To a child, divorce can seem like the death of a parent.
If you are going through a divorce, have gone through a divorce or know of someone who has, you must know that divorce is a devastating and traumatic thing to endure. It is already difficult and painful for the husband and the wife, but divorce hurts more than just two people. Divorce is equally painful and traumatic for the children.
There is much controversy about how divorce affects children. Many studies show that, to a child, divorce is equivalent to the pain of the death of the parent. There is a great loss, with grief and sadness, and confusion for the children. Children most always believe that they are the cause of the divorce. They think that the parent who left, actually left them or left because of them and that the parent doesn’t love them anymore. Often the parents are so consumed in their own grief or turmoil that they fail to see the devastating effects of the breakup on the children.
Divorce affects children adversely in many ways. Children of divorce have more difficulty in school, more behavior problems, they often have low self esteem and think they are worthless and bad, more problems with peers and more trouble getting along with their parents.
The family unit is a vital part of the stability of young children. Mothers and fathers are important resources for their children. They give love, provide emotional support and teach their children skills and knowledge about life, as well as serve as role models.
The break up of the family unit through divorce can be a heart wrenching experience for children. Divorce can adversely affect a child, from their behavior, school, employment, relationships, and future marriage.
Studies regarding teenage and adult females, parental divorce has been associated with lower self esteem, promiscuity and greater delinquent behaviors, as well as, difficulty maintaining long-term relationships. Girls experience the emotional loss of the father directly and personally. They believe it is a direct rejection of them. Many girls attribute this rejection to not being pretty enough, affectionate enough, athletic enough, smart enough, etc.
On a long-term study of up to 25 years later, it was shown that when the parents first got divorced, the children reported feeling lonely, ashamed, or terrified of abandonment. In teens, half of the children became involved in alcohol and drugs. In their twenties and thirties, the women in the study had less education, decreased socio-economic status and difficulty with long-term relationships.
But caregivers can be alert for signs that the child is upset or depressed. Children will question things like:
"What did I do wrong?"
"What will happen to me if they both leave?"
"Was it my fault?"
Children react differently yet similarly in divorce. Some will be extremely sad and show signs of depression and even sleeplessness. Anxiety levels peak as they feel they are going to be abandoned. They experience feelings of loneliness due to the loss of the other parent. Different children go through it at different levels and different times.
How bad or how well children go through the divorce depends on how the situation is handled. It can throw the child's entire life into a whirlwind. There will more than likely be financial instabilities due to loss in income of the absent parent. There may be a change in residence or schools. Also, for both parents and children, holidays and birthdays after a divorce can be some of the most difficult things to deal with, traumatic even. It is important that as many things as possible in the children’s lives, remain the same. Familiarity with as many things as possible, with the least amount of disruption, is crucial to minimizing the emotional damage divorce causes to the innocent victims, the children. Counseling may be necessary.
Family structure is very important to a child, vital, in fact. Divorce in the family environment requires the family to restructure. It is critical for the well being of the children for both parents to continue to play important roles in their lives. The parents should work together as much as possible for the well being of the children to limit the amount of damage divorce can have on the children.
by Shirley Glass, Hara Estroff Marano
Hold on to your wedding ring. It's difficult, but possible, to repair the damage caused by infidelity. Increasingly, that's what couples want. But let go of assumptions. In an interview with Editor at Large Hara Estroff Marano, a leading expert challenges everything you think you know about the most explosive subject of the year.
Infidelity appears to be the topic of the year. What has struck you most about the reaction to what may or may not be some kind of infidelity in high places?
Whatever horror or dismay people have about it, they're able to separate the way the President is performing in office and the way he appears to be performing in his marriage. That's especially interesting because it seems to reflect the split in his life. We don't know for sure, but he apparently is very much involved in his family life. He's not an absentee father or husband. Whatever it is that they share--and they share a lot, publicly and privately--he has a compartment in which he is attracted to young women, and it is separate from his primary relationships.
Is this compartmentalizing characteristic of people who get into affairs?
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It's much more characteristic of men. Most women believe that if you love your partner, you wouldn't even be interested in an affair; therefore, if someone has an affair, it means that they don't love their partner and they do love the person they had the affair with. But my research shows there are many men who do love their partners, who enjoy good sex at home, who nevertheless never turn down an opportunity for extramarital sex. In fact, 56% of the men I sampled who had extramarital intercourse said that their marriages were happy, versus 34% of the women.
That's how I got into this.
Because?
Being a woman, I believed that if a man had an affair, it meant that he had a terrible marriage, and that he probably wasn't getting it at home--the old keep-your-husband-happy-so-he-won't-stray idea. That puts too much of a burden on the woman. I found that she could be everything wonderful, and he might still stray, if that's in his value system, his family background, or his psychodynamic structure.
I was in graduate school when I heard that a man I knew, married for over 40 years, had recently died and his wife was so bereaved because they had had the most wonderful marriage. He had been her lover, her friend, her support system. She missed him immensely I thought that was a beautiful story. When I told my husband about it, he got a funny look that made me ask, What do you know? He proceeded to tell me that one night when he took the kids out for dinner to an out-of-the-way restaurant, that very man walked in with a young blonde woman. When he saw my husband, he walked out.
How did that influence you?
I wondered what that meant. Did he fool his wife all those years and really not love her? How is it possible to be married for over 40 years and think you have a good marriage? It occurred to me that an affair could mean something different than I believed.
Another belief that was an early casualty was the hydraulic pump theory --that you only have so much energy for something. By this belief, if your partner is getting sex outside, you would know it, because your partner wouldn't be wanting sex at home. However, some people are even more passionate at home when they are having extramarital sex. I was stunned to hear a man tell me that when he left his affair partner and came home he found himself desiring his wife more than he had in a long time, because he was so sexually aroused by his affair. That made me question the pump theory.
Many of our beliefs about the behavior of others come from how we see things for ourselves. A man who associates sneaking around with having sex will, if his wife is sneaking around, find it very hard to believe that she could be emotionally involved without being sexually involved. On the other hand, a woman usually cannot believe that her husband could be sexually involved and not be emotionally involved. We put the same meaning on it for our partner that it would have for us. I call that the error of assumed similarity.
What infidelity research have you done?
My first research study was actually based on a sex questionnaire in Psychology Today in the '70s. I analyzed the data, looking at the effect of extramarital sex, length of marriage, and gender difference on marital satisfaction and romanticism. I found enormous gender differences.
Men in long-term marriages who had affairs had very high marital satisfaction--and women in long-term marriages having affairs had the lowest satisfaction of all. Everybody's marital satisfaction went down the longer they were married, except the men who had affairs. But in early marriages, men who had affairs were significantly less happy. An affair is more serious if it happens earlier in the marriage.
Explaining these gender differences was the basis of my dissertation. I theorized that men were having sexual affairs and women emotional affairs.
Are affairs about sex?
Sometimes infidelity is just about sex. That is often more true for men. In my research, 44% of men who said they had extramarital sex said they had slight or no emotional involvement; only 11% of women said that. Oral sex is certainly about sex. Some spouses are more upset if the partner had oral sex than if they had intercourse; it just seems so much more intimate.
What is the infidelity in infidelity?
The infidelity is that you took something that was supposed to be mine, which is sexual or emotional intimacy, and you gave it to somebody else. I thought that we had a special relationship, and now you have contaminated it; it doesn't feel special any more, because you shared something very precious to us with someone else.
There are gender differences. Men feel more betrayed by their wives having sex with someone else; women feel more betrayed by their husbands being emotionally involved with someone else. What really tears men apart is to visualize their partner being sexual with somebody else.
Women certainly don't want their husbands having sex with somebody else, but they may be able to deal with an impersonal one-night fling better than a long-term relationship in which their husband was sharing all kinds of loving ways with somebody else.
Why are affairs so deeply wounding?
Because you have certain assumptions about your marriage. That I chose someone, and the other person chose me; we have the same values; we have both decided to have an exclusive relationship, even though we may have some problems. We love each other-and therefore I am safe.
When you find out your partner has been unfaithful, then everything you believe is totally shattered. And you have to rebuild the world. The fact that you weren't expecting it, that it wasn't part of your assumption about how a relationship operates, causes traumatic reactions.
And it is deeply traumatic.
It's terrible. The wounding results because--and I've heard this so many times--I finally thought I met somebody I could trust.
It violates that hope or expectation that you can be who you really are with another person?
Yes. Affairs really aren't about sex; they're about betrayal. Imagine you are married to somebody very patriotic and then find out your partner is a Russian spy. Someone having a long-term affair is leading a double life. Then you find out all that was going on in your partner's life that you knew nothing about: gifts that were exchanged, poems and letters that were written, trips that you thought were taken for a specific reason were actually taken to meet the affair partner.
To find out about all the intrigue and deception that occurred while you were operating under a different assumption is totally shattering and disorienting. That's why people then have to get out their calendars and go back over the dates to put all the missing pieces together: "When you went to the drugstore that night and said your car broke down and didn't come home for three hours, what was really happening?"
This is necessary?
In order to heal. Because any time somebody suffers from a trauma, part of the recovery is telling the story. The tornado victim will go over and over the story--"when the storm came I was in my room..."--trying to understand what happened, and how it happened. "Didn't we see the black clouds? How come we didn't know?"
And so they repeat the story until it no longer creates unmanageable arousal?
Yes. In fact, sometimes people are more devastated if everything was wonderful before they found out. When a betrayed spouse who suspected something says, "I don't know if I can ever trust my partner again," it is reassuring to tell them that they can trust their own instincts the next time they have those storm warnings. But if somebody thought everything was wonderful, how would they ever know if it happened again? It's frightening.
Can you predict which couples will get involved in affairs?
Social context is a predictor. If you're in an occupational or social group where many people have affairs, and there's a sexually permissive attitude, you're more likely. Also if you come from a family where there's a history of affairs--the most notorious are the Kennedys, where the men have a certain entitlement. Coming from one of the Mediterranean cultures, like the Greek, where the double standard is alive and well, is another predictor.
You're saying that an affair is not always about the marriage. There are often cultural or contextual pulls into affairs. This is important information for women, because women blame themselves.
And society blames women.
So affairs can happen in good marriages. Is the marriage really good?
Sometimes one person thinks the marriage is fine and the other doesn't. That may be because the more dissatisfied person hasn't communicated their dissatisfaction. Or they've communicated it and the partner has discounted it. But after an affair, people often try to justify it by rewriting unhappiness into the material history. They say, "I never really loved you," or "You never really acted like you loved me." That is just a way to make themselves feel that they didn't do such a terrible thing.
Why do some people in unhappy marriages have affairs and others do not?
Number one is opportunity. Number two is values. Some people do not think an affair is justified for any reason. Others think it's okay if you're not getting it at home or if you "fall in love" with another person.
Surveys show that for women, the highest justification is for love; emotional intimacy is next. Sex is last on their list of justifications. It's the opposite for men; sex scores the highest.
Is infidelity in a long-standing marriage the same as in one of shorter duration?
It is potentially more threatening to the marriage when it happens earlier, and the chances of the marriage surviving are less, particularly where the woman is having an affair.
Did she choose the wrong mate?
She thinks so, especially if her affair partner is the opposite of her husband.
From your perspective, what's going on?
She's growing and changing, and she chooses somebody she sees as more similar to herself. Usually it's someone at work. Her husband may be working very hard in his profession or going to school and not paying much attention to her. She feels a little lonely, and then she gets involved. Or maybe her husband is very caring, and the relationship is so supportive and stable that it doesn't have a challenge for her.
The opportunities for affairs have changed radically in the past 20 years. Men and women are together all the time in the workplace, and workplaces are sexy places. You dress up, you're trying your best, there's energy in the air.
And you're not cleaning up vomit or the hot water heater that just flooded the basement. And it's not at the end of the day when you're exhausted. Also, you're working together on something that has excitement and meaning.
One of the major shifts is that more married women are having affairs than in the past. There are several reasons. Today's woman has usually had more experience with premarital sex, so she's not as inhibited about getting involved sexually with another man. She has more financial independence, so she's not taking as great a risk. And she is working with men on a more equal level, so the men are very attractive to her.
What do people seek in an affair partner?
Either we choose somebody very different from our partner, or we choose somebody like our partner used to be, but a younger version. A woman married to a really sweet guy who helps with the dishes, who is very nurturing and very secure, may at some point see him as boring and get interested in the high-achieving, high-energy man who may even be a bit chauvinistic. But if she's married to the man with the power and the status, then she's interested in the guy who is sensitive and touchy-feely, who may not be as ambitious.
Is this just the nature of attraction?
It has to do with the fact that people really want it all. Probably the only way to get it all is to be in more than one relationship at the same time. We have different parts of ourselves.
The other flip-flop in choice of affair partner reflects the fact that the marriage often represents a healing of our family wounds. Somebody who lacked a secure attachment figure in their family of origin chooses a mate who provides security and stability It's healthy to seek that balancing.
But after we've mastered that, we often want to go back and find somebody like that difficult parent and make that person love us. There is a correlation between the nature of the attachment figure and the affair partner; the person is trying to master incomplete business from childhood. As a result, some people will choose an affair partner who is difficult, temperamental, or unpredictable. Under those circumstances, the unfaithful partner is often caught in a triangle.
What do you mean?
The person maintains the marriage, and can't leave it, and maintains the affair, and can't leave that either. Tension arises when either the affair partner or spouse applies pressure on them to get off the fence. The spouse provides security and a sense of family, the affair partner excitement and passion. When the involved spouse says, "I don't know which person to be with," what they really want is to keep both.
The challenge is, how do people satisfy all of their needs within the marriage?
It is a false belief that if I'm incomplete, I have to be completed by another person. You have to do it through your own life, your own work, for your own pleasure, through individual growth. The more fulfilled you are, in terms of things that you do separately that please you, the more individuated and more whole you are--and the more intimate you can be. Then you're not expecting the other person to make you happy. You're expecting the other person to join you in your happiness.
Are more couples trying to survive affairs these days?
People are more willing to work through them. People are saying, I'm willing to work this through, but we have to solve whatever problems we have; we have to get something out of this; our marriage has to be even better than it was before.
More men are calling to come in for therapy That's a very positive sign. The downside is, it's often too late. By the time men are alarmed, the woman is too distanced from the marriage.
What other changes do you see in affairs these days?
Cyber affairs are new. For some people the computer is very addictive. They get very caught up in it. It's hiding out, escaping. And an affair is an escape--from the realities of everyday life. These two escapes are now paired.
The other danger on-line is that people can disguise who they are. Think of the roles you can take on if you hide behind a screen. More so than in workplace affairs, you can project anything onto the other person.
You can act out any fantasy you want. You can make this other person become anybody you want them to be. There's a loosening up, because you're not face-to-face with the person.
This attracts only a certain kind of person, doesn't it?
We don't know yet. I always get e-mail questions from people who are concerned because their partner is having an on-line relationship with somebody Or their partner had an affair with somebody they met on-line. It's very prevalent, and it's very dangerous.
If you're talking to somebody on the computer, and you begin to talk about your sexual fantasies, and you're not talking to your partner about your sexual fantasies, which relationship now has more sexual chemistry? Which has more emotional intimacy? Then your partner walks in the room, and you switch screens. Now you've got a wall of secrecy. It has all the components of an affair. And it's easy.
Technology has impacted affairs in another way, too. Many people have discovered a partner's affair by getting the cellular phone bill, or by getting in the car and pushing redial on the car phone, or by taking their partner's beeper and seeing who's been calling. We're leaving a whole new electronic trail.
Has that changed the dynamics or the psychology of affairs in any way?
In the past, when someone was suspicious they could ask their partner: "What's going on? You seem distant lately." If the partner denied anything was wrong, there wasn't a whole lot a person could do. Now there's tangible evidence people can utilize to find out if their hunches are indeed true.
There is a public conception of affairs as glamorous, but the aftermath is pretty messy. How do we square these views?
Successful marriage depends on trust, respect and love for each other. These are three pillars of any successful married life. Apart from these if you couples or singles know the tips to success given below, i am sure, you will not face any problem in your married life.
PreparationsBe with each other.
Provide a refuge and sanctuary for each other from the chill winds of the world. Your marriage is a hearth, from whence comes the peace, harmony, and warmth of soul and spirit. Its like bicycle, where it is necessary for both wheels to work.
Love to be loved.Warm your loved one's body with your healing touch. Remember that as babies can die with lack of touching, so can marriages wither from lack of closeness. Touch is the best feeling which you can give to anybody, even plants grow faster if you touch them daily and here its you n your beloved.
Be more like a friend. Friendship can be a peaceful island, separate and apart, in a world of turmoil and strife. Reflect upon the tranquility of the many future years you can share with a true friend, and beware of becoming battling enemies under the same roof. Don't forget," Friendship is a plant whose roots are embedded in hearts and flower blossom in heaven".
Openness is key to success.Bind not yourselves in the secretness that causes suspicion and doubt. Trust and reveal yourselves to each other, even as the budding rose opens to reveal its fragrance and beauty. This is the most important point in married life, openness, be frank and say what ever you want, don't look like under the carpet deal, as this will built suspicion and tension
Listen to know each other.And hear not only words, but also the non-language of tone, mood, and expression. Learn to listen to understand rather than listening to argue. Listening each other will help you to know each other better and give little space for arguments and tensions.
Respect each other feelings. Remember that each is a person of flesh and blood, entitled to his or her own choices and mistakes. Each owns himself, and has the right to equality. Remember criticism divides, while compliments encourage confidence in the other. Try to ignore each other mistakes, this will help you both. Respect each other feelings and choices, don't blatantly speak out about the choices.
Allow the individuality.
Seek not to create for each other a new mold that can only fit with much discomfort and pain. Accept the other as they are, as you would have yourself accepted. Be what you are and never try to restrain your ideologies and words on each other. Let both of you maintain a individuality with space to fit each other rather causing discomfort and pain.
Enjoy your togetherness. Let no one come between your togetherness, not child, not friend, nor worldly goods. Yet maintain enough separateness to allow each other his or her own uniqueness.
Don't boost. Never boost about your individuality and independence. Boosting in public or parties can cause/develop tension in your life as no person would like to hear boosting unnecessary.
Respect your husband. The most Important, never give an impression that just because you are not dependent on your husband you can do anything and that your husband has no right to tell you anything. Don't fight over small matters and learn to avoid unnecessary tensions.
I hope this info will be more than enough for you people to run your married life happily. Above all, love each other as much as you can, let not the love die. If you need any suggestions or help please feel free to write back at
counselor@asianmatches.com Enjoy!!!
Panel discusses ways to bring it back and make it last.
By LIZ DOUP, Herald Staff Writer
Published Friday, May 23, 1997, in the Miami Herald
ARLINGTON, Va. -- Four years into their marriage, Angela Hight, 28, and Trevor Walker, 30, spend more time finding fault with each other than having fun. She's too messy, says Walker, who's director of a software company. He doesn't listen, says Hight, a research physicist. But for better or worse, the Gaithersburg, Md., couple want their marriage to work. So they're attending a "Fighting for Your Marriage'' workshop that's part of the first "Smart Marriages: Happy Families'' conference, sponsored by the Washington, D.C.-based Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education. It's an informal group of more than 100 academics, ardent feminists, conservative Christians and feel-good family therapists, who spent last weekend at an Arlington, Va., hotel, talking about how to keep couples together.
"Marriage is filled with changes,'' says Diane Sollee, a 53-year-old divorcee and director of the year-old coalition. "You may be a tax lawyer who decides to become a minister. You may say, `I changed my mind; I want to have children.' We need to teach people skills to deal with whatever lies ahead.''
Sounds simple. Divorce, though, remains an American way of life, even if the divorce rate continues to drop from its peak years in 1979 and 1981.
So how can we help make marriage work?
At one extreme is conference speaker Mike McManus, a syndicated columnist from Bethesda, Md., who writes about ethics and religion. McManus speaks with one arm draped around his wife of 31 years. He wants a mandatory four-month waiting period for couples to prepare for marriage and the repeal of no-fault divorce laws. He's also against same-sex marriages.
At the other end: New York therapist Peggy Papp, who wants to show couples how gender-based stereotypes strangle marriages. "Our goal is to save people from miserable marriages, not from divorce,'' she says. "If they want to get out of a miserable marriage, we'll help them get out.''
Classes for marriage
Another area of conflict: the benefit of educational courses offered before and during marriage. Marital instruction covers everything from brief, free chats with clergy to intensive, days-long workshops with books, tapes, exercises and a tab of hundreds, even thousands, of dollars.
The people behind these courses often talk of "new approaches.'' Yet, many of the courses recycle techniques such as empathetic listening, pioneered by psychologists Carl Rogers and Thomas Gordon in the late 1960s.
What should be taught in these course? Who ought to be teaching it? And, more to the point, does any of it work?
Many therapists, armed with anecdotal evidence but also some studies, insist it does.
"I'm so convinced, I give courses as wedding gifts instead of china that they can throw at each other,'' says Sollee, whose two sons received marital-skills courses when they got married.
But sound, scientific research is skimpy, even though premarital-counseling programs have been around since the 1930s, says Karen Blaisure, an assistant professor of psychology at Western Michigan
University who has studied the research.
"Most studies only followed couples for six months or a year,'' Blaisure says. "When you're talking about something that's supposed to support a lifetime commitment, six months isn't very long.''
Legislative fixes
State legislators around the country have jumped into the debate. In at least seven states, including Florida, lawmakers introduced bills during the most recent legislative sessions to make premarital counseling a requirement for getting a marriage license. None of those proposals became law.
Rep. Elaine Bloom, D-Miami Beach, who introduced the Marriage Preparation and Preservation Act of 1997 in the Florida Legislature, says she'll bring the bill back next year.
"I don't base my bills on someone's clinical research,'' Bloom says. "As legislators, we reflect what we perceive society wants, and that's fewer divorces.''
More controversial, lawmakers in at least nine states, including New Jersey and Virginia, tried to modify, or eliminate, no-fault divorce laws.
"Appalling,'' says Papp, the New York therapist. "If people have to document fault, we'll be back to hiring detectives and showing pictures to prove adultery, creating the worst kind of hostility. We need to concentrate on equalizing roles in marriage, so it's not as constraining, and people will want to stay married.''
But even "wanting to'' may not be enough.
Talking, listening
At the marriage workshop, Hight and Walker, the Maryland couple, hear a speaker describe a "healthy'' way to discuss differences: One of the couple should briefly describe a concern while the partner listens. Then, the partner paraphrases what was said to make clear it was understood.
Hight and Walker agree to give this a try, but Hight is skeptical.
"You can try new things,'' she says, noting that, in her home, arguments tend to involve Walker talking on and on while she turns silent and walks away. "But you still can't change who you are.''
She's hardly alone in her skepticism. There are plenty of harried couples trying to build a marriage while juggling jobs and child-rearing and often feeling that a good divorce may be a better solution than a bad marriage.
No benefit
"Sometimes, staying together isn't going to benefit you or the kids,'' offers Martha Sosa, 38, an elementary school media specialist in Miami.
A mother of two, ages 8 and 5, Sosa got divorced nine months ago after 13 years of marriage.
"My son says he likes it better,'' she says, "because he doesn't have to hear us arguing all the time.''
Jeremy Segal, 28, a North Miami graphic artist, plans to marry Andrea Klein, a 28-year-old social worker from Hollywood, next month. They've dated for three years and recently took a marital-skills class. They liked it.
Yet Segal, whose parents divorced when he was 3, doesn't think government should mandate premarital counseling. Nor does he believe that people should be forced to stay in unhappy marriages.
"I know in my heart there are couples who don't belong together,'' he says, "no matter how many communication classes they take.''
