Introduction
1: Do We Minimize Death?-- Not in the Least
Introduction 2: “Finality” Makes
Divorce More Painful
We have traveled a long road through the Bay of Heartbrokenness toward and beyond the Bridge of Finality. This detailed journey through the wasteland touched many points in the pain that so often characterizes the vacancy left in divorce. To use one more analogy, we walked through the Black Forest and observed many an ominous tree. For perspective, then, we will step back and look at the forest as a whole.
That is, we will move off the track of chronicling the stages of grief, and we will describe the painful and unique burden of divorce itself. The stages of grief are like the various trees along a path through the Black Forest, the path that I walked in particular.
Your path is unique too. The following attempts to look at the whole forest of grief that is unique to divorce: not so much mine as what may be some of the common elements in many divorces. Common elements in grief that is.
Some similarities between death and divorce are immediately understood. Both are very painful. As in any loss, we hurt and grieve in proportion to what that loss meant to our inner self, in proportion to the needs the departed met or in proportion to the degree of attachment. Death and divorce are losses that cut to the core of our being.
There are at least five reasons why divorce is more painful than death, and we will look at these in a moment. However, if it has not already become apparent, we have been dealing with one major difference between death and divorce. This is also a significant reason why divorce is more painful than death: the whole issue of finality in general.
This is truly beyond description. Even the word "finality" itself seems to confine and restrain. The permanence of death removes any possibility of reconciliation and ends all rejection.
One similarity is understood: of the pain and sorrow experienced, divorce possesses most of the same characteristics of grief as death, most of the same feelings of pain in loss. While having most of the same grief as death, the most profound difference is that divorce has many more painful qualities than does death.
Having said this, let us not forget the tragedy of death. There are two sides in how finality impacts our grief. In death, because of the finality of death, there are times when this will make death indeed more painful than divorce. The loved one is no longer in the land of the living. Whereas in divorce the loved one is still alive; even after separation, love could continue to rejoice in the successes of the departed, as true love always does. In this love, then, there is a degree of pain to death that divorce cannot approach‑‑finality, especially in the removal of the loved from the living, from participation in life and growth in love.
Yet even this pain in death is ameliorated by my faith understanding of death and my view of the providence of God. Then again, never mind all of this; to the one encountering the death of a loved one, the grief is enormous still. Despite my faith and view of God, this type of permanent removal from the land of living grants to death a unique kind of pain that divorce does not have.
I make no pretense of minimizing the pain of death, and I elaborate on this later in this chapter and again in chapter XIV. In the comparison between the pains of death and divorce, the point is not to show which pain is greater in a morbid kind of contest. That would be sacrilegious. That would also cheapen the grief in both circumstances.
The point is to bring to light the intense pain in divorce that is so often cloaked, denied, ignored, or otherwise missed‑‑and most often missed by the very people surrounding and attempting to comfort the divorced. Through a comparison with the enormous and accepted pain that is so very common and shared in death, I firmly believe there is insight into the pain encountered in divorce.
So outside of the exception above, indeed in spite of the exception, the grief of divorce has most of the characteristics of death plus other characteristics not found in death. So in focusing on the divorced grieving, we look in detail at those elements in grief that make divorce more painful than death.
Whatever the final analysis may be in the comparison of the pains of death and divorce, I have resolutely come to this conclusion:
there is no greater pain on earth than in the permanent loss of a loved one‑‑whether
in death or divorce.
In the instantaneous finality of death and in the prolonged search for finality in divorce, in both, love becomes the vector through which a healthy expression of feelings and a healing adaptation will come.
What about the unique pain of divorce? Sometimes, love struggles to distinguish between our inner needs of the self and how to set the departed loved one free. In true love you cannot understand how anyone else can love the departed as much as you do. So much does our ego boast of itself. True love will endure (1 Corinthians 13) so much, even respecting and looking beyond the devastation of rejection, even continuing without very much expectation of return.
That's love. We would not have it any other way.
The difficulty with love is this: in our humanness, at least on this earth, it is impossible to love another as much as or in the same manner as God loves. As long as we are on this planet, our love will be tainted and therefore limited by our humanness. Nevertheless, by our high ideals and through a portion of our selflessness, our love will maintain some kind of expectation of return. Even though we might fantasize, not one of us is perfected in love.
So in looking at the difficulty of finality in general and at the impossibility of loving with a perfect love, "finality" is so much harder if not impossible to come by in divorce than it is in death. To free the departed lover from our needs, to loosen the binding ties, will require stamina to endure the self-discovery along the way. How difficult and confusing becomes the issue of finality in the one determined to move to a higher level of loving.
To those who were truly married‑‑truly in love, and now apart, there are at least five reasons that make divorce more painful than death. These further complicate the issue of finality not present in death, and they make the challenge of moving to a higher level of loving something unique to divorce.
1. Death is
natural ... Divorce
is often a shattered dream.
2. Death is a religious value ... Divorce is a religious taboo.
3. Death has funerals ... Divorce usually
divides.
4. Death often immortalizes ... Divorce often distorts.
5. Death removes the loved ... Divorce changes the love.
But before we look at these, let me note again that these are just words and that the list does not have an end. Certainly, there is a different kind of pain unique to death that has to do with finality. We cannot distinguish everything. These are scribblings. When asked about the brutal death of a child or the tortuous journey of the diseased or the Jewish Holocaust, we can only try to express our own feelings. The same applies to any occurrence of brutality or injustice. Words will ultimately escape us in brutality and injustice. Having said this, we would emphasize again that we in no way deny or diminish by an iota the deep pain of any death from any cause.
We could toy this theme around the philosophical table forever. It is most crude to even compare the death of a child to divorce, almost sacrilegious and profane. The pain cannot be compared comfortably. So why make the effort? Because until you have lost a child, you cannot truly know what the parents go through. Because until you have gone through a divorce from a loved one, you cannot know what the divorced person is going through.
Without diminishing death by a single tear drop, in comparison to any death where great love was present, because of great love and because of finality, an irreconcilable divorce from great love has most of the qualities of death‑‑and then some other qualities. Indeed, in many respects, divorce is more painful than death. Unlike death, divorce does not have the established tradition of support, and divorce has some aspects of loss that are not even present in death. (Just as death has some aspects of loss that are not present in divorce.)
Death is natural. We are all terminal. As soon as we enter an age of significant consciousness, we begin to come to terms with the fact that there is both a naturalness and a finality to death. Whether with a little animal or some family member, death is the common experience.
Furthermore, television has blurred the significance of both life and death. The number of graphically violent murders and death desensitize the mind and heart. Television uses our feelings about the finality of death to draw us into a fictitious drama. The net result is that the death is used to bring entertainment. Such entertainment devalues the living and removes from death a degree of tragedy.
The more prudent and mature even plan their deaths through living wills, trust funds, funeral and burial arrangements. Death is so natural that many make long term plans, business arrangements, and retirement dreams around it. The naturalness and sureness of death make death a transition that is looked at long in advance of its coming‑‑a sad coming, but a coming nevertheless.
Children from their early years will play games. Little boys play cowboys and Indians, or cops and robbers. Little girls play nurses or doctors. They will bury their dead toys and their dead pets.
Said in another way, death cannot be prevented. Death is the destiny for every living being. For us humans, who know we are alive, death carries extra weight within the soul. Nevertheless, death is one reality we all have in common. While it might be delayed with cautious driving and exercise, we will die. While we might be rescued from an accident or healed by a doctor, we will die. Death is natural.
Unlike death, divorce is not natural. Divorce is often a broken dream. People plan their death, for no one expects to live forever. Unlike death, people never truly marry with plans to divorce. Everyone who marries intends to commit for better or worse, to commit for a lifetime.
As a child we did not play "divorce." Nor as we moved into adulthood and found a vocation did we plan legal arrangements, arrange custody rights, or have payroll deductions made to support us in our future divorce. When we courted our spouse, we most likely did not make any divorce plans. In courtship or marriage, the total focus of life was in a completely opposite direction from divorce. For many, there is not even a thought.
Though I have no statistics, I would venture to say that if a search was done of all pre-nuptial contracts, most of those contracts (if not all) were done by couples in which at least one party had been divorced. Said in another way, I do not think there are any first-time marriages that have made a pre-nuptial contract. No one truly marries with a plan to divorce (whether contracted or not). What is a pre-nuptial contract, anyway, but insurance against divorce.
More than all of this, the naturalness of death stands in sharp contrast to the broken dream of a good marriage. In a good and healthy marriage, death is properly and openly discussed. While one may plan death, the very nature of a marriage itself mitigates against any plans for divorce. In fact, many would say that the very word "divorce" should not be used. Regardless, the nature of marriage sets itself to plan for marital permanence. To plan for keeps. To plan for security. To plan to commit and dream and build and grow and survive.
In other words, the nature of marriage sets itself to plan against separation. To plan against failure. To plan against dissolution. To plan against heartbreak, pain, loss, and insecurity‑‑to plan against divorce.
Compare the dreams of most marriages with the dreams (?) and hopes surrounding death. How many books deal with the dreams and hopes of death? Not many. Certainly, as laws change, some debate the ethics of "good death" and assisted suicide. If one is wealthy, then there are the matters of trust fund options and wills and cryogenics. But the dreams of death stop there.
What about the dream of marriage? There are not only books about marriage, there are book-size bibliographies about marriage. There are journals and workshops and counselors by the thousands to help make marriages the dreams they are sought to be. To this vast and literally endless supply of dream-shapers is added another literally endless supply of work--namely, the defining of love.
Love and romance are the most treasured resources and the most powerful forces in a marriage. There is scarcely a novel, play, or movie which does not have some allusion to love. Love, marriage, and family are the foundations for a person, indeed for society and the world. In this light, all of the sciences would have a bearing on love and marriage.
Are we being over-zealous? A major difference between the dreams of death and the dreams of marriage is that death is closure and marriage is ongoing. Marriage is a present reality with a potentially unlimited future, and death closes forever any further potential with the deceased (except that of posthumous inspiration).
Truly, a good marriage is in the dream-making business.
Death is natural. Beyond the prudent plans made for death, there are no other tantalizing dreams. The best dream of death is that you might die in your sleep of old age, with your affairs in good order, surrounded by your family and friends.
Many dreams of marriage could and certainly have been truncated by untimely deaths. Still the dreams of the marriage through the survivor would continue in what "could have been." What was possible. Even in death the memory of the departed continues to live and glow from the intimacy.
Not so in divorce. The dreams die. They die. The lack of "death dreams" in comparison to the abundance of "marital dreams" underscores the severity of divorce. Dreams are cancelled, shattered in divorce.
This is difficult. "Till death to us part" is the creed of the couple in love, the only acceptable reason for permanent departure. With this modus operandi the couple becomes dream-makers.
Divorce shatters this and all of the other investments‑‑all the investments in mutual dreams about life, courtship, and through the empty nest. All the investments to that point are shattered, severely fragmented. Your very orientation to the world is rearranged. You only have one life and one youth to give; once spent, that life is forever gone. For those who married young and divorced late, marriage was the risk of a lifetime. You bet everything on one lottery ticket, put nearly everything into one basket in a marriage, and in divorce you lose.
With regard to dreaming, marriage and death have a common element in the preservation of intimacy. Truly there is great pain in the death of a spouse as with any loss of a loved one. But death does not destroy the relationship, the investment in intimacy. Even though death cuts short a precious life, death does not destroy the dream, hope, and potential still resident in the heart of the survivor. Destruction of the precious and unique bond does not come in death. That is the work of divorce. Divorce is the slayer of dreams.
In comparison with the dreams of marriage and the dreams of death‑‑as painful as is that termination‑‑divorce breaks, indeed shatters the dreams of what was thought and believed and intended to be a permanent, intimate, and exclusive relationship of love for eternity.
How much more painful is divorce! Death is natural, but divorce is a shattered dream.
The religious value of death separates the pain of death from the pain of divorce. Like marriage, death is a value in most religions.
If you are a religious person, your religion not only supports your marriage, but your religion also makes a value out of death itself. In addition, it was most likely your religion that played the significant part in the grand dreams you formed about your marriage. Religion values the permanence of marriage.
Because your religion places an extreme value to both your marriage and death‑‑because of the religious values, there is a separate pain quite unique to divorce.
When one adds to this unique pain the interpretations of divorce by some religious judges, there is also added a religious "cursing" to divorce. So the divorced person not only carries the added pain of his or her own religious values, but the divorced person also carries the cursing from those who were or are the religious authorities of the divorced. To one of sincere faith, added to grief is a legalistic shame.
The value of death in religion is no secret. Quite along with the naturalness of death, the religious value of death helps with long-term plans. Christianity makes eternal plans. Christ is our forerunner gone to prepare a place for us. Death is but a transition from an earthly chaos to a heavenly home of peace and security. For a Christian, death is the beginning of a new and better life. From this value, death offers a hope that is alien, absolutely foreign to divorce.
Though the death and physical loss of the departed is grieved, the very nature of Christianity removes some elements of grief. Yet with divorce, the departed person has not died; instead, the departed has turned away in rejection. The physical loss of the person in death does not change the affection. But the turning away and rejection in divorce forces a change in affections and a change in the relationship. And the change is not ameliorated when your religion places such a high value on marital reconciliation and detests divorce in general.
The religious hope beyond death, that is so very absent in divorce, should be enough to distinguish between the pains of death, but this religious hope beyond death complicate divorce. Compounding this is the value of marriage mentioned above. Even the non-religious value marriage. Christianity places a value on marriage second to no other religion, and likewise makes a taboo of divorce. The very value of marriage and the taboo of divorce‑‑both of these combine to make divorce a very painful encounter because of one's religious values.
On top of this, woe to you if you happen to be a part of a legalistic church whose leaders condemn the divorce before they comfort the pain. Of course, you suffer more pain in your isolation, because it is an isolation reinforced with condemnation. You are certainly in much more pain than are divorcing people who receive comfort from their religious leaders.
Said in another way, the more you value your religion the less painful death will be and the more valuable marriage will be; therefore, the more painful divorce will be. If your religious authorities cannot be with you during this time of your life‑‑truly, truly your sorrow runs deep. May God be with you.
How much more painful is divorce? Death is a religious value, but divorce is a religious taboo.
What can be said of funerals? Funerals are our way of saying goodbye. In a funeral we have the opportunity to say some final words in the company of others who likewise loved the departed. In a funeral we come together to show our mutual respects and honor the past life of the loved one.
The funeral is the traditional gathering that marks a transition in life. From that point on, the deceased loved one will be talked about in the past tense. What they did, what they left behind, what they dreamed about. From that point on, the living must set about the task, the irrevocable, inevitable, and natural task of moving on without the loved person who died. The gathering marks the transition from an old life with the beloved to a new life without the beloved.
Whether the death was accidental, brutal, or natural‑‑whatever, the very nature of death seems to bond the survivors in a mutual sharing of grief. The funeral is at least a memorialization of the finality of the loved one's departure. You pay your last respects to the departed at a funeral in a community of mutual affections. Even distrust and sometimes even previously held hostility are often set aside by family and friends in order to amicably share‑‑at least for the day‑‑a mutual and supportive handshake and hug with those closest to the departed.
On the other hand, a divorce forces a major shifting of allegiances.
Unlike death, there are no traditions or mutual gatherings, except perhaps at the courtroom. The transition in divorce is similar to that of death in that both are a transition from the past to the future tense, from the old life to the new life. As in death there is a radical and forced change of time perspective.
Yet most unlike death, divorce forces a change of allegiances in manner rarely ever encountered in death. What makes this shifting in allegiances even worse is that even though there is a shifting, some relationships cannot be severed. You cannot divorce grandparents, nor should you feel it necessary. Nor should one parent restrict visits of a ex-spouse who is also a good parent. Woe to the children placed in the binding position of having to choose. How complicated and heart-rending it all becomes.
Nevertheless, choices must be made. Allegiances will shift. Choices will be made. Some choices have to be made.
All that we have said and is said about love applies to all of the family and friends. Though in a greatly reduced sense, everyone will struggle with the tendency of love to hang on. This exponential complication is beyond us. Because family and friends (most of the time) cannot any longer hang on to the divorcing parties as a couple, logistical decisions will have to be made. All of those involved will have to decide where their time will be spent. As the time cannot be given to a couple as before, choices are made in the frugal management of time. When family and friends love both parties, the Christian ideal might be to give what time one could to the weaker party. But such is easier said than done.
After a divorce, when family or friends give more affection and comfort to one person, in their sincere desire to help, this excludes the other party. The excluded person is hurt. How can this not be viewed as betrayal by the excluded party? It is unlikely to be seen as anything else.
Here is a real dilemma for everyone caught in the divorce. Where there was once a good relationship of support and mutual consideration, the divorce forces an exclusion. Like the injection of a bacteria into the body, the inevitable and unavoidable shifting of allegiances in divorce confuses most of the relationships. Somebody is sure to feel excluded.
Christian charity could prevail. If so, the demand for courage and carefulness necessitates a special tenderness in the giving of love during this time to both parties. But this is probably more an exception than a rule.
What is even more sad is that some family and friends choose an even more painful course. That is, rather than divide their time in proportion to their affections, they will withhold their affections altogether. Marital friendships with other non-family couples are the most notorious. The pathological rationalization goes something like this: if we befriend the one, what will the other think? Without courage to dialogue further, they give up on both.
Worse still is the danger of cross-gender counseling. When a female friend counsels with the husband of the divorcing couple, she risks damage to her own marriage in giving very much attention to the male "ex"; and vice versa, when a male friend counsels with the wife a divorcing couple, he likewise risks his own marriage. These kinds of relationships tax trust to the limit. How tragic it is when hitherto good friends have to necessarily alienate themselves from the people they care deeply about through fear of misunderstanding.
What will happen when the wife of a friendship couple befriends the ex-husband of the divorced . . . or when the husband of the friendship couple befriends the ex-wife of the divorced? When there is a similarity in age and interests with the divorced parties, tossed in with the degree of vulnerability in the "ex," this becomes a Pandora's box that demands that the married couple proceed with caution. Some kind of alienation of the divorced "ex" is expected if not demanded.
Even when good Christian charity exists, only a fool would overlook the incredibly powerful forces at work. Only a fool would fail to insure the safeguards necessary to preserve trust. The danger is so great that most prudent couples would have to restrict communication. This is only good sense. That is, the married couple who are friends of the divorced would in the natural course of events alienate.
Quite naturally, the divided families already have allegiances. If years have passed with the couple more inclined to one family, when the divorce takes place, one divorced person is more in the cold than the other. Maybe "cold" is too lenient. Almost always one party in the divorce is more on ice than the other.
Furthermore, if the person who forsook a family of origin is now forsaken by the adopted family, what then? Even if a ready fellowship could be expected from the family of origin, how freely will the divorce be accepted? The time invested, the distance, the changed interests, and especially if the adopted family had hitherto become close: this could make for a strange reunion with the family of origin to say the least.
If the adopted person cannot expect a ready fellowship with his former family of origin, what pressure comes to bear? If the forsaken person has no significant or quick network of support, what then? The pressure on the adopted sometimes borders on slavery, and at times is indistinguishable from such. If he or she is abandoned with children to care for, as with so many single mothers‑‑well, what kind of strength is needed?
Where in death finality usually is a bonding force, in divorce the forcing of allegiances damages all of the relationships somewhat. Everyone struggles with finality. There is no funeral, much less any mutual gathering of comforters. In contrast to the funeral, the divorced are usually and regularly alienated in many different ways.
After the fall of the judge's gavel, nobody brought food to my house. That was the loneliest day of my life. I had just moved out of town for a job change. When the finalized the papers arrived and the court date and time was set, I made the long trip back to the town in which we were married. When I came back to the town I had lived in for two years prior to our separation, I felt like I was entering a ghost town.
Somehow, the town was Foreboding. Threatening. I was really alone.
I took some pictures of some of our old spots. I thought I might send them to her as a reminder of the places and times we shared, but I never did. I did looked up a pastor and informed him of the news.
After the judge's gavel fell, I left town. What an experience? I was single again. Kind of glad. Kind of sad. Where was finality in my heart?
Because death by its very nature is final and irrevocable, finality is readily accepted: the departed has gone and will be gone forever. Yet even if the divorce shows no prospect of reconciliation, both parties still have to be related to, both parties and their families are still present.
Because the forging of allegiances took a long time, because divorce is the result of conflict, and because the severing of allegiances takes time, finality is not settled in divorce, not even close to the settlement that takes place in a death.
Not just with the divorcing couple themselves, this absence of finality is present with all of the parties around the couple. A few with strong constitutions and who possess the best of the Christian virtues, these strong and healthy folk of integrity will not readily align themselves with one divorced person to the exclusion of the other. Though they will not be absolutely for or against the divorce, they are inclined to believe in the preservation of a healthy marriage. After the divorce, their consideration is given with such caution so as to avoid any appearance of exclusion.
The short story is simply that most parties will somehow align themselves. In the alignment, someone is rejected. That is, some people will reject each party in the divorce from what was once the circle of fellowship for the couple.
In death, everyone seems to be present (perhaps even some enemies) in a mutual compact to salute the departing. But the very nature of the realignments in divorce seems to remove from the divorced parties some of those who would be the greatest source of comfort in a death.
Funerals succor the pain of death. Divorce is not only devoid of funerals, it brings divisions and shifts in allegiance‑‑shifts during a time when you most need the allegiances.
How much more painful is death? Death has funerals, but divorce usually divides.
When a loved one nears death and then dies, how much that person means to us usually comes together through a regular and predictable pattern of grief. In times of death, our focus on the departed is clearer and more intense than at any other time in our lives. Often in the intensity of focus the good eclipses the bad. All of the comforting times together usually push out of focus the conflicting times. We remember the love and devotion. We memorialize and immortalize.
If the death was accidental or tragically unexpected, we are shocked at the injustice, surprised at the events, or guilty over our absence. The irrevocable loss points out quite quickly how much we clung to and valued the presence and relationship of the loved one. If death was coming as from a terminal disease, we began to release the loved one before they actually died. Yet after death, we find that we cannot be fully prepared anyway and grieve with great intensity anyway. And we grieve over the finality of it all.
However, a predominant part of divorce is rejection, rejection by someone. Someone became disenchanted. There is abuse or neglect that forced one party out. The result becomes a mutual rejection between parties.
Forces outside the relationship usually cause a death. Forces inside the relationship usually cause a divorce. Separation in divorce is usually the result of offenses. The separation in divorce is the result of offenses inside the relationship or to the relationship.
As opposed to death, the causes of divorce are so much more personal. Why? The inside factors. Trouble between the two parties in love caused the divorce, and a lot of the time one party played a more significant role in the cause.
Said in another way, when death occurs, the living human relationship ceases; and along with that cessation, all the good and bad in the relationship also ceases. What remains for the living is the memories of what was and the dreams, and hopes of what might have been. For the survivors after a death, it is a simple step to believe the best about the departed and so to immortalize the departed. Death prevented the dream from coming to fulfillment (not the offenses of the relationship as in divorce). In the separation by death, you almost always want to believe the best about the departed loved one.
After death, though the dreams and hopes are no longer an earthly possibility, the idea and belief and potential that they could have been does not end in death. With the positive memories and some degree of commitment, after death, "what could have been" lives on within the heart and soul of the living. No one would or could ever change this. The dream of this departed relationship reaching an earthly perfection is immortalized in the heart of the living. If there was the potential for a better future with the beloved, then even that potential is enshrined: "if he or she had lived, we could have . . ." becomes an eternal solace.
We human beings immortalize our dead in our hearts. We do not forget the good and the powerful influence those close persons had on us. We like heroes.
Quite the opposite takes place in divorce. Because the separation and divorce is the result of offenses inside the relationship, the dreams and hopes and potential dreams are shattered. The longer time the dreams were shared and the more dreams the marriage contained, well then, the greater the enormity of the shattering in divorce. Because the offenses in the relationship caused the divorce, the heart cannot hold up the dream.
In death the heart and soul can quite easily hold up the formerly potential and now immortalized dream of what could have been. In divorce the heart is struggling with the end of a dream itself, the review of dreams past in order to discount them, and the likely possibility of no dreams at all in the future.
Here comes one very severe pain in divorce: because of your age, lack of trust, betrayal of the closest friends, the loss of the one you loved and the loss of the dream itself‑‑your vision of your own life takes a turn that is never taken in death.
Death is tragic and unfortunate. With death, you move on without the loved one eventually, perhaps lonelier and perhaps alone. Added to this, the more personal nature of divorce causes a re-evaluation of your own inner self. Though both death and divorce are tragic and heart-wrenching, rarely‑‑if ever‑‑
Do
rejection and offense Cause the death
as they Always
cause the divorce.
So then death in a positive immortalization of the departed can foster self-realization. But because of the personal rejection, the struggle with finality, the shifting allegiances, and the lack of support, divorce often impedes, distorts, or at least makes difficult true growth and healing after loss.
In handling the massive rejection and offenses, you struggle to find yourself a second life, a second life of worth and esteem. Caution and fear are natural. The crash breeds and heightens the sensitivities. Allegiances are tested and some are found wanting.
There is redirection of massive proportions in both death and divorce: both redirections are forced and life changing. But unlike death, the redirection in divorce additionally forces a re-evaluation of personhood, a consideration of rejection and shattered dreams, a shifting of allegiances, and the construction of new dreams.
To survive the loss, you may distort your view of yourself. To avoid others, you might view yourself as ugly and unwanted. To avoid conflict, you might view yourself as a perpetual victim. To avoid rejection, you might reject all hints toward new relationships with the opposite sex. To avoid insignificance, you might overcompensate in work or play. To find intimacy, you might confuse sex with closeness. To find worth, you might confuse your adequacy with the proportion of power you have over another. To find love, you might become dependent upon manipulation to gain affection.
These kinds of distortions could go on forever. For you and me, the questions might be slightly altered or reconstructed. Try to fill in the blanks.
To avoid ___?___, I might view myself as ___?___.
To find ___?___, I might confuse ___?___ with ___?___.
Viewing your temptations to distortion will provide another avenue of expression that will lead to overcoming or safeguarding against the distortions.
Death involves a re-orientation toward the future with an oftentimes immortalized version of the departed loved one. Divorce involves a re-orientation towards the future with some oftentimes distorted versions of your inner self, to say nothing of how your view of others might change or develop. Or how your view of the whole world might change.
One way or another, this is the nature of personal growth: we encounter a tragedy that forces us to re-evaluate our life-values, and the evaluation forces an adjustment to the new version of life that resulted.
Unless you are a perfect person, especially before your marriage, you have accumulated your own collection of weaknesses and other social/personal inadequacies. The personal nature of divorce forces out into the light your imperfections, failures, and inadequacies; divorce does this so much more powerfully than does death. No one likes rejection. How much harder is rejection to handle alone? So much harder to handle than those who had some family and friendship support.
Some kind of distortion is quite natural as the inner self grapples with survival. We are frail in a fragile world. Divorce removes a major life partner and fosters questions unheard of in death. Only T.V. people have it all.
We often immortalize our dead. But in divorce, we often are tempted to view ourselves or others in a distorted fashion.
How much more painful is divorce? Death often immortalizes, but divorce often distorts.
Even in death we seek to free the departed from our needs for them. But there is rarely the temptation to question or otherwise kill what remains of love in the heart. While love is usually affirmed and immortalized in death, the rejection in divorce often throws stones at any positive love.
While death removed your loved one, your love for him or her never ceases. In death your love is sealed forever. There will never be a decrease in love, only growth in love. Memories compound with your memorializations in love. The departed loved one moves into an exalted place within your heart, even a mythical place of enshrinement.
To the contrary in divorce, though your love might continue, it can no longer be given with the prior abandon and freedom. What was once meant to be intimate and sharing is now restricted and choked by divorce.
Death removed the loved one, but death enshrined and sealed the love. Divorce not only views the departure of the loved one, but also is forced to reevaluate the nature of love itself. If you succeed in preserving love for the departed in a divorce at all, that preservation was accomplished only after a great period of renegotiation with rejection. In the preservation of a vestige of love, there was a heart-rending and mind-boggling struggle. Love changed.
How does love change? I do not know. I do know that a change in love is healthier than losing or pushing out love altogether. I feel it is even healthier to believe in the departed's love (whether or not it was valid, even in spite of the validity).
I suppose I could go on and obsess forever like this. How painful is divorce?
How painful is divorce? Death removes the loved one, but divorce changes the love. Is divorce more painful than death?