Basic Tasks for Surviving Divorce

• Griefwork: Coping with Loss and stopping the "train of negative emotions. Grief = psychological distress due to a personal loss.
• Intensity of feeling: comes and goes and is proportional to the degree of identity devoted to spouse role. Those who really want out of a marriage will suffer less   than those who want the marriage to continue.
• Duration: some say it takes about as long to get over a lost love as it does to endure one in the first place. Depends on a person's frame of mind - three months to couple of years.
• Avoiding Self Pity: The difference between Understanding what's happened and Wallowing in remorse or sadness.

Dealing with Depression, Anger and Guilt

• Depression = sadness, self-blame, hopelessness. This is not Clinical Depression, but is Event Precipitated and gradually lessens over time
• Anger must be resolved in order to be dispatched. Directed toward the person one is angry with - this means further communication with the Ex.
• Guilt - over having hurt someone - reasonable amounts of guilt are signs of a healthy conscience. Unreasonable amounts of guilt only prolong the rebuilding process.
• Rational measures are appropriate: - write down the pros and cons of the marriage - try to understand what has happened.
• Such Questions As: Anxiety about the future? Will I ever find love again? Did I find it the first time and lose it? Why do people hate me so much. I will never have sex again.

In order for a successful remarriage to begin, the divorced person must come to grips with the issues surrounding the divorce. Write it all down. Keep a journal!

1. Combating Loneliness = a feeling of unconnectedness with others.
2. The Situationaly Lonely = being lonely was precipitated by an event - a death, a divorce, or other.
3. The Chronically Lonely = lack social or interpersonal skills necessary to make others feel comfortable.
4. Loners = those who are at home with themselves, comfortable with their own company.
5. Loneliness Traps: -viewing loneliness as a weakness -clinging and hanging on -meaningless sexual episodes -love and marriage on the rebound
6. Coping with reality demands - life goes on - walk it off! The nice thing about life is it continues with you or without you.

Realistically taking stock of one's abilities and deficiencies. Here's a little counseling trick that illuminates personality development in general (it'll help with adjusting to divorce too!).

A. Establishing a New Identity - People suggest that events sometimes change them - "The War Changed Him" or "My divorce embittered me. "Perhaps people are simply unaware of some of their capabilities or deficiencies in the skills area prior to these "life changing events"
A "New Identity" may really mean completing the old one that was never finished in high school.

Repairing damaged self-esteem. One thing marriage can to, especially to women, but to both genders is gradually - insidiously - wear away at their self-esteem. If divorce devastates one's self-esteem:

Getting Out into the mainstream and Meet People. = Aerobics class, college courses, community centers, singles meetings, environmental protection groups.

Overcoming any Fear of Dating (when the time is right).

Coming to grips with Sexual Feelings - Look! You know what you know and what you want. Figure out a way to deal with your sexuality until ->

Remarriage - Factors in selecting a new mate

• Realistic self analysis - know yourself better Know your good points and the stuff you need to work on.
• Go through the whole selection process again - Remember? Stimulus - Value - Role Fit ????
• Evaluate Potential relationships on your new information.
• Make Sure You are Ready and Jump Right IN - No reservations.

Remarriage is at least as unstable as 1st Marriages - maybe more - Remarriages account for about 40%. But, as Butch Hancock says, "Statistics don't make much difference as long as one person changes their mind!"

Remarriage Factors in need of attention:

1. Emotions and Commitment P
2. parental Responsibilities
3. Psychic (feeling) Remarried
4. Community Ties
5. Economic Responsibilities
6. Legalities

• Money - sometimes stem from the left over responsibilities of the 1st Marriage.
• Sex - be good to yourself and good to your sweetie pie Emotions - 2nd guessing a spouse based on your 1st experience
• Stepparenting = automatic families are not easy.
• Complex Kin Relations and Ambiguous Roles Step parent - child relationships can make or break a remarriage.
• Relating to the ex-spouse
• Complexity of relationships
• Ambiguous Family Boundaries
• Normative Ambiguity Guidelines for a happy remarriage and stepfamily
• clear up as much unfinished business and emotional garbage as possible from your previous marriage and divorce
• don't make comparisons between your present partner and your ex-spouse
• avoid guerilla warfare with your ex-spouse
• don't try to forget to allow time for things to develop
• make effective use of what you have learned from your previous marriage and divorce

The Divorce rate for 1st marriages is about 50% in the U.S., and about 60% for 2nd marriages. Further, remarriages have an average duration of about 10 years. One of the main reasons for this is that couples underestimate the complexities of living in a "blended" family situation.

About 20% of U.S. kids live in stepfamilies. Another 20% (roughly) shuttle between divorced bioparents, many of whom will re/marry. Around 2 of 3 stepfamily re/marriages eventually split up now, vs. about half of first unions. Most of these re/marriages followed a prior divorce for at least one partner.

Where 1st marriages have family trees, blended families have family forests.
For example, typical 3-generational stepfamilies have: from 3 to 6+ co-parents managing 2 to 3+ linked homes, co-raising 3 to 6+ minor children with 40 to 100+ extended kin.
Full stepfamilies have up to 30 roles (like "step-grandmothers" and "step-cousins"), compared to 15 roles in normal 3-generational biological families.

There are now few informed social norms to guide all these adults and kids in figuring out to conduct normal, daily life. They have to invent viable new family rules to go with the roles. While their goals are similar, the personal, family, and social environments for average stepparents often lead to transitional confusion, stress, mistrust, and strife in and between linked co-parenting homes, at the very least.

Typical minor stepkids have special developmental tasks to master that their peers in intact, 1st families don't have. There is typically little informed community help available to guide co-parents and others in helping stepkids with these vital emotional tasks.

Uninformed co-parents often expect their multihome stepfamily to act, feel, and be like a 1-home biological family. This expectation often comes from one or all co-parents wanting to avoid identifying themselves as a stepfamily, because of the negative associations ("evil stepmothers", etc.). Actually it was our children who began using the prefix "step" in front of brother, sister, dad and mom.

1. -Stepfamily members have experienced important losses.
2. -They have no shared family histories or shared ways of doing things.
3. -They may have very different beliefs.
4. -Children may have "loyalty conflicts" between the parents he or she lives with, and the "divorced" parent who lives somewhere else.
5. -Newly remarried couples may not have enough time alone to adjust to their new relationship.

While facing these issues may be difficult, stepfamilies should attend to an array of feelings of: Loneliness in dealing with the losses; Loyalty conflicts between two parents or two households; Exclusion and isolated by feelings of guilt and anger; Confusion about right and wrong; Awkwardness with any member of the original family or stepfamily.

Some very serious indications of a need for intervention: A child vents his or her anger upon a particular family member. A stepparent or parent openly favors one of the children. A child resents a stepparent or parent. Any member of the family gets no enjoyment from normally pleasurable activities such as learning, going to school, working, playing, or being with friends or family.

Stepfamily Child Discipline ("SCD")?

1. A fundamental difference is that discipline with stepchildren involves "your child" or "my child" (or grandchild), rather than "OUR child". This inevitably breeds stressful loyalty conflicts;
2. Normally, bioparents discipline their children without fear of being lastingly rejected by them.
3. Remarrying adults choose each other, primarily - especially if the remarrying bioparent is non-custodial. Normally, the children's' opinions about bringing a new adult into their family aren't given equal weight ("unfairly", from their point of view). The reality is that a stepparent may not like their stepchild - or vice versa.
4. Remarriage often requires an "instant" merger of CD rules from adults' prior families (including single-parent families), vs. the gradual evolution of rules in biofamilies. This can be particularly stressful if one of the adults has never parented before;
5. The act of remarriage often causes significant changes in adults' and children's' expectations. For example: "Yesterday, I was your Mom's boyfriend, but today, I'm your stepfather. Now I have both the responsibility and right to discipline you - but I didn't, yesterday."
6. If child visitations are involved, kids and adults may experience 3 conflicting sets of disciplinary rules: prior family, custodial family, and non-custcldial family or household. This gets even more complex, considering the added CD rules in grandparents', stepgrandparents', and step/relatives' homes;
7. If relations between divorced parents remain hostile, arguments or behaviors may become a vehicle for them to continue their pre-divorce fighting.

Booth, A., & Edwards, J. (1992). Starting over: Why remarriages are more unstable, J. Family Issues, 13. 179-194. Remarriages are more likely to have attributes that affect the quality and stability of marriage, all of which were increased when both partners were in a remarriage. Remarriages were more likely to be less integrated with family and friends. Women were more likely than men to feel that they could comfortably leave a remarriage. Men in remarriages are more likely to have lower SES. Partners are more willing to leave a remarriage with less dissatisfaction than those in a first marriage.

Coleman, M., Ganong, L., Goodwin, C. (1994). the presentation of Step families in Marriage and Family Textbooks. Family Relations, 43, 289-297.

MacDonald, W. & DeMaris, A. (1995). Remarriage, stepchildren, and marital conflict: Challenges to the incomplete institutionalization hypothesis. JMF, 57, 387-398. The impact of stepchildren depends on the length of marriage. Couples with both step and biological children do not experience more conflict than those with only biological children.

Montgomery, M., Anderson, E., Hetherington, E., & Clingempeel, W. (1992). Patterns of courtship for remarriage: Implications for child adjustment and parent-child relationships, JMF, 54, 686-698. Children of cohabiting couples were more socially competent throughout the two year period following remarriage. The longer the amount of time spent in a single-parent household, the more difficult the relationship between stepfather and stepchildren.

Zeppa, A., & Norem, R. (1993) Stressors, manifestations of stress, and first-family/stepfamily group membership. J. Divorce & Remarriage, 19(3), 3-23. 

Back to Syllabus