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This YouTube video clip provides perspective on this recovery checklist:
This is one of a series of lesson-4 articles
on how to evolve and enjoy high-nurturance relationships. This series extends
the concepts in Lessons 1-3, so study them first.
This is one of several worksheets designed
to help courting couples make three wise commitment choices for
themselves and any dependents.
The
worksheets exist because over half of recent U.S.
marriages fail legally and/or psychologically -
and up to 70% of divorced people commit to new partners - some before
they're finished adjusting to their losses.
This
worksheet assumes you're familiar with...
The
intro to this
nonprofit Web site and the
premises underlying
it
Divorce is a multi-phase
process that starts either
in a mate's
low-nurturance
childhood, or when one or both
needy partners make
unwise commitment choices.
The process becomes evident well before one mate leaves, and lasts
for some years after any legal decree is filed.
Divorce is a
complex, multi-year
family-system
reorganization, not just the ending of a relationship
commitment and bond. The complex divorce
process "ends" psychologically when every family adult and child
significantly affected by the process (in someone's opinion) has...
clearly grieved all their
major divorce-related
losses
(broken bonds), and has...
stabilized their inner
and outer lives after changes in each person's personal
identity, names, family
roles, rules, and
rituals; finances;
spirituality; childcare; work; and key
relationships caused by the divorce.
Depending on many factors, these two divorce-recovery
processes can take many years after a desertion, separation, and/or
legal divorce. This is specially true for divorcing parents
with one or more minor children.
A
study by
psychologist Judith Wallerstein concluded that some families
can take over 10 years to adjust and stabilize to legal
divorce. Each family member
progresses at their own pace in these two concurrent tasks,
which can be slowed or blocked but not sped up.
Family members'
language can be a recovery-status clue. If they say "John and Mary are
divorced," it implies the speaker doesn't appreciate
that the two divorce-recovery processes above may not be
not finished. A more realistic option is "John, Mary, and
their families are divorcing" - even after the
decree is granted.
If a suitor commits to a partner whose family is not well along in
these two adjustment tasks, the couple risks committing
too soon and encountering serious relationship
problems.
This is specially likely if there are kids and/or
grandkids involved.
Implication -when one or both courting
partners have ended a prior primary relationship, each partner needs to judge
honestly how
each divorcing family (not person) is doing in the
two recovery processes above.This means that
each partner needs to...
_ clearly understand the
three-level
grieving
process, _ know the common
signs
of incomplete grief, and _ what to
do
about it. For more perspective on this, see
Lesson 3;
be able to describe the two
divorce-recovery processes above in some detail.
And
each partner needs to...
know (a) when family members
need professional help in recovering from
divorce-related changes and losses, and (b) how to
select qualified
supports.
Many needy
couples don't (want to) know they need these
four factors, or
they do know, but ignore
or minimize them. Psychologically-
wounded partners are at high risk of
distorting reality
without knowing it to meet current short-term needs.
Divorce strongly suggests mates are unaware
of - and significantly affected by - the lethal [wounds + ignorance]
cycle .
Note the reality of
psychological divorce. Though partners may
choose to endure a loveless independent relationship, each
partner has things to grieve (like hopes and dreams) -
unless they never bonded in the first place.
Symptom Checklist
Premise - incompletedivorce adjustment has
recognizable behavioral symptoms.
The more symptoms a family has, the more likely
their members have not fully adjusted to divorce changes and
losses. This checklist
is illustrative, not comprehensive - each family may have
unique symptoms.
__ 2)
One or both ex mates are often hostile, critical,
disrespectful, distrusting of, and/or dishonest,
codependent, and/or seductive or sexually intimate with the
other.
__ 3)
Ex mates often avoid direct contact with each
other, specially if they are parents. If so, each may
justify this by blaming their ex ("S/He's just impossible to
deal with.")
__ 4)
One or
both ex mates and/or one or more children are...
their family denies or
minimizes the addiction/s and their personal and family
effects, or...
the addicts and any
co-addicts (codependents) (a) have not hit
true bottom,
and/or (b) are not genuinely committed
to achieving and maintaining
sobriety.
__ 5)
The legal divorce process has not been finalized for
at least 12 months.
__ 6)There are
significant recurring disputes between ex mates about
money; property, asset and debt ownership;
values; co-parenting
agreements;
child-custody; and/or other personal or family conflicts.
__ 7)
One or both ex mates have recently or chronically
threatened to take the other "back to court" over some
issues.
More typical symptoms of a psychologically-unfinished
divorce...
__ 8)One or more children
of the divorce are significantly _ angry, _
"depressed," _ have chronic physical, sleep, and/or eating
complaints; are _ "hyperactive" or _ "have trouble
concentrating;" and/or _ feel overly responsible for a
parent, sibling, or troubled relative.
__ 9)
There is significant
antagonism, hostility, distrust, disrespect, and resentments among some relatives
of the divorcing couple - specially parents and/or siblings.
__ 10) One ex-mate
and/or one or
more family mrembers (a) have recurring unrealistic fantasies about the couple
and their family reuniting, and/or (b) they are compulsively trying to make that
happen despite clear evidence that it's not possible.
__ 11)There are one or
more stressful relationship
"cutoffs" among family members that seem to
relate to the divorce's causes,
process, and/or impacts;
__ 12)one or more family
members chronically avoid...
talking about divorce causes,
losses, conflicts, and/or impacts; and/or...
physical or emotional
reminders of the divorce (e.g. places, music, mementos,
rituals, holidays, etc.); and/or...
speaking honestly about their
divorce-related opinions, feelings, needs, and reactions;
__ 13)One or more family
members show signs of significant
guilt and shame about the causes, pro-cess, and/or effects of the
divorce process.
These are usually symptoms of false-self
wounds, not just incomplete divorce recovery.
__
14) One or
both ex mates are isolating and avoiding normal contact
with family, friends, and their religious community, if any;
or one or both are compulsively busy and
avoiding solitude.
Do you feel that these are probably reliable clues that a
family-system divorce adjustment isn't finished yet? Can you
add any symptoms?
Recap
From my professional research and clinical experience with
hundreds of typical divorced and
remarrying couples and families since 1979, this checklist
offers common symptoms of a psychologically unfinished divorce. That is,
symptoms that ex mates or other members of the divorcing families have not yet...
grieved and accepted all their
major divorce-related
losses
(broken bonds), and/or not yet...
stabilized their inner
and outer lives after adapting to members' changes in personal
identity, names, family roles, rules, and rituals;
hopes, goals, finances; spirituality; child-care; work; and key
relationships caused by the divorce.
Each symptom in this checklist suggests that one
or both ex mates and their families are affected by the
lethal [wounds +
ignorance]
cycle - and
they probably don't
(want to) know that or what it
means.
A well-respected divorce-recovery book is
Rebuilding - When Your Relationship Ends,"
(3rd ed., 1999, with a related workbook) by Bruce Fisher and
Robert E. Alberti. There are many recovery resources
accessible now by Web search.
Pause, breathe, and recall why you read this article.
Did you get what you needed? If so, what do you need now? If
not - what
do
you need? Is there anyone
you want to discuss these ideas with?
Who's
answering these questions - your wise resident
true Self,
or
''someone else''?
The Web address of this article is
http://sfhelp.org/mates/divorce_wks.htm
Premises