Difference between revisions of "Separating Emotionally"

As a result of all of this, it can be critical to get a grip on your emotions right out of the starting gate. While all of these emotions are common, natural and entirely understandable, failing to recognize and manage them can lead to disastrous short- and long-term consequences to your emotional well-being, your relationship with your children, your children's emotional well-being, and your financial situation. If you are having trouble managing your feelings and you have children, see a counsellor as soon as possible.

When a couple of have children, they must accept that they will remain a permanent part of each other's lives, whether they like it or not. A couple may no longer be partners but they will always be parents. The parental relationship does not end with the romantic relationship.

It is impossible to emphasize enough how important it is to always put the children first. This may sound a bit trite, but putting the children ahead of yourself can be an extremely challenging task when you are also trying to cope with the intense emotions involved in separation. It can be tremendously difficult to refrain from badmouthing your former partner to the children, "forgetting" to drop them off on time, and using them as a weapon.

I am not a psychologist, a psychiatrist or a counsellor. As a result this chapter should be read with a grain of salt as it is based on my observations of my clients' experiences and a healthy dose of common sense. For the same reason, you are cautioned that this page should not be used as authority for the propositions it sets out.

Finally, there are a ton of resources available to help you cope with the separation process and protecting the emotionally harmful aspects of the process away from your children. In addition to public programs, many counsellors specialize in helping people work through the emotional turmoil that often follows the end of a long-term relationship. Since counsellors are unregulated, anyone can hang a shingle saying that they offer counselling services. What you should be looking for are people with the designation of Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC), Certified Canadian Counsellor (CCC) or Registered Psychologist (RPsych).

*'''Shock and Denial:''' "This isn't happening to me!" An initial paralysis at hearing the bad news; trying to avoid the inevitable. People usually avoid making decisions or taking action at this point.

*'''Acceptance:''' "I'm ready for whatever comes." Finally finding the way forward. Decisions are much easier to make because people have found new purpose having begun to accept the loss.

<blockquote>"Over time the intensity of the emotions diminishes and people usually find that the feelings begin to blend. Early on, the grief of divorce is experienced as an intense period of feeling nothing but love, followed by an equally intense period of feeling nothing but anger, followed by an equally intense period of feeling nothing but sadness. ... Over time, however, the intensity of the feelings begins to wane, and the cycles of each emotion begin to blur and run into the other two. This overlapping of emotion results in a realistic, less emotionally painful view of the divorce.</blockquote>

Each person's goal at the end of the day is to find acceptance, that moment when you don't recognize your former partner's voice on the telephone right away. As Dr. Emery has observed, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.

All of us seek allies as we cope with the end of a relationship, it's human nature. Allies may be found in family members, friends, coworkers or a new boyfriend or girlfriend. While we all appreciate the support that allies can offer, allies can also polarize your position with respect to your former partner, and sometimes encourage you to take an unreasonable and entrenched position when you need to be more flexible.

You shouldn't stop seeking reassurance and comfort from your allies, but you should try to be alert about the influence allies can have, even though they're not intentionally trying to worsen the issues you and your former partner are dealing with.

Some people best manage a breakup by walking out the door and never looking back, and doing their grieving alone. This just isn't possible where there is property to manage and divide, and it's especially not possible when a couple have children. You can't change your phone number, you can't stop answering the phone, and you can't refuse to see your former partner if you have children. You are still mom or dad, and you'll always be mom or dad and have a relationship with the other parent until and unless your children predecease you.

*Third, respect these new rules. Don't intrude past those boundaries and keep your discussions focused on parenting. It may be hard not to react when your former partner pushes your buttons, but you're best off following this old saying: don't say anything if you don't have anything nice to say.

It can be extremely tempting to rely on your children to comfort you as you go through the grieving process. One word: ''don't''. Whatever else you do, don't do this.

According to Dr. Emery, "extreme emotional care taking is developmentally inappropriate and can have long-term consequences on children's mental health." Children who grow up too soon are robbed of their right to be children. In the long-term they have trouble forming meaningful relationships, they may be emotionally distant, and they may be compulsively over-responsible.

There is more than one way to resolve the issues that arise when a relationship ends, the most common of which are negotiation, mediation and litigation. Collaborative law is sort of a cross between negotiation and mediation.

In ''The Truth about Children and Divorce'', Dr. Emery describes three general categories of divorcing couples: the angry divorce, the distant divorce and the cooperative divorce. While these categories are not exactly exhaustive and are drawn from an American legal construct, they are useful in discussing the impact of emotional separation on negotiation, mediation and litigation.

Couples engaged in a cooperative separation have usually worked out a lot of their emotions and resolved much of their grief. They recognize their emotions for what they are, and avoid acting out of spite or tearfully reminiscing about the lost relationship. These couples attempt to work things out between themselves, with and without help from lawyers and mediators.

Cooperative separations usually result in a separation agreement or an order that they agree the court should make. Often, what little litigation that does occur is limited to simply getting the divorce order.

Couples in a distant separation are able to keep their conflict from their children, but are still dealing with feelings of hurt, resentment, anger and pain. While there is plenty of intense anger, this emotion usually fades to a growing dislike or indifference. These couples have done a lot less emotional work on their feelings, and their recollections of the relationship are characterized by bitterness rather than sadness.

These couples are not friends but know better than to become enemies, perhaps because of the children or past experience with the court system. They deal with each other minimally, without a great deal of warmth or demonstrated anger.

This, of course, is the type of separation to be wary of. These separations are also known as "high-conflict" separations. Couples in an angry separation have trouble letting go of the marriage, and feel intense pain and anger. Their emotions are usually raw and neither party has done a great deal to manage their feelings.

Angry separations are the sort that lawyers most often wind up dealing with. The epic battles couples engaged in an angry separation are capable of can barely be described. The legal issues arising from the breakup are rarely concluded within two years, and, when there are children, can run for six or more years! A trial rarely resolves issues between these couples, as they will often keep fighting long afterward about real or imagined changes in their respective circumstances following judgment. These couples are also living proof that money doesn't buy happiness — it buys you litigation, and lots of it.

By now, you will have guessed that the irrational thinking anger triggers can be the most important roadblock to resolving family law issues in a cooperative manner. Anger is an incredibly powerful emotion characterized by Dr. Emery as "the toxic residue of unresolved grief."

Anger also does a lot of very odd things that not many people are aware of. Ignorance of these different functions of anger can slow the grieving process, entrench unreasonable positions, and protract the resolution of the issues flowing from the end of a relationship.

Anger can be used to divert blame from yourself and avoid feelings of guilt. People experiencing anger as a shield are often avoiding accepting responsibility for, perhaps, an affair or being the one who announced the end of the relationship. It can also stop you from experiencing the other primary emotions in the grieving process, sadness and love.

Intense anger can also signal that you are not yet done with the relationship. Conflict can be a way of drawing a former partner closer by getting their attention and maintaining the emotional relationship. Underneath this kind of anger remains love and a continuing attachment to a former partner, as illogical as this sounds.

The process of separation contains a lot of threats, whether real or imagined. Many of these threats are obvious: the risk of losing an asset, the risk of not being able to have another romantic relationship, the risk of losing one's children. Fear triggers the fight-or-flight response; anger can be a manifestation of the fight response.

Anger can stop you from recognizing positive steps your former partner is taking to resolve issues, and lead you to assume that your partner is acting on false pretenses or on a hidden agenda. This kind of anger breeds suspicion that is often unwarranted.

Anger can also stop you from acknowledging your former partner's good qualities, especially with respect to parenting issues. Avoiding admitting these qualities makes it easier to hold onto an objectively unreasonable position.

For people who are emotionally bottled up, the emotions wrapped up in the grieving process can be very difficult. Both sadness and love can be difficult to acknowledge and deal with, particularly when feeling those emotions is associated with a loss of face. As a result, anger can be the easiest emotion to deal with and less painful to experience.

Apart from slowing down the grieving process, anger inevitably delays the resolution of the issues that come from the end of a relationship. An enraged person is not going to be able to negotiate since negotiation involves making concessions; an enraged person is mostly going to want to litigate. People in this state of mind make threats like "I'm going to take you for everything you've got," or "you'll never see the children again." They will also tell their lawyers that "it doesn't matter what it costs or whether I'm likely to lose, it's the principle of the thing!"

Rage, as Dr. Emery observes, is a symptom of unresolved grief. Whatever the cause, failing to move beyond anger can be poisonous to you, to your former partner, to your children and to your relationship with your children. Some counselling, whether by yourself or with your former partner, can be critical in moving forward and out of anger.

Your choice of lawyer can play a large part in determining how your separation unfolds. Many lawyers are quite open to mediation, while a few others see litigation as the only means of resolving a dispute, particularly lawyers who have a reputation as being bulldogs. Other lawyers do not take their duty to respond promptly to correspondence particularly seriously, which will delay things and may result in an unnecessarily large number of interim applications. Still other lawyers see their duty as limited to militantly carrying out their clients' instructions, without supplying a great deal of options or cautions as to the likely effect of those instructions.

While some people, particularly those in angry separations, feel an almost irresistible urge to go out and hire the toughest bulldog around to exact revenge against their former partner, bulldogs rarely see any resolutions other than: a settlement on exactly the extortionate terms their clients want; or, a knock-down drag-'em-out trial. These lawyers cost the most, and you can expect the litigation process to drag out for an ungodly amount of time. Even if you are in an angry separation, step back and take a breath. Remember that even though you may hate your former partner at present, you will have to live with the consequences of hasty litigation and your unreasonable positions well into the future. You might also lose your house to pay your lawyer's fees.

You should also know that many lawyers who litigate are also accredited family law mediators. If the lawyer you're speaking to is also a family law mediator, you may want to enquire about the possibility of using his or her services to mediate your dispute before you say much more about your case. If you give the lawyer too much information about your situation, he or she may not be able to assume the impartial role demanded of a mediator.

==Further Reading in this Chapter==