You can divorce well or you can divorce badly and like with most things, there's a front and a back to both scenarios. How better to ameliorate our shame of our failure than to posture a divorce as a constructive motion toward benevolence? This is a lie you can't live with. In amicable divorce, someone is either compromising too much or they're hiding their animosity. "We've grown apart. No one's to blame." This is yet another lie. Growth, by virtue of itself, is new and different. It is neither predictable nor certain. You enter into marriage with the knowledge that you will traverse growth and navigate your changes as partners. Growing apart means you have stopped partnering. Someone has let go; lost their edge, and now the two parties are in a free fall...separately. So then, how can it be authentic for them to come to the business of divorce as one; unified and together?
When two people enter the ring of divorce with smiles on their faces and a song in their heart, the world around them is left confused and unsure as to what is expected from them. Lawyers can't do their jobs, mediators feel useless. Parents and children are completely bewildered and friends just want to fade away rather than manage this ambivalence. The divorcing couple wants an amicable divorce for the sake of the family, but they are actually making things harder for their families and confusing their children.
Some of the most damaging divorces are the most amicable ones, where the high ground respect and friendship of the Switzerland like ex-couple infiltrates both or either party's future and current relationships. These seemingly benign, friendly divorces create a hostility, jealousy and rancor that often percolates below the surface until it creates its own seismic shift in the landscape of any new, soon to be old, relationships; not to mention the current relationships with friends and families. The friendly divorce is too often based on the rejected party hoping to regain the love of the whistle blower. "I will always love him. He is the Father of my children." Is this meant to be consolation to families or a line of seduction to a prospective paramour? The fact that "the Father of your children" dumped you and gave seed to another woman's child while you were still under the illusion that the two of you were "working it out" is irrelevant. What you are clearly not "working out" is him out of your system, your heart and your rejected self. And until you do, you will be unlovable and unacceptable. You may be divorced, you may be unmarried but you are not available. You are just alone.
Except for your children, who are completely baffled by how their lives got turned upside down while their parents seem to be peachy keen. Taking the high road has taken on new stratospheric heights. Everyone is uncomfortable, except for the un-couple who bask in their "superior" amiability. How well children weather divorce has more to do with how their parents manage their conflict than the actual conflict or breakup itself. But it is simplistic to think that that means Mommy and Daddy should be best friends in order to insure the well being of their children. If they're such good friends, why didn't they stay married? What is marriage, then, is it not friendship? Is it not love? Is it really just about sleeping together? Because that seems to be the only thing that's changed in Mommy and Daddy's relationship. Is this the message about love and marriage that you want to teach your children? An honest relationship post-divorce is hard to attain but it is more important to self and others than any other aspect of the dissolution. Being best friends is not the answer any more than being arch enemies is.
No matter how or why two people come to the divorce table, one thing is for certain. At least one of the two are dissatisfied. And even if they both agree to disagree, in the words of Bob Dylan, "One of us cannot be wrong." There is a big difference between handling disagreement maturely and pretending there is no disagreement. Divorce does not have to be about hate, but it cannot be about love. Divorce is a business deal that is afflicted and compromised by the emotional instruments of the marriage. It is a beginning and it is an end. But it is not something that two people can accomplish while holding hands any more than it can be accomplished at gun point. You can't be afraid to be angry any more than you can be afraid to be kind. Marriage at its best is about love. Divorce at its best is about business. And while one is a union and one is a dissolution of a union, they are not opposites.
I've been a party to three divorces in my immediate family, two as a child and one of my own. Ironically, they were all different. I can tell you with certainty that the bitter, rancorous divorce was brutal on us kids, led to hatred, resentment, tumult, insecurity, and guilty feelings if you still liked one of your parents. Meanwhile, the prior divorce was respectful and kind. Us kids didn't even realize what negativity was taking place. We were insulated from it by our parents' amicable behavior. It was just "mom and dad were going to live in different places." We didn't have to choose, evaluate, hate, or any of that. We loved both our parents and always felt that we were allowed to. The respective families got along, wishing Christmas blessings and attending major events like our graduations and weddings. My divorced parents got along for years, all the way through to my father's funeral. Conversely, the man my mother divorced rancorously, well, none of us ever saw him again and he became the poster boy for everything negative. That's healthy??
So I can tell you from vast experience, this is just an awful article. Clueless, misguided, and just plain wrong.
Next up:
"The Myth of the Happy Musician"
"The Myth of the Successful Business"
"The Myth of the Sure-Fire Pancake Recipe"
"The Myth of the Really Wonderful Vacation"
The article did not state you have could not have a friendly or amicable split. However, an allegedlly "friendly split" does not mean that BOTH EXs are being completely honest about their
feelings.
Sometimes a new relationship.
Sometimes control of the children.
Sometimes large child support/maintenance payments.
Sometimes wants money/cash in hand.
Sometimes the existing house.
Sometimes a new house.
Sometimes a new job/life.
Sometimes not to have to get a job.
Sometimes revenge or to cause harm/suffering and embarrassment and drama/havoc.
How the divorce will go largely depends on what that "something" is -- relative to what the other divorcing spouse wants -- temperament and personality disorder issues of the divorcing spouses notwithstanding.
The "magic of divorce"?
Not work/effort, not care/attention, but magic -- the idea that you instead can get something by legerdemain/deception or illusion or the supernatural.
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mag·ic [maj-ik] noun
1. the art of producing illusions as entertainment by the use of sleight of hand, deceptive devices, etc.; legerdemain; conjuring.
2. the art of producing a desired effect or result through the use of incantation or various other techniques that presumably assure human control of supernatural agencies ....
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I am sure that divorce feels like "magic" for selfish and irresponsible divorcing spouses who prevail in divorce court by deception/illusion -- and who may enjoy the "freedom" not to have to work for a living (i.e. because they can live on the child support payments).
But decades of experience and research show that divorce is devastating and not "magic" for the affected children.
Magic indeed. Abracadabra -- daddy be gone! (but please keep mailing in the checks).