Breaking up is hard to doA lot of my counseling work involves talking with individuals or couples who are considering or are in the midst of a break-up or a divorce. We are all aware that a large number of marriages and even more non-marital relationships fail: over forty percent of all first marriages and even more subsequent marriages end in divorce within sixteen years. I pay heed to that fact with my couples sometimes, when I describe my work focus as “marriage counseling when we can, but if that should fail, divorce counseling when we must.” I recognize that relationships tend to have certain inherent instabilities, counterbalanced by another set of stabilizing factors. Instabilities might include dissatisfactions, financial insecurities, and problems of trust and conflict management. Stabilizing factors include maturity, mutual attraction and caring and feelings of safety, reliability, and trust. Even though we may have something in common with nearly everyone, it takes a special something more to enable a relationship to grow and have the promise of lasting for the rest of our lives. At some point in a relationship, one or the couple may come to realize that, “This isn’t really working for me,” as I have often heard it said. At this point additional requests or demands may be made; more closeness or greater distance may be sought; but soon one or the other will find their minds pointed away from the relationship and towards the open road. Sometimes couples break up when one feels injured or betrayed by the other’s actions or by neglect; or when one realizes that the other either can’t or won’t stop hurting them. In my experience, more relationships break over issues of trust than for any other reason, although the emotional strain of financial insecurity accounts for a lot of relationship conflict. Couples break up when they can no longer believe in the partnership that they once believed in; when he or she can no longer maintain a vision of the relationship being able to give enough to fulfill them or to be a part of their own fulfillment. Following a break up, I often hear about the sudden return of deep grief, even after a considerable time of relatively good feelings. Based on my own experiences dealing with losses and many conversations with others, I find that there’s a cyclical pattern to such feelings, which I sometimes illustrate by comparing it to the orbital path of a smaller planet around a sun. When the planet gets closer to the sun, the gravitational pull is stronger; when the planet is furthest away, the pull and the emotional effect are temporarily weaker. One may go through many revolutions, of varying intensities, while gradually resolving the loss of a close and important relationship. With each close passage there is opportunity to tolerate and face the loss; when the distance is greater and the impact is reduced, there is opportunity for objectivity and perspective to grow. Breaking up is a lonely business. Although soul searching and time for solitude and reflection are essential, this is also an important time to rely on friends and other loved ones to provide support and social contact and activities. Having given oneself in relationship to another who is no longer there, the time then comes to go out, once again, in search of the beloved. |
