The D Word

Divorce

I’ve been avoiding this post, primarily because I just know that if certain patients run across it on the web, they’re going to say, THAT’S ME! OMG! SHE WROTE ABOUT ME AND PUBLISHED IT ON THE WEB!

But you have to understand, this is not about you, unless, perhaps it fits and it is. This is a very common interactional sequence, and if you fit into it and you're pretty sure I'm your doc, well, that can’t be helped. As I’ve told you before, you’re not that special. We're all unique, but our emotional lives are not.

The Post:

A patient will come into therapy fed up with a partner, sincerely ready, wanting, willing, to leave. The partner has a thousand deficits, some of them truly tragic flaws. (If you think you don’t have flaws, character deficits, think again).

We all have these, tragic flaws, features of character disorders. There isn’t a soul who is free of shtick, and we therapists say, Long live the shtick, for it is our specialty, you see, working it through, turning it around. We have you rethink it, and if we have enough time and you have enough money, the shtick melts away and is no longer tragic, and the relationship improves, and no one has to go anywhere.

But yes, it can take a long time, and a lot of money. I’m always saying that the lawyers are making so much more, however, invest it in good therapy. You look at a lawyer and you’re broke. That’s why I sent my son to college to become a lawyer. At this writing, as a lawyer, he is making less per hour than the piano teacher across the street. But okay.

Back to you, this is not to say that every character deficit can be fixed or will be fixed, or that we should intuitively understand the other's deficits and accept this person as he or she is. We don't get things like this intuitively just because we walk on two legs and have a rational, thinking chip in our heads. How to live with and adapt to personality is surely an art and a skill, and it helps if our partner is willing to change those maladaptive slivers of self.

Why be dysfunctional when you can be functional? Why be a part of the problem when you can be a part of the solution?

But it's never that simple, is hardly intuitive, and is the reason you pay for help, is the truth.

And when therapy begins to drag on, when things aren’t getting better, many choose to call it quits, and that’s okay. If it makes you happy, I am prone to say, or actually sing. And sometimes it does, or it will.

Yet we are destined to bring into the next relationship that which we brought into the last relationship, thus the next relationship is likely to be unsuccessful, as well. We bring ourselves.

I serve on a committee that reviews proposals for research for ethical violations. It is called the Institutional Review Board, or IRB, the Office of Protection of Research Subjects. Each member of the committee reviews the research proposal and together, in a small room, we hold up, block the student’s journey to a PhD, block the proposal for as long as it takes to get things right. There’s metaphor in this, holding things up, working on things until they’re right, and in this process the student learns a great deal. It is the humbling hurdle, getting through IRB, but you have to do it or you can’t proceed with the adventure.

But the metaphor isn't why I bring up IRB here. Last week I read through one of these research protocols and learned that 62% of second marriages fail. That’s much higher than the rate of divorce for first marriages, 50%, and although you can do the Freakonomics, you can find alternative reasons, surely, my guess is that remarried partners are bringing themselves into that second marriage. And haven't changed.

Let's assume, however, that no one's been divorced yet, and everyone is still chipping away at the relationship and themselves, peddling as fast as possible in marital therapy. At some point in the middle phase of therapy, in the thick of the marriage, deep into conflict and avoidance, it is likely that one or both will not see any light at the end of the tunnel, despite the therapist's well intentions.

One of the partners is confident, actually, that this marriage is unbearable, unfixable, and might say:

You have to change or I want a divorce. Something's gotta' give, and it's you.

And the recipient of that good news will say: YOU have to change.

And partner #1 shoots back: I’m this way because of you.

And the wheels go round and round.

And the therapist enlightens the couple with circles and squares and arrows, interactional sequences and patterns, the dance you can read about in books (and should), yet the two magoos just can’t break out of their old behaviors.

And one says, often, unfortunately, "I want a divorce," but may do absolutely nothing about it, because inside it isn’t what is truly desired.

You want successful relationships, and if you've been married many years and have children, really want things to work.

You want things to work so even though you're complaining, you never get that lawyer, or if you do it is to spend your hard-earned money just to tell him,

"I’ll think about it."

But the damage is done. As soon as you threaten with the D word, certainly if you do it over and over again, a partner’s abandonment issues are lit. That part of the brain that says, FAILURE! LOSER! lights up.

In this situation we see ourselves embarrassed, alone, powerless in the face of our children who will act out all over the place because they know that they can. We are alone and the kids are acting out and we'll be damned if we’re going to call our ex to help us out because we're still furious about the emotional abandonment, one that began well before the divorce.

Calling the ex when the kids are acting up, of course, is what you have to do, because without that executive committee (read about it somewhere on the side bar), the kids have executive power and do whatever they want, and you’ll never know the half of it,either. Obviously this is not always the case, many children are sensitive and caring and do not want to make our lives miserable to accomplish their selfish task of individuation, but many are not. And they will have issues regardless of how they behave.

Thus once the abandonment nerve is triggered with the D word, our most primitive defenses kick in. No longer will we risk intimacy. No longer will we come closer, tell a wounded partner, “I’m sorry. I know you’re miserable. I shouldn’t have said that. Let’s talk. Let’s work it out. I love you.”

How can you say that when you might get kicked in the head? You might hear, “Well, I HATE you and I wish I had never married you!”

Oy.

Once the D-word is out, there’s no taking it back. It’s out. And it comes out again, and again, and again, because without that bravado that comes with commitment, the other will not say, , “I’m sorry. I know you’re miserable. I shouldn’t have said that. Let’s talk. Let’s work it out. I love you.”

But that has to be said. I’m sorry. Just say that. Get over it, that fear of getting kicked in the head. Move in, not away, and assert, assert, assert. Pronounce the confidence you have in your problem-solving matter, the confidence you don’t have, but should have, and melt that miserable partner of yours with kindness. Keep any criticism out of your tone (you really can do this, you know, edit not only your words, but your tone), and kill with kindness.

No, it won’t always work. The partner who is already involved with someone else may not want you. It’s true. Once you taste other fruit, eating cantaloupe every day is not the same. On the other hand, if you only had cantaloupe, you really would be fine, you know.

Okay, hit me with your best shot. I kept it as short as I could.

therapydoc