Emotional Divorce and Grief

Grief is something that occurs naturally in response to a loss. Loss and grief are normal and a valuable part of life and we all respond to loss in different ways. One reason separation and divorce affect us so much is that it means our lives are never the same afterwards.

Even if you are happy to be out of the relationship, there is still the loss that needs to be grieved. Some people dismiss the idea they have lost anything with a “Good riddance” view or that “Nothing would be missed”. However, in doing so there is a risk of carrying emotional baggage into the future and preventing an emotional divorce. Ruth Malkinson author of Cognitive Grief Therapy says that grieving is crucial, necessary and unavoidable for successful adaptation.

By recognising the purpose, or meaning, of grief, we can master that grief. Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl recount the story;

‘Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now how could I help him? What should I tell him? I refrained from telling him anything, but instead confronted him with a question, "What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive without you?:" "Oh," he said, "for her, this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!" Whereupon I replied, "You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it is you who have spared her this suffering; but now, you have to pay for it by surviving and mourning her." He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left the office.’

New York Times writer Tim Sanders uses this concept to relieve the stress of fellow airline travellers by asking them the purpose of their journey. When he does this, no matter how miserable they are, their whole demeanour changes and they remain happy throughout the flight.

By recognising the purpose, or meaning, of grief experienced post-separation, we can master that grief.

Increasingly mental health professionals are recommending that participation in ceremony or ritual to mark the end of the relationship and give closure. Every major event in our life is marked with some type of ritual or ceremony. The exception is often the ending of an intimate partner relationship. If some form of ritual with your former partner is not for you an alternative is writing your own ‘divorce decree’ including a detailed account of what went wrong in the relationship and what lies ahead for you over the next few years, your future goals. The written emotional divorce decree can be read often and helps people accept the end of the relationship and achieve their emotional divorce.

Psychotherapist and author Daphne Kingma suggest that an important part of the emotional divorce is acknowledging the ‘gifts’ that were received from the relationship. Not material gifts, but the changes to yourself, things that were learned and the achievements of the relationship such as children. It can be very valuable to compare yourself no to the person you were before the relationship. Every relationship is enriching in some way. Writing these things down could form part of your emotional divorce decree.

Margaret Stroebe, Professor Emeritus of psychology says, ‘dwelling in intense suffering can have severe mental consequences; thus, moving beyond the pain should not be misinterpreted as a signal that the bereft have been forgotten or that the grief has ended’.  Grief is a necessary part of moving on with life.