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2. DIVORCE CREATES NEW PROBLEMS

When people divorce they have visions of better lives. Old problems will vanish, they hope, as new dreams take their place. These dreams usually include meeting candidates for more intimate relationships, more compatible sexual partners, improved financial status, more freedom to pursue personal goals and new opportunities to make independent choices. As explained above, these dreams frequently do not materialize, creating a whole new set of problems. Even when desired changes do occur, they are not without unintended or unexpected consequences. Let us take a look at some frequent but unexpected consequences of divorce.

Money Matters

If you are a woman, the statistics are bleak. Lenore Weitzman, a sociologist who conducted an extensive study of divorced families, wrote in her book The Divorce Revolution that one year after divorce, women's standard of living decreases by 73 percent while men's increases by 42 percent. Furthermore, alimony is a thing of the past. Women seldom are awarded it. Weitzman writes:

These apparently simple statistics have far-reaching social and economic consequences. For most women and children, divorce means precipitous downward mobility — both economically and socially. The reduction in income brings residential moves and inferior housing, drastically diminished or nonexistent funds for recreation and leisure, and intense pressures due to inadequate time and money. (Quoted in Berman, 1991, p. 57.)

Unfortunately, all too often, effects of changing financial status are overlooked, minimized or denied.

Where Is Mr. Right?

There are other disadvantages to being a newly divorced woman. According to the Census Bureau, divorced women are far less likely to remarry than divorced men. Forty percent of the women who divorce after age thirty do not remarry. A portion of those who do not remarry may do so by choice, but many say that the pool of marriage-minded men available to these women has been shrinking. It seems that many men in similar age brackets are marrying younger women.

Imagine how shocking it is to the woman who leaves a marriage hoping to find intimacy and romance in the perfect new mate and finds herself alone instead. Loneliness is a frequent complaint in my therapy practice. "How do I meet someone if I can't stand the bar scene?" is the $64,000 question.

Being Single Again Isn't All That It's Cracked Up to Be

There is a line in a popular country and western song by K.T. Oslin that goes, "Don't kiss me like we're married, kiss me like we're lovers." The newly divorced often look forward to the excitement of playing the field. The routine and boredom of married life gives way to the titillation of being single again. What they do not anticipate and what many veterans of single life have discovered is that being single again isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Fear of rejection, fear of AIDS, learning about and adjusting to a new person's idiosyncrasies, struggling to trust again, all make single life a real challenge. Many people find themselves yearning for the very stability they left behind.

While most people do not naively assume that the adjustment period after divorce will be easy, they don't expect the intense loneliness and depression that often follows. Judith Wallerstein's long-term study of divorced couples revealed that even one decade after their divorce, many people still had not completely recovered:

With typical optimism, we wanted to believe that time would mute feelings of hurt and anger, that time itself heals all wounds, and that time automatically diminishes feelings or memories; that hurt and depression are overcome; or that jealousy, anger, and outrage will vanish. Some experiences are just as painful ten years later; some memories haunt us for a lifetime. People go on living, but just because they have lived ten more years does not mean they have recovered from the hurt. (Wallerstein and Blakeslee, 1989.)

No matter how badly a person wants a divorce, there are usually feelings of remorse about the failed relationship — especially in cases where couples have been married for many years, Looking at photographs of memorable occasions and wonderful vacations together, rereading once-cherished love letters, glancing at sentimental memorabilia, all arouse feelings of sadness and loss.

Frequently, people in the throes of divorcing are too angry and antagonistic to acknowledge these emotions, which lay dormant until the divorce proceedings have ended and the dust has settled. Then even the most zealous divorce seekers often report a sense of failure and personal loss. Even when the decision to divorce is firm, there is no escaping the sadness.

3. DIVORCE HURTS CHILDREN OF ALL AGES

There is no optimum time to divorce when children are involved. People once comforted themselves by thinking only young children get hurt when parents split. Now we know better. We have learned that, regardless of children's ages at the time their parents divorce, children lose a great deal. I recently heard a story which vividly illustrates this point from a man I sat next to on a plane.

The man was in his late sixties and said he had been married for twenty-four years. "One day, my wife announced she needed to find herself and filed for divorce," he said. He went on to tell me, "My youngest son was thirteen at the time and was the only child of three still living at home. I must admit that although I was devastated by the divorce my career blossomed afterward. Although always financially comfortable, I had never been quite as successful professionally during my marriage as I was after my divorce.

"My wife also benefited from our divorce. She went to school and received two degrees and developed her own career. I am convinced she has made more of her life than would have been possible had she remained my wife. Still," he added, "the real losers in divorce are the children." He then told me about an incident involving his thirteen-year-old son in the period leading up to the divorce.

"I have had a lifelong habit of changing my clothes each night after work and placing the coins emptied from my pants pockets on my dresser. After several weeks, I noticed I was missing money. By the time I became aware of it, about eighty or ninety dollars had been taken. I confronted my son about the missing money and he admitted to taking it.

"Hurt, disappointed and puzzled, I asked him why he took the money. He lowered his head and replied, 'When you and Mom divorce, I will have to live with Mom and since she doesn't have a lot of money, we will need the money for food.'" These words were like daggers to his heart. Finishing his story he reiterated, "Children are the real losers in divorce," and quickly averted his eyes for fear I would see his tears.

Couples Don't Divorce, Families Divorce

There are many reasons that children lose out. What children lose when their parents split is their family. It is a fallacy to think of divorce as something that happens between a husband and wife. Couples don't divorce, families divorce. What was once the basis of security and protection for the children no longer exists. A child of divorce has his very foundation pulled from beneath him with no say in the matter. Parents move away, sometimes siblings get split up, intensely loyal family members take sides. The family structure disappears into thin air when a marriage dissolves. The unspoken rule — mom and dad will be together forever — has been broken.

Divorce Is Forever

In her book Adult Children of Divorce Speak Out Claire Berman recounts her extensive interviews with men and women ranging in age from twenty-four to sixty-seven who during their childhood experienced their parents' separation or divorce. The vast majority of these adults described their reactions to the divorce as a pain or emptiness that never goes away, a pain that continues to affect many aspects of their adult lives. "The divorce of my parents has left a hole in my heart. It is a hole that will never be filled," said one of the study's participants, and many others echoed this or a similar phrase. What is particularly striking is the freshness of the memories despite the distance time placed between those interviewed and their parents' divorce.

Berman tells her readers:

The most striking impression one comes away with is that for children, the divorce of the parents never goes away. It may be welcomed. It may be understood. But even when it is a positive solution to a destructive family situation, divorce is a critical experience for its children. Although there may be relief that a painful situation has been ended, there is also regret that a healthy family could not have been created. (Berman, 1991, p. 18.)

Some say that death is easier for children to accept than divorce because death is a single event which passes, and for which there is usually a clear-cut cause. People mourn, grieve and have memories, but death is final. Divorce, on the other hand, lasts forever.

For the Sake of the Kids

We are now beginning to see that it doesn't necessarily follow that what's best for parents is best for children. Frank Pittman, author of Private Lies: Infidelity and the Betrayal of Intimacy, believes:

Our experiment with abolishing marriage has not worked very well for either the adults or the children, but it's the adults who don't seem to realize it. I don't know anyone with divorced parents who doesn't see the divorce as the most central experience of their lives. Children who grow up seeing their parents run away from home have a different relationship with marriage than those who saw parents hang in there. Brutal marriages may be bad for children, but I'm not sure boring marriages are. (Quoted in Nord, 1989, p. 26.)

This raises the popular question: "Should couples stay together for the sake of the kids?" Implicit in this question is the assumption that people stay together for any single reason. Even successful long-term marriages are rarely held together by one bond, including love. Couples stay together for a multitude of reasons: financial and emotional security, sex, dislike of the singles scene, stability, companionship, status, fear of loneliness, feelings of love and commitment, religious mores, the children. There is nothing unusual or unhealthy about kids being one of the many ties inextricably connecting couples.

Another assumption implicit in the question "Should couples stay together for the sake of the kids?" is that these couples will always be miserable, that they must live in conflict for the rest of their lives. Couples should not remain in unhappy or lifeless marriages for the rest of their lives just for the sake of the kids. Research shows that whether their parents are married or divorced children suffer when there is conflict. Couples should do everything within their power to make their marriages work again so that their children's lives will not be adversely affected by conflict or divorce. In other words, couples should stay happy for the sake of the kids.

IS DIVORCE ALL BAD?

Research on the potential effects of divorce on childhood development is about two decades old, and the lasting effects are only beginning to be documented. The actual percentage of children adversely affected is still largely an unanswered question.

We do know that children are not necessarily doomed to a life of depression or delinquency simply because their parents have decided to divorce. In fact, many children do quite well. Some researchers believe that the parental conflict that often follows divorce, rather than the divorce itself, is the major cause of childhood behavior problems associated with divorce. Children whose parents strive to cooperate or co-parent after divorce experience fewer post-divorce difficulties.

So whether you decide to learn how to cooperate with your spouse within the context of your marriage or in the post-divorce period, if you want you, your spouse and your children to have a stable environment you will need to develop and practice problem-solving skills. The message of this book is: "Why not begin right now?"

You are probably saying to yourself, "Yes, but how?" This book was written to provide you with answers to this question. Based on my work with hundreds of couples, it has been my observation that a vast number of marital problems are caused by misconceptions about love and marriage. Unrealistic expectations about relationships are the viruses in unhealthy marriages. Chapter 2, "Illusions Leading to Dis-solutions," outlines these misconceptions so that you can see how faulty thinking may be underlying some of your difficulties.

Copyright © 1992 by Michele Weiner-Davis, MSW, CSW

Tags: Divorce

About the Author

divorcebusting.com
Michele Weiner Davis has appeared as a regular guest on Oprah, 48 Hours, the Today show, and CBS This Morning. She is the author of the bestseller Divorce Busting and of Getting Through to the Man You Love and Change Your Life and Everyone in It, and coauthor of In Search of Solutions. A marriage therapist in private practice, Weiner Davis lives outside Chicago with her husband and two children.