Divorce As A Healing Shock

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

"Hands are stretched out to heaven in gratitude. God, how merciful partings are!" How does divorce begin? Most women think that it’s infidelity, which in itself, in my opinion, is not so much the result of extinct love as a desire to diversify a boring relationship. Most men believe that with the loss of a woman's attractiveness, from a seized way of life, about which a love boat crashes

But from my point of view, divorce makes itself felt long before the betrayal and bored life, and betrayal is just a reaction to a long-term illness, just like the temperature in the body is a reaction to the presence of a virus or infection. And the established way of life, which supposedly levels love, is just a way to maintain social status in society, while losing relationships. And divorce becomes a natural outcome of a relationship, where there is room for nagging, humiliation, devaluation, painful silence, and there is absolutely no place for dialogue. But, in spite of everything, divorce is becoming an increasingly popular way to solve the accumulated problems in relationships, in which quite adequate and successful people often cannot find a common language. I often see signs of an approaching divorce among clients precisely by such "markers", which, to a greater extent than adultery, are capable of ruining a marriage to the core, no matter how strong it may seem from the outside.

The most difficult and unbearable manipulative action is gaslighting … This term is often used in psychological treatises on manipulation and takes an honorable first place there. This is because gaslighting is very difficult to resist, since its task is to make you "abnormal", to change your reality and attitude towards yourself in your mind. "You are hysterical!" - the man says to the woman, and then “gracefully” humiliates her in public, and when she is completely legitimately indignant, she immediately repeats: “Well, you see! Witnesses are right there - shaking their heads in unison: "How does he, poor man, live with this hysterical woman? It's just a feat. Unhappy …" Gaslighting has two main purposes: to make you doubt your adequacy and to devalue what is important to you. Another example. Woman: "You promised that we would go to the theater today!" - "Yes, dear, but the children are sick, and we have no one to leave them with!" - "I knew it! You always do not keep your promises!" The feeling of unreality and absurdity of what is happening visits everyone who is faced with gaslighting. The main message is that you are abnormal (abnormal), and everyone sees it, and only I can (can) tolerate it. The message that follows this often looks like this: "Who needs (needs) you, except me!" And most women live with a despot in complete confidence that no one else needs them, especially with children and an uncompromising mother-in-law. If you hear something like that in marriage: "real men (women) do not behave this way", "you start again", "these are your problems - you should solve them", "you, as always, are wrong", " you PMS, crisis, depression - go get treated! "," all women (men) are fools, hysterics (goats, bastards) "," I didn't say that "," you misunderstood me "- all these are typical phrases of a manipulator, which uses gaslighting to lower your self-esteem and self-esteem. Run!

Inability to listen and engage in dialogue - the scourge of modern relations. Of course, often instead of questions, there are only complaints, but you also need to have the courage and patience to listen to them. And not just listen, but also understand their essence. For this, both spouses often have neither the time nor the desire. The result is misunderstanding, understatement, inability to reflect on events and words. In order to understand each other, it is important to initially "compare concepts", which, in fact, is done very rarely by young spouses, because many marriages are concluded in a hurry, on emotions. Young people often do not have, and indeed cannot have, the experience of understanding what they need, why they are getting married, in what family and according to what laws I was brought up, and in what kind - my spouse. What values, principles and responsibilities were in the parental family, and what will I have. Who will wash the dishes and who will make money. This is precisely the misalliance of modern precocious marriages, and not the age difference. It is the parental family that for many becomes the standard of relations, a model in the distribution of responsibilities and the principles of raising children, and young people often do not take this into account. Do we have enough understanding that we will have to change something, are we capable of changes? All these disagreements will come out sooner or later, and many things are already visible at the start. And even if the spouses were brought up in similar conditions, profess the same principles and views on the family, nevertheless, disagreements may arise due to misunderstandings. They are possible at the level of temperaments and reactions to events, where the husband who has turned away from his wife gives the woman a message: "Don't touch me!" But due to the fact that everyone scans his own reaction, then he reacts in his own way - in the way he considers possible and acceptable for himself.

Personal crisis. One of the reasons and prerequisites for divorce can also be a personal crisis, which is difficult to survive, especially when things are not going very well not only at home, but also at work. At this moment, it can be difficult for a person to distinguish where his own dissatisfaction with life is, and where is the result of interaction with others. And sometimes, fearing internal changes, a person tries to change the environment - family, work, friends, hoping that he will be able to avoid a personal crisis. There is, as it were, the "zeroing" of all life, where there is an opportunity, as it were, to "start over", from a "blank slate". During this period, you always want to radically change everything. It must be admitted that a personality crisis often occurs against the backdrop of a partner's success, when spouses who have taken the same start suddenly begin to notice significant differences in the results achieved. If at the same time one of the partners considers his success to be absolutely personal and does not depend on the partnership, then the other may just have this personal crisis, and the desire to "catch up" turns into a desire to "get rid of the competition." It is quite understandable that a woman is often tied hand and foot by everyday life and children, and if she does not have the opportunity to do something for herself, and not "for the house for the family," then, most likely, she will withdraw into this life, experiencing permanent personality crisis. Often, it is in this case that a partner is a way to solve their personal problems, and then a divorce is a complete loss of support in life, a collapse, the end of everything. An adequate person should choose himself, and not everything that requires sacrifice. No sacrifice is ever paid! These are the laws of sacrifice - a ritual of gratuitous giving, the magical powers of which lie only in the action itself, but not in the result.

Sexual relationship as a marker of a possible divorce are also very significant. As a rule, spouses during a crisis avoid sexual relations, which only brings divorce closer. Perhaps this is a topic for a separate article, but what the spouses call "sexual incompatibility" is most likely not. What we usually mean by this is the inability to negotiate and communicate about sexual needs. Here again we come to the conclusion that there is no dialogue. Of course, there is also a real physical incompatibility, when we cannot tolerate the smell of a partner or his habit of eating with an open mouth, but, excuse me, this did not arise "suddenly" - it was before, and if you tried not to notice it, then, may have had other compelling reasons for such a marriage. Men and women react differently to divorce and try to save a marriage in different ways. The phases of the experience of divorce are very similar to the experience of the death of a loved one or the news of a serious illness: denial, anger and the search for guilty ones, bargaining - a desire to somehow correct the situation, depression and stabilization. If any of the stages is missing, this does not mean at all that you are abnormal. Perhaps for you, divorce is happiness and liberation, and not the tragedy of a lifetime. This also happens. The experience of the "bargaining" stage is characteristic of women. Women most often look for the reason in themselves and rush into "tuning": they try to improve themselves externally and internally. Their efforts to lose weight, transform, rejuvenate and grow personally often take very bizarre forms. However, all popular women's magazines advise exactly this: "Take care of yourself! Urgently to a beauty salon!" and curlers. Women, in the period of pre-divorce anxiety (more often than men) go to all kinds of fortune-tellers and soothsayers, trying to find out and suggest their future in order to somehow prepare for it, bargaining with fate for a man. For some reason, it does not always occur to women to shape their future on their own. Yes, this is often the fault of a woman's material dependence on a man, who, in anticipation of a divorce, tries to strengthen it by manipulating the woman's fear of material difficulties, especially if the family has children. The male reaction to a prospective divorce is manifested in a quick search for a replacement. Strange as it may sound, it is scary for a man to be alone, especially if he has lived for a long time in a marriage, where life was adjusted and arranged. Therefore, a man very quickly finds a temporary replacement for his wife, which helps him to maintain his masculine identity and makes it possible to calmly continue to do business. Often, a man anticipates a divorce, realizing that the relationship is crumbling, and he has neither the strength nor the desire to keep them, and, while still in marriage, begins an active search for a replacement. By the way, it is important to say that very rarely these relationships end in a new marriage, because a man practically does not choose, but takes the first thing that catches his eye. The qualities of a "temporary companion" are practically irrelevant. This choice is a man's struggle with the fear of loneliness, in some cases - revenge and a desire to prove that "someone else needs me." Happens and lucky - not without it. Men, too, experience divorce quite sharply, but they have a prevailing desire not to notice their feelings, to “cover up” them, like covering the windows in a bath with white paint, so as not to see, feel, “stick” and continue to “be effective”. Women, on the other hand, fixate on feelings, experience them violently and richly, discuss and reflect. That is why women often have a powerful "breakthrough" after a divorce, and they can move to a new stage in work, creativity, relationships. The experience of pain helps a woman to be initiated, to become a new, different, "seen everything", and in many ways experienced, which in general becomes an unequivocally positive result. In this sense, divorce can be considered an initiation even more than the marriage itself. After all, initiation-divorce is a healing shock. It not only makes a man and a woman think in a new way, get rid of the infantilism, which is full in marriage, but also makes them grow up instantly. And growing up is very painful, even if you are a child and really want to become an adult. What can we say about the "growing up" of an adult! Yes, it goes through the pain and tears of all family members, but it can become a powerful impetus for development, growth of consciousness, independence. I am sure that you know dozens of stories when, after a divorce, women and men began an incredible growth in their careers, creativity, changed for the better - they became more independent, engaged in personal growth and education, and were healed from ailments and psychological addictions. It is women who most often regret that they lost a lot of time in a boring and uncomfortable union, not having filed for divorce much earlier. Every now and then from women I hear the question: "For what? Why do I need this? What did I do wrong?" I always recommend asking yourself the question before an important decision: "Why do I need this? What will change, and what will I get in return?"Not in terms of money and content, but in the context of gaining freedom, development and new opportunities. And often this question leads to an understanding: what was, is no longer alive and valuable, and in what will be, there are a lot of prospects. There are prospects even after realizing that "parting is a little death", as the unforgettable singer sang. If, after all that has been said, you ask me what a divorce is, I will say that divorce is a way of regulating family relations, when, having no other means of determining a comfortable distance, the family chooses parting. The distance for the safe existence of people who love each other is determined by each couple in its own way even during marriage. But the distance that determines what suits them at this critical moment, when the forces for dialogue have been exhausted, can be both minimal and huge. And even if this distance is an abyss, it is still a relationship. Relationships to build.