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Finding Truth and Hope in a Time of Crisis

When we think of divorce (and here the term refers to separation, legal divorce, and never-married partners who end their relationship), we typically see it in terms of ending a marriage. Legally, people can get divorced on demand in a number of states.

Emotionally, however, a divorce can take forever.

Public discussions of divorce often center on the legal, financial, and social aspects of divorce, not the emotional ones. It is all too easy to forget that the primary responsibility of parents at all times, but especially in a time of crisis like divorce, is to be parents, and the primary right of kids is to be kids. Children are at risk when parents fail to contain their own emotional issues (which then, in turn, often complicate and exacerbate their legal issues). When parents abandon their parental responsibilities in divorce, children lose one of their greatest gifts and rights: the opportunity to be children.

Reading this, you might have thought to yourself, "This is so obvious and so simple." And in some ways it is. Yet I know from the statistics, my studies, and hundreds of personal stories, including my own, that for many people there is no harder time to be a parent or a child than in the wake of divorce.

I am convinced that professionals like me now have a more realistic, more nuanced, and in many ways a more hopeful picture of the prospects for children in divorce. This is not to diminish the real challenges and risks children face. For virtually all children, divorce is a deeply painful, difficult transition - but it does not remain so forever. Children whose parents have divorced are not "doomed" or "damned." The vast majority of children are resilient. Yes, they are, to varying degrees, shaped by their parents' divorce. Yes, in their eyes, divorce is a life-changing event. Yes, most wish the divorce had never occurred. Despite all of that, most children carry the marks of their parents' divorce, but they are not permanently wounded by the experience.

The fact is, even if you have failed at your marriage, you can succeed at divorce. While some may feel that all divorces are bad, the fact is there are better divorces and there are worse divorces. Children fare better in a divorce when parents work together cooperatively and limit their children's exposure to conflict. Dozens of studies, including my own, have found this to be true.

Children can emerge from divorce emotionally healthy and resilient, but it takes a conscientious effort - sometimes a heroic one - on the part of parents to manage the personal and legal business of divorce in a responsible, adult manner. Protecting their children demands that parents deal with their own anger, hurt, grief, fear, and longing on a schedule dictated by their children's needs, not their own.

Parenting Through Divorce

Parents have many specific tasks to accomplish in divorce: working through grief, reducing conflict, renegotiating their relationship, establishing a working coparenting relationship, resolving all legal issues, learning how to parent effectively on their own to name only a few. In the best of worlds, they would do so quickly and easily so that they could be available to their children every step of the way. In that ideal divorce (an oxymoron), events would proceed in a clear, logical order. You would, for example, discuss your separation with your children when you were both ready - or at least before one of you moved out in a rage, had the other served with divorce papers, or your child heard the news from a well-meaning relative or friend.

In real life, however, people make mistakes. Things happen that are sometimes unpredictable, unexpected, and unintended. One of the most challenging aspects of divorce is not that parents have so many things to do, but that they often must do them all simultaneously when they may be feeling depressed, angry, sad, confused, anxious, and perhaps not able to be the parents they would like to be. And we can add the fears, guilt, and conflict parents have about their children to this bubbling emotional stew.

Controlling Emotions Before They Control You

The message of this book is very simple: Children whose parents put them first from the start have a tremendous advantage over those whose parents cannot separate their feelings about their failed marriage from their feelings about the coparenting partnership that will last the rest of their lives. Most of the couples I see for the first time walk into my office thinking about the relationship they are ending. My first priority, if the marriage cannot be saved, is to convince parents to focus at the same time on the new relationship they are about to begin.

Rather than ruining my Christmas, Danielle and Frank made my holiday. At the beginning of our first session, Danielle, a confident, assertive corporate accountant, took charge. A redhead in her midthirties, Danielle was conservatively dressed, radiated a healthy glow, and had a sense of ease about who she was. For the first twenty minutes or so, she did most of the talking. As she did, I closely watched Frank, her husband of nearly fifteen years, out of the corner of my eye. Frank had the weatherworn permanent tan and lean build of a man who obviously loved working outdoors. A top landscape architect, he had a national reputation for several major corporate projects and the newly renovated local park. Sitting in my office, however, he looked deflated. He was clearly distraught as Danielle repeated in greater detail what she had told me on the telephone. She admitted to her yearlong affair with a co-worker and confessed the guilt she felt over her indiscretion and the pain it caused Frank.

Looking at me, Frank said quietly, "I've loved Danielle since high school. I never thought this would ever happen to us." He reminisced about how long it had taken them to conceive Sam and how he had always believed that no one could ever have had a better family than he did. "Why?" he seemed to be asking no one in particular.

"Why?"

"Because . . . ," Danielle began, as tears ran down her cheeks. "I'm sorry, Frank. I'm really sorry. What can I say? I feel so guilty."

"Right," Frank snapped sarcastically. "Sorry if I make you feel guilty. It must be my fault."

Frank was hurt, and he wanted to hurt back; that's human nature. And Danielle felt guilty and defensive; that's normal, too. What does not come naturally at a time like this is an ability to put aside these powerful emotions. I could see that Frank was at war with himself. He wanted to rage and to attack Danielle, but he knew that Sam would be devastated if he did. Frank desperately wanted Danielle back despite her affair, and he wasn't ashamed to admit it. At the same time, he wasn't blind to her actions and desires. He knew that he couldn't force her to stay with him and that trying to do so would only drive her further away.

The only time Frank raised his voice was when the custody issue came up. Frank wanted sole custody of his son. His arguments about sole custody caused Danielle to lose her composure and she angrily blurted out, "If anyone should have sole custody, I should!" But when she calmed herself, Danielle made it clear that she wanted to share custody equally. Frank wanted Danielle to lose some of her time with Sam the same way he was losing her. After all, he reasoned with an edge to his voice, "Why should I lose my son for even one day a week just because she decided to cheat on me?"

Danielle looked away; I held my breath. "You're right, Frank," she said softly. "You shouldn't lose. But neither should Sam."

Frank nodded, then said sadly, "You're right. I'm so angry with you, but this isn't Sam's fault, either." Then looking at me to avoid Danielle's gaze, he added, "He loves his mother, and she loves him. I could never stand between them."

"We're not here about our marriage, or even the terms of our divorce," Danielle said, as Frank nodded silently. "I think we agree that we're here about Sam. He doesn't even know that we're about to separate - "

"He doesn't even know that Mommy and Daddy ever fight," Frank quickly added, completing Danielle's thought the way even parting couples sometimes do. "I know this is going to break his heart, and we worry how it may affect him."

"We love Sam," Danielle said. "And we want to have a plan for him. Despite the mess I've made of our marriage, and the horrible way it's going to end for us, we want to do what's best for him."

Frank won my respect with his ability to separate his feelings from Sam's needs, and Danielle did, too. Rather than going on the defensive, she admitted her mistakes and absorbed Frank's anger, painful as that was. She listened, reflected, apologized, and compromised. They touched hands, and both admitted to their ambivalence about splitting up. Danielle repeatedly made it clear that she wanted a separation despite her caring for Frank. Yet she and Frank confessed to fighting one minute, crying the next, and, soon thereafter, comforting each other with a hug.

Their mixed emotions confused them. It would have been much easier to just stomp off angrily and never speak to each other again, never admit to the sadness and tenderness that accompany the anger and hurt of divorce. Fortunately for them - and especially for Sam - Danielle and Frank were mature enough to contain their own emotions and work together for their son.

In the two years since I first met them, Danielle and Frank have lived up to the promises they made for Sam's sake. They found a way to cooperate as parents even as their marriage unraveled. Was it easy? No. Perfect? No way. Danielle and Frank took several missteps along the way. But overall they have done a remarkable job, and the first years bode well for the rest of their relationship and for Sam's future, too.

© 2006 Plume, a division of Penguin Putnam, used by permission.

Tags: Children and Divorce

About the Author

Robert E. Emery, Ph.D., is professor of psychology and director of the Center for Children, Families, and the Law at the University of Virginia. A frequent lecturer, he is the author of more than one hundred scientific publications, and several books. His work has been featured in publications such as Newsweek, Time, Child, and the New York Times and he has appeared on Weekend Today and The Jane Pauley Show.