When I began my journey to become a Therapist that worked with couples my hope was to be able to save, heal, and help every relationship to thrive. While I did recognize my own naiveté I still believed that I could be the savior to relationships that were on the brink of divorce or even helping bring back relationships in which both partners had lost hope. Although this has been the case for some couples, in other situations couples I have worked with have chosen divorce.
Divorce is one of the most stressful events that individuals experience. On stress assessments divorce rates in the top 3 life events right behind death of a spouse and death of a child. Although with these other stressful events often comes significant community support. With divorce that kind of support doesn’t typically occur. A friend of mine commented that when she lost her husband people surrounded her with prayers, meals, visits to her home, phone calls, and invitations to events. While at the same time an acquaintance of hers was going through a divorce and did not receive any of this kind of support. It wasn’t that she was shunned or excluded, but for her there was little or no extra support like my friend whose husband died had received.
For couples with children, divorce creates a new task; for parents to provide a structure that can become a “bridge between both parents” so that children can safely go between both parents and have access to both parents without being in the middle of their parents conflict and divorce. Author of “The Children of Divorce” Andrew Root says it like this;
“When trust in love is gone, and the foundation [of the marriage] crumbles, parents may label the structure [the marriage] uninhabitable and try to move on. We rarely consider that children are, through their parents’ union, and in their separation unable to leave the structure created by their [parents’] union that they [parents] now deem uninhabitable.”
Parents’ role is to provide for, protect, nurture and challenge/discipline their children. In families that mother and father are together and living in the same home these parents perform these roles as one unit. Perhaps one parent provides more nurturance while the other challenges the child(ren) more. When the family system and structure, indeed the very foundation, is disrupted through divorce each parent takes on a greater responsibility in each of these tasks. In fact each parent is responsible for providing each of these tasks and at the same time coordinating with the other parent to make sure that these tasks or being consistent between both homes. This is no small task. To do this well may often require a higher level of coordination and collaboration than from couples that are married and living together.
This coordination and collaboration is “the bridge” that parents create. When this is done well outcomes for children in families that are divorced are very good. Children’s self-esteem, anxiety, academic performance, social and emotional intelligence are on par with children from families that have not experienced divorce. Because of the stress that divorce creates and the level of emotional dis-regulation, helping couples that are divorcing find someone to help lead them so that they can lead their children is invaluable.