Mourning, The Heart of the Divorce Process: From Grievance to Grief to Gone

By Joy A. Dryer Ph.D

PART I

We all know that Separation and/ or Divorce [“S and/or D”] involves loss. You may be just exploring S or D as a possibility. Or you may be in the beginning, middle, or end stages of S or D. You may even have already signed S or D Agreement papers at some point in the past. You’ve experienced loss. Often more than one loss: you have lost the shared context [whether a “marriage” or a cohabitated partnership]; you may have lost shared time with children specifically, and family in general; and/ or, you may have lost some of your hopes, aspirations, dreams.

PHASES. We all know, too, that throughout our lives we will face separations and losses during our growing up and growing old[er]. Well known psychological writers throughout history –Freud, Piaget, Erikson, Kohlberg, to name a few– have helped us to understand the paradox of attachment and separation: we need both roots and wings. That is, to develop in a healthy way, we need to work through, then give up, or separate from, one phase of our development in order to move on and gain the next phase. For example, to become healthy young adults with our own separate identities, we need to give up aspects of our childlike relations with our parents. To grow old with dignity and with as few regrets as possible, we need to experience specific satisfactions in our middle years, then give up aspects of youth.

MOURNING IS ESSENTIAL. The same applies to the S and D process. Mourning is a healing adaptation to loss. Just like the physical healing of a wound, the emotional healing of mourning takes time. Thus the first of two major points I will make here, is that the “good” S or D process involves mourning what you have lost. Your capacity to grieve in a healthy way will allow you to move on in your life. Incomplete grieving will likely keep you emotionally stuck.

DIVORCE MOURNING IS UNIQUE. While separation and loss is ubiquitous in most lives, my second major point is that S and D are unique types of separation and loss. First, this decision was made because the negatives outweighed the positives in your relationship. This imbalance intensifies the normal ambivalences we all have toward those for whom we care deeply: it is sure to intensify any of the ‘darker’ feelings you may have, such as guilt, shame, longing, sadness, anxiety, and perhaps despair. Second, if you are coming to us seeking a legal outcome, then your life with your partner has become interconnected in complex ways, with intertwinings of children, or property, or family relations. This complexity also reflects a multi-faceted uniqueness.

YOUR TEAM. Those of us on your Collaborative Divorce Team understand that mourning is a process — a necessary process. We try to provide you with a safe frame for gathering information and making decisions; we try to time the process at an appropriate pace [neither too fast or too slow]; and we try to offer you emotional space and responses that are tailored to your individual needs.

DEFINITION. To grieve and to mourn, used interchangeably, are defined as your emotional and intellectual processes of gradually lessening the psychological bond to a person, object, achievement, or ideal. This process eventually enables the mourner to accept the loss and move forward.

PART II

Many writers have defined the phases, or “tasks,” of grieving. Below, I have integrated some of the literature into a 5-step process to review with you.

TASK #1: ACKNOWLEDGE THE REALITY OF THE LOSS. You cannot begin to mourn until you can acknowledge that your partner has both feet out the door. Most couples are at different levels of “readiness” to accept the various steps of acknowledging:

1. the facts;
2.  the meaning of the loss;
3.  the irreversibility of the loss.

Acknowledging, then accepting, the decision to separate and/or to divorce is particularly difficult when one partner experiences the other’s decision as “coming out of the blue.” This kind of surprise usually involves withdrawal or denial of what the other has been saying or doing “in plain sight”. The NONdeciding partner, can feel victimized, helpless, controlled, resentful, guilty, angry, or any combination of these feelings. When coaching such couples, I try to help the apparent “NONdecider” begin to decide – to begin to own how s/he may have contributed, unwittingly, even unconsciously, to the other person finally saying “this is over”, “I’ve can’t go on”, “I’ve had enough.”

Couples who can decide together to take this step have a chance to be aware, to acknowledge, and to accept better the painful realities as they move forward.

TASK #2: IDENTIFY AND EXPRESS EMOTIONS OF GRIEF. A wide variety of feelings may surface.

1.  Expressing feelings in words, to friends, family, to your Team members, can help remove barriers of cynicism, isolation, mistrust, and fears of vulnerability, insecurity, victimhood.
2. “Anticipatory Grief”, a term coined by Lindemann (1944) and developed by Aldrich (1963), refers to the absence of overt manifestations of grief at the time of a loved one’s death because the survivor had already experienced the phases of normal grieving during the anticipation of death. We can apply this concept to how carefully the Collaborative Divorce process tries to inform and to prepare each partner about the steps in the process. Parkes’ (1975) study shows the advantages of “advanced warning.” We can see a parallel here: given time and advanced information about the process, you have a greater sense of control and anticipation in making your own choices.
3.  Some level of feeling pain is expected, although what kind, how much, and how you show it is very individual. Some people cut off their feelings so as not to feel their pain. This can help their pacing. But it can also backfire: emotional pain can be displaced into psychosomatic symptoms e.g. sleep disturbances, headaches, and back pain, etc. Or a person could become irritable or angry or demanding of others. Some handle their anxieties by withdrawing from life’s details, at one end of the continuum, or over managing them, at the other end.
4. AMBIVALENCE. This is a major feeling that needs to be acknowledged and eventually resolved.

Anyone with whom you’ve had a close relationship will be both the source and the recipient of positive and negative feelings. Most relationships are neither all black or all white, all positive or all negative. The goal here is to recognize the complexity of feelings and put them into a realistic perspective which can involve both appreciations and disappointments.

5) MELANCHOLY. Freud (1917) first noted that normal grief can move from “mourning to melancholy” when the ambivalence is very intense. A chronic grief reaction is one that is excessive in duration and never resolves with a satisfactory conclusion. Some tell tale signs of chronic, exaggerated, or masked “complicated’ grief reactions are: a) intense and fresh grief that lasts what seems like a very long time; b) some relatively minor event triggers off an intense grief reaction; c) themes of loss are frequent when speaking to others; d) attempting to make radical changes in lifestyle; e) a long history of sub-clinical depression marked by persistent guilt and lowered self-esteem — or the opposite — i. e. experiences of false euphoria. (Worden, 1991).

6) HISTORY OF LOSS. It would be useful for you to try to recall other important losses in your life, even as a child. Your current S/D situation may trigger some unfinished business in your past.

TASK #3 ACCOMMODATE TO A RESTRUCTURE OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP.

Part of this work entails the task of accommodating yourself to large chunks of your environment where your partner will be missing.

1. ALONE. As difficult or painful that your relationship may have been, you may now be the sole ‘adult in charge’ who sleeps, makes breakfast for the kids, balances your checkbook– alone.
2.  ROLES. You may poignantly discover that your partner played roles different from yours. S/he may have shopped, been especially tuned into the kids, efficiently took charge in any situation, took care of finances. Without her/him around, you may need to learn new skills.
3.  SENSE of SELF. Sometimes grief leads to regression. Such feelings as abandonment, not feeling cared for, or unworthy, can contribute to experiencing oneself as helplessness, inadequate, incapable. Zaiger’s (1985) study (in a situation where a partner died) showed that women, especially, who defined their identify through relationship and caring for others, found that loss of their significant other also contributed to a sense of a loss of self. You can see that this can ring true in a S/D situation as well.

TASK #4: LET GO

This involves finding a suitable place in your psychological life for your ‘ex.’ Your challenge is to pull back your emotional investment in the other (Crenshaw, 1999) and to detach your hopes and memories (Freud, 1917). This task is saying good-bye on an emotional, not intellectual, level.

TASK #5 MOVE ON

This step involves your ability to move from the past into the present and the future. This means giving up old hurts, or need to punish, to blame, to justify, to be right. If you have worked reasonably well through the previous tasks, you may feel freer to orient yourself to future hopes, dreams, plans.

NOTE: You may have received special notice from family and friends who gave you great attention and sympathy during your transition from couplehood to singlehood. This “secondary gain,” or possible view of yourself as a ‘tragic figure’ (Crenshaw, 1999) may be hard to relinquish. This may feel good in the short term, but such a dynamic is extra baggage that will weigh you down as you try to move on.

In sum, allowing yourself to mourn, challenging yourself to move through the above tasks (the order is approximate) will help you navigate more smoothly this transition. Your Team is trained to journey alongside you to anticipate as many of the bumps as possible. Call upon their expertise!

REFERENCES

Aldrich, C. K. (1963) The dying patient’s grief. J. Am. Medical Assoc., 184, 329-331. Crenshaw, D.A. (1999) Bereavement, Counseling the Grieving through the life cycle. Crossroad, N.Y.

Freud, S. (1957) Mourning and Melancholy (1917), Standard Ed, Vol. XIV, London: Hogarth.

Lindemann, E. (1944) Symptomatology and management of acute grief. Am J. of Psychiatry, 101, 141-8.

Worden, J.W. (1991) Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy. 2Ed., Springer Publishing Co. NY.

Zaiger, N. (1985-6) Women and bereavement. Women and Therapy, 4, 33-43.