Saturday, April 28, 2007

The 5 Divorces

Divorce is never easy. Certainly it might come as a relief if the marriage has totally deteriorated, but even relief does not make it easy. There is always pain and loss and hurt.

Divorce is not a simple thing either. It is complex. With legal standing, emotional challenges, financial decisions, psychological changes, spiritual realities, and social complexities all affected, divorce is one of life's biggest disruptions, challenges, and transitions.

So, for every aspect of life, there is a divorce.

1. Legal Divorce: This is what most people think divorce is. It happens with courts, attorneys, and judges. Or, maybe it happen in mediation. Any way it goes, it is the legal aspect of marriage dissolving.

2. Emotional Divorce: Anyone who has been through a divorce knows that the when the legal part of divorce ends, many more divorces may have to be attended to. Emotional divorce is important. Hanging on, running emotions through the children, making lots of phones calls (just to talk) or constantly finding ways to exact revenge, obsessing mentally, or stalking are ways to avoid making the divorce complete. The relationship must end. If there are kids in the mix, then the relationship must be all business.

3. Psychological Divorce: Life cannot stop when the legal divorce is over. The pain, the loss, the betrayal, the whatever must be attended to and healing must occur. Remaining in a hurt state is not acceptable after a divorce. Yes, being hurt by it is natural, but some people refuse to heal and are determined to prove that their ex-spouse ruined their by living ruined for the rest of their life. What a waste. The psychological divorce must take place.

4. Financial Divorce: Dividing the house, assets, savings, 401(k) and all earthly possessions is part of divorce. Taking care of this stuff should not linger into weeks and months. It will only cause pain.

As far as child support and alimony - do whatever it is the judge told you to do. No more and no less. There really ought to be few exceptions to this rule. It is simply too hard to give more than the the divorce decree says and then feel like you are owed something, OR to give too little until the other forces you back into court.

5. Spiritual Divorce: This might sound like a weird thing, almost sacrilegious. Truth is, if ther eis spiritual union there must be spiritual divorce. This does not mean someone has to change religions or even churches (although someone changes church is probably a good idea). It means that you no longer share spiritual intimacies. Yes, pray for each other's good, but even then be careful that such prayers do not connect you too much. God is big enough to take care of your ex-spouse without too much of your psiritual investment into that person.

Be especially careful of spiritual connection when the ex-spose has remarried. It can be viewed as an intrusion and it could lead to the downfall of the remarriage - not what God is looking for in remarriage.

So, there are your 5 divorces. Would love to hear you feedback.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I do believe you are right on with all 5. Been there,done that. When I found out that my first wife cheated on me. My whole life came to an end. All I could think of, was why did God let this happen.And why wouldn,t God make her change her mind and come back to the marriage so we could work this out! But... God did know such thing. And I finally had to accept that it was over,when she finally married the guy.
Now that I'm remarried, my wife feels that my first wife is a threat because we try to get along for our daughters sake. And I feel that all women would and possiblly will cheat if given the chance!! if they feel that men or I do not meet there emotional wants. So I feel that I always have to try to fill this need in my present wife. Need less to say I don' t feel that she even tries to fill my emotional needs. She was raized as " deal with it honey...Its the best it will ever get"!!