Author Q&A

The Love They Lost : Living with the Legacy of Our Parents' Divorce
by Stephanie Staal

(Page 2 of 2)

A Conversation with Stephanie Staal

Q: Why did you write THE LOVE THEY LOST?

A: It started as a personal exploration. For years, I didn't talk about my parents' divorce with anyone ... when casual acquaintances asked about my family, I would often use the plural - "my parents" - simply because I didn't want to invite any questions. And when I left home for college, I really thought I could leave my parents' divorce behind me, too. But then I hit my early twenties, and like most of my friends, I was starting to confront choices about my career and relationships, piecing together a vision of the future. That's when I suddenly found myself increasingly haunted by my parents' divorce and feeling terribly confused and alone. I didn't know where to turn, until one night, a friend of mine and I started talking about our relationship fears and comparing the ways we acted on them. The conversation shifted, and suddenly we were tracing some of these fears and behaviors back to childhood, recalling episodes from our parents' divorce that once wounded us so deeply. For the first time, I realized I wasn't alone in my feelings. As I started to talk to others, I learned that many of us were in the same position, facing similar anxieties in our relationships, driven by painful memories and looking for guidance.

Q: But aren't there already a lot of books on divorce?

A: Yes, but surprisingly, not one written from the unique viewpoint of an "adult child of divorce." When I searched for books on divorce that I could relate to, I found myself in front of a packed bookshelf, yet essentially coming up empty-handed. Despite the wealth of information on divorce, I quickly discovered that my peers, who had been raised against a similar backdrop of experience, were my best resource in making sense of the impact my parents' divorce has had on my life. And I wanted to give voice to our experiences. Beyond our intimate conversations and the occasional memoir and television show, our perspectives have been noticeably absent from the public dialogue on divorce. Instead, most discussions center on whether or not parents should get divorced - a debate that is somewhat irrelevant to those of us whose parents are already divorced. In fact, because divorce has become such a politically charged issue, I found that many people were reluctant to discuss the intricacies of our family histories with those who might not comprehend the push and pull we feel; not wanting pity or proclamations, we choose silence. By writing a book of personal testimonials, including my own, I wanted to add our stories, told in our own voices, to the evolving dialogue about the divorced family. By discussing what helped and what hurt during our own experiences with divorce, I hoped to help parents who are contemplating splitting up in the future ways in which to protect their children emotionally. Most importantly, though, I wanted to offer the comfort of shared experience and a sense of hope to others dealing with the legacy of their parents' divorce.

Q: How did you find the people you interviewed? Were most eager to tell their story?

A: In an effort to get as broad a cross-section of respondents as I could, I placed ads in local newspapers across the country, posted listings on the Internet, and relied on word of mouth. I was overwhelmed by the volume of responses I received. In addition to the hundreds who were interested in participating in the book, there were the countless informal conversations I had with other adult children of divorce on the street, over dinner, at parties. The more I talked to people about their parents' divorce, the more I realized just how eager they were to not only share their own stories, but to also find out what others were going through. I ultimately interviewed 120 people. Since this was not a clinical population I interviewed, a number of those with whom I spoke had never sought or received counseling in relation to their parents' divorce; in fact, the majority had rarely, if ever, discussed the divorce at length within their own families. Yet, because my parents are divorced, too, they felt more comfortable and more willing to come forth and give voice to their feelings and experiences. Several people admitted that our conversations were the first time they had ever openly talked about their parents' divorce.

Q: What about your parents? What have been their reactions to the book?

A: They have both been extremely supportive, although at first, they couldn't really understand why I would want to bring up what they considered the past. They were also a little bewildered, I think, to learn that thirteen years later, I was still being affected by their divorce. They believed that I had "gotten over it," partly because I had never told them otherwise. As a family, we had never discussed the divorce and its aftermath, and until I started writing the book, I don't think I even knew how to talk about the divorce with my parents. So that was an important turning point for me. I started to articulate some of the emotions that I had carefully avoided as a teenager, telling my parents how sad and painful their breakup was for me, which was not easy for me to say and I'm sure not easy for them to hear. We really have three separate points of view. Comments and incidents that I remember vividly, my parents have no recollection of whatsoever, and vice versa. While they see their divorce as the culmination of a failing marriage, I see it as the splitting up of my family. In the end, though, this book has been a tremendous catalyst in forcing us to finally talk about the divorce and negotiate our different versions of what happened. Talking about it with them has helped me to gain a handle on the past. Likewise, many people have told me that just remembering and talking about the divorce has encouraged them to bring up any unresolved issues for discussion with their own parents, and I hope this book will continue to open the channels of communication within families.

Q: Why did you choose to write the book in an anecdotal format?

A: Actually, I didn't see any other choice. I am not a psychologist, lawyer, economist, or sociologist conducting a formal study; my expertise on parental divorce comes from my living through it and growing up as a member of the divorce generation. Since this book is primarily aimed at other adult children of divorce, I felt very strongly that it should be written in the language of experience. For us, divorce is not a set of statistics or a series of conclusions, but a constantly unfolding story marked by family dynamics and personalities, individual circumstances and events. While other books may give us a more intellectual understanding of divorce, they often lack the emotional connection we crave. Such writings don't spur us to reflect on our own situations, but maintain the distance between what we read and what we live. That's why I recounted specific anecdotes that fit into general themes that emerged again and again during the interviews, like the sense of growing up too soon, or traveling between two worlds, or how money is often equated with love after our parents split apart. It's our stories that construct the framework through which we view our parents' divorce; it's our stories that we remember and tell each other; it's our stories that provide insight and hold the power to instruct and inform.

Q: To what extent do you and those you interviewed identify yourselves as members of "Generation Ex"?

A: When divorce is a part of your life, it's difficult to measure the extent to which you define yourself by it. Sometimes I wonder "what if?" - how would I be the same or different if my parents had stayed together? Obviously I can't answer that question. But that being said, the accelerating divorce rate has certainly been a major influence in shaping our views, both as individuals and as a generation. We occupy a special place in the cultural landscape, coming of age during a time of transition when divorce quickly transformed from social stigma to commonplace event. We watched our parents, our neighbors, our relatives and our friends' parents get divorced. The culture of divorce has permeated our generation to such an extent that even those whose parents didn't divorce are affected. Of course, there were many other social influences beyond divorce that transformed the nature of family and home during our childhoods. And now, as adults, questions and doubts about marriage hover over the members of my generation as we enter into our own relationships. For many experts and social critics, this fear of commitment is the coda of the divorce legacy, the final bang. But for those of us dealing with it on a daily basis, their gloomy conclusions often leave us asking ourselves, "Okay, so now what?" How are we dealing with our insecurities and our fears? How have some of us overcome them? These are the questions that are so rarely explored, yet most directly affect our lives today. My favorite example is this: One man I interviewed, who broke down in tears as he remembered growing up in a divorced home, admitted that he was petrified of getting married because he was afraid that it wouldn't work, even though he had been with his girlfriend for several years. That wasn't the end of the story, though. Afterwards, he talked about his parents' divorce with his girlfriend for the first time. A couple of months later, he proposed. We may be living with the legacy of our parents' divorce, but we are also creating our own.

Excerpted from The Love They Lost by Stephanie Staal Copyright © 2000 by Stephanie Staal. Excerpted by permission of Delta, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Stephanie Staal graduated from Barnard College in New York City with a degree in Anthropology and a minor in Political Science. Thne she attended Columbia University's Gradute School of Journalism, where The Love They Lost began as her master's thesis. Stephanie is now a freelance writer and lives in New York and Maryland with her husband John and dog Emma.