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This is by far the toughest of the three divorces. But you already knew
that, didn't you? This is the process in which each of you has to come to
grips with your separation and begin to view yourself as a person separate
and distinct from your spouse. This is where divorce gets messy. Painful.
This is all about the grieving both of you have to do.
The tricky part about the emotional divorce is that, unlike the legal
divorce and the social divorce, you and your spouse deal with your emotional
divorce on radically different schedules. Most divorces involve a "leaver" —
that's the person who wants to split up — and a "left" — that's the person
who wants the marriage to stay intact.
Typically, the Leaver's Emotional Divorce has been under way for months,
often years. If you're the leaver, you've already grieved over the marriage,
and you know it needs to end. Your emotional divorce is more or less
complete by the S Date.
This means that you've probably given up on your marriage by the time you
and your spouse separate. Incidentally, this is why I believe most trial
separations eventually result in divorce.
If you're the leaver, you're typically impatient with delays, and you
want decisions from your spouse right away, and you tend to get put out with
your spouse for what seems like unnecessary foot-dragging.
The Left's Emotional Divorce, on the other hand, typically doesn't begin
in earnest until well after the S Date, because even at separation, the left
often assumes there will be a reconciliation and that the marriage will
continue more or less as before. And once the left begins his or her
emotional divorce, the impatience of the leaver tends to compress it.
Can you see what happens? In many divorces, the emotional divorce of the
left gets "squished." It starts late, and then it hurtles along at a pace
that seems out of control — that often is out of control.
It's during the emotional divorce of the left that spouses often behave
in bizarre ways. This is the stage at which people sometimes shadow their
spouses, and sometimes make anonymous and menacing phone calls. It's at this
stage that we see a husband go after his wife's car with a baseball bat.
It's at this stage that husbands and wives both look for the meanest lawyer
they can find. They want it to hurt, and they lash out any way they can.
During this stage, emotions are white-hot. Logic simply has no meaning to
the left during the peak of the emotional divorce. And because the left
behaves in such a bizarre way, or perhaps in anticipation that the left will
behave in a bizarre way, the leaver typically behaves in bizarre ways as
well. It's not a good combination.
I spend a great deal of time with my clients explaining the three
divorces. The key is to understand that when your spouse behaves in an
irresponsible or irrational way, it doesn't necessarily mean that he or she
is evil. They're just caught up in an incredibly cruddy process. You are
too. You're probably doing some irresponsible and irrational things
yourself. |