Breaking Vows, Breaking Habits : When a marriage ends, a partner may hang on out of obligation, fear, passion or friendship. But getting over divorce is essential to moving on, say local therapists.
Boomerang love kept couples such as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and, more recently, Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly from making permanent breaks after their divorce.
When a husband and wife begin to dissolve their marriage, going their separate ways can sometimes be so agonizing that one or both may cling to the other physically or emotionally.
“Divorce is so painful, some people would prefer (to stay in) an unhealthy relationship” than to separate, explains Phil Hall, founder and director of the Centers for Psychological Growth and Development in Tustin, Anaheim Hills and Cypress.
Though there is often plenty of pain in an unhealthy relationship, Hall says the difference in the severity of the pain between staying in a bad marriage and ending it, for some, is comparable to the difference in pain between a sore and a severed artery.
“The sore doesn’t heal, but a severed artery is life-threatening; that’s what divorce feels like for many people,” he says.
Indeed, divorce is “the death of a relationship, and there is a mourning and a grieving time. As long as you hang on, you are not able to move through that process,” says Linda Benson, a marriage, family and child counselor who practices in Huntington Beach.
Hanging on to each other may stem from habit, passion, obligation or fear.
For some, as in the case with Jennifer (who asked, as did others in this story, that her real name not be used), companionship as comfortable as a worn slipper is the reason she can’t break with her ex-husband.
The Corona del Mar resident says her relationship with her ex-husband, Darren, would probably mystify outsiders, but a deep bond holds them together. Though Jennifer has since become involved with someone else in the two years following their separation and filing for divorce, she continues to socialize with Darren.
Mutual interests is her reason for keeping a less intimate form of their relationship alive.
“We see foreign films, concerts, things like that (that) my new (man) isn’t as into,” Jennifer says.
Recent developments--Darren’s beingdiagnosed with terminal cancer--have shifted the relationship even more. Jennifer, who quit her job in September, has been at his bedside during her ex’s ordeal, because Darren’s family is in Europe. She was at his side for his chemotherapy treatments and plans to accompany him to Europe so he can say goodby to his family. She even purchased his airplane ticket with one of the couple’s mutual credit cards.
“I’ve always loved him; he’s a very dear man,” says Jennifer, who says the reason the marriage didn’t survive is because he is 28 years older than she is.
Sometimes obligation and guilt serve as motivators for continued involvement in a former spouse’s life.
Steven, who has been remarried for 11 years and lives in Tustin, called ex-wife Gloria after the January earthquake and offered to do extensive work on her San Fernando Valley house.
“Often what happens is that the ex or separated husband will continue to act as the role of handyman, doing the jobs out of obligation. He may care about her welfare and in a limited way retain a small, familial part of the relationship, but he is no longer physically attracted to her because he is having his sexual needs met elsewhere,” Benson says.
The most common tie that binds many divorced couples is children.
If a couple have children, “there will always be a connection between the two parents, especially if they have spent a third of their life or so with one another,” says Linda Algazi, who has a psychology practice that includes marriage and family therapy in Corona del Mar.
Friends and family might assume that couples having trouble letting go may be candidates for reconciliation.
Not necessarily.
Lisa, a Newport Beach resident divorced since August, spent 25 years married to Bob. The two “tight friends” continue to run their family business together. “The love doesn’t just go away, but since we still have the same problems, we both know that we just can’t live together,” Lisa says.
“If the couple have identified problems and put forth the time and the effort to change their behavior, they have a chance of making it work,” says Norman Wright, director of the Family Counseling & Enrichment Center in Tustin. Otherwise, it’s important that people move on when the relationship is too impaired to be saved.
“If the horse is dead, then it’s time to stop beating it,” says Bill Flanagan, a marriage, family and child counselor and single adult minister at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach.
Flanagan, whose biannual workshops have led 10,000 adults through divorce recovery since 1971, says healing is essential before people can move on to leading a full life.
Beginning to let go means:
* Understanding the reality of the situation. “It’s natural to deny or escape, but a person must wake up in the morning and assess his or her situation--they are divorced or lonely or whatever--instead of operating with a ‘this is OK’ superficiality,” Flanagan says.
* Dealing with the known and still-to-be-discovered effects of the divorce. “Someone needs to stand back in a position of emotional neutrality, to give perspective to people who are in the middle of the process,” Flanagan says.
* Overcoming obstacles to readjustment that crop up after the divorce. Sometimes a loss of order in a person’s life becomes so unbearable he or she may seek out an ex-spouse for the sole purpose of trying to restore order, says Jim Head of the Mariposa Women’s Center in Orange.
* Making an emotional withdrawal from the marital relationship. This enables both people to feel comfortable reinvesting in another relationship. Once emotions and logistics are sorted out, spouses and children can move into a new kind of family, Benson says.