you don't give therapy a good
try, you risk wondering "What if we had..." in when you're
older.
7)
Identify
the people in your life who have the
most influence on your decision
to divorce or not. To
minimize reality distortions, (a) ensure your Self (capital "S") is
you, and consider using an objective counselor's help. Be
alert for well-meaning supporters offering you
advice that...
-
isn't founded on healthy primary-relationship
basics (Lesson 4),
-
is unaware of (a) your primary
and (b) whether they're well-filled or not,
-
is really about the advisor's own needs,
values, and
agenda, and...
-
that may come from a narrow-visioned, biased,
well-intentioned false self.
Option 8)
Avoid comparing yourselves to other couples
- specially your grandparents, par-ents, siblings, and/or
real or fictional hero/ines. Doing so risks increasing your guilt, anxiety, confusion, and shame.
You and your mate and family are unique in the universe. Yes, you
surely have things in common with other spouses - and none of them have
the unique mix of needs, opinions, values, per-sonalities, perceptions,
histories, wounds,
and circumstances that you two do.
If your
ruling subselves insist on comparing, at least rate
yourself against couples similar to you in ages, education, ethnicity,
spirituality, income, and probable woundedness.
9)
If
either of you feels that
abuse is a reason to divorce, make sure you understand the three
requisites for that provocative word…
-
one person has significant power over another – i.e.
s/he fills
some primal needs of the other, like a parent does for a dependent child or
elder; and…
-
the “power” person fills their own needs in a way that
significantly injures the dependent person psychologically, physically, and/or
spiritually; and…
-
the dependent person can’t (vs. won’t)
defend themselves or withdraw.
Many
unaware people say "You're abusive," when they really mean "You're
aggressive with me." This
distinction is important in relationship problem-solving, because of the high
that an accusation of
abuse can trigger.
Would you
rather be publicly called an aggressive person or an
abuser
(or neither)? True abuse is
always a symptom of
major false-self
+
ignorance of effective-communication basics
and skills. Once admitted, both can be greatly reduced, with patient effort.
10) Affairs. If a reasons you're considering divorce is because either of you
has had one or more sexual or romantic affairs, read and discuss this
article. Typical affairs mean several things:
-
some or all people involved are
significantly wounded, and...
-
they have important
that aren't being
met in their current circumstances, and...
-
they aren't able to
effectively often enough; and...
-
one or both mates may have made up to three
unwise
Option
11) Do a "guilt
check." One or both of you may be carrying excessive or unwarranted
about your feelings, attitudes, or behaviors toward your partner. If so,
that can skew or complicate your decision-making process.
With your Self guiding you, meditate and
honestly list any significant guilts you're feeling now -
including any that stem from your childhood and/or religious faith.
"Significant" is a judgment call. Then
apply these ideas to each guilt you feel
is "significant" to validate it, update it or let it go. Then see if
for-giving yourself or someone else (like
your partner) would release your guilt.
12) Try physical separation. Instead
of imagining living apart, you can learn valuable realities by experiencing
it without committing to an expensive, grueling legal divorce. A
family-law attorney can advise you about legal separation options. You
can...:
-
View marital separation as an investment vs. a punishment (manipulation) or
an escape.
-
Separate for five days / two weeks
/
some months...
-
about your experience,
and learn from the process...
-
Go to a retreat location to minimize distractions and optimize meditations and
clear awareness.
-
Before or during separation, form some clear
goals - e.g. like learning...
"How does living apart actually feel, vs. what I thought
it would be like?"
"What specific
reliefs do I experience? What
new
anxieties, guilts, and hurts?"
"How, specifically, does this exploratory lifestyle seem
to affect each of our resident and visiting kids? (e.g. less tension,
different, or
more?)"
"How does this experience affect my attitude and
motivation about legal divorce?"
“What am I learning about my real values,
and
"Am I letting some other peoples' needs
and values shape my decisions?"
"Who's
these questions - my
or
13) If
you're parents, mediate on “What marital options are best in the long term for our
kids and grandkids?” To help answer that wisely, reflect on and
discuss these...
-
kids' normal
developmental needs, and...
-
up to
four sets of concurrent family-adjustment
needs that typical kids of divorce and parental re/marriage must fill - often without informed adult help.
Then...
-
assess each of your kids’ status with each relevant
need,
-
try to
imagine how each of your main marriage options (stay together, separate,
divorce) would most help each
child fill their mix of needs until they live on their own, and...
-
what are your current
and how do you rank them compared to your kids' needs?
Premise - "staying together for the kids' sakes" is
usually harmful, long term. It prolongs a
environment, which inexorably promotes psychological wounds, blocked grief, ineffective communication skills, and many secondary
problems. There are exceptions.
For more perspective, read “How it Feels
When Parents Divorce” by Jill Krementz, and “Second Chances,” by Judith Wallerstein
and Sandra Blakeslee.
Note that their books are about first (biofamily) divorce,
not re/divorce.
14)
Read this perspective on using
lawyers and the courts to resolve marital and divorce conflicts. Doing this
always means one or both mates are wounded and don't know how to
problem-solve (#1 and #2 above)
Option 15) Exercise: Take
undistracted time now to imagine your elderly self a week before your death.
Get physically comfortable, put other thoughts aside, and breathe peacefully
from your belly.
Close your eyes, and imagine your present self sitting by your older self's
bedside. What would you say to each other? Ask each other? How would you
each feel about this marriage, and how you decided to manage it, across
time?
Now imagine each of your present kids
joining you as adults. Imagine them circling your present and elderly
selves. Let your present Self look into each person's eyes, and ask that man or
woman what they experienced while you were married.
Ask each adult child "How have you felt about the decisions
we parents made about healing or ending our relationship back then (i.e.
right now)? How have our decisions affected you and your kids? What do you
want me to know now?"
If you wish, thank your grown kids, and now ask your living
or dead parents to join you all. Let them be any age you wish, or several
ages. What would you want to say to them about your life? About your marital
decisions? What would you want to know? Would their grandchildren want to
speak to them?
Take your time with this exercise. Repeat it as often as
it's useful - perhaps over several weeks or months. Consider tape recording or
journaling about your experience, including the inner dialogs that you "hear."
Alternatively, journal about why you choose not to do this exercise. What are
your
say-ing - specially the
quiet ones? Slow down and listen....
Option: suggest (vs. demand) that your mate do this exercise, and see
what happens. Share it with others you feel it would benefit you and/or them.
Divorce Alternative for
Stepfamily Couples
16) If you're a stepparent and/or a re/married
bioparent, the 15 divorce
alternatives above all apply to you. Because typical stepfamilies have
many more concurrent
than average biofamilies, before deciding to split up,
Reluctance to do this usually indicates a false-self controls
your life. (See #1 above)
+ + +
If you don't have children, skip to
here.
If you are parents, an important factor in deciding whether to divorce or
not is recognizing...
