How Do You Mourn Your Marriage?

    The cycle of emotions one faces during grief can be applied to the feelings that surface after divorce. Knowing what is ahead can help ease the pain, according to some psychologists.
 
“The good news, is it a process, and eventually, with time, the acuteness of the pain will dissipate,” said Christine Cauffield, Ph.D., the president and CEO of Aspire Behavioral Health, Inc., a national organization of geropsychiatric hospitals. 
        
The Kübler-Ross cycle of grief is widely used as a tool for mitigating feelings of loss. Divorce provides several situations in which grief is a relevant emotion, therefore the cycle of grief can apply to the divorce process, Cauffield said. “Going through a divorce not only represents the loss of a parent or a spouse, but numerous other losses one must grieve,” Cauffield said. 

Some examples of losses faced during a divorce are: the obvious loss of the relationship and companionship, losing the family connection to in-laws, moving and losing the home community, or losing friends if they choose sides in the divorce. “There are so many losses when one is going through a divorce,” Cauffield said, “and the Kübler-Ross stages definitely come into play.” 

The model of the cycles of grief was developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross after spending time treating and researching terminally ill patients. Her original intent was to provide information about the cycle of accepting death. However, the model is now used for a variety of life-changing topics, including divorce. The model is a cycle of emotions that usually circulates in this order: Shock, denial, anger, bargaining, guilt, depression and acceptance. (Sometimes the cycle is edited to five emotions, with shock and denial in one category and bargaining and guilt in another.) 

It is during the shock stage that one feels stunned at hearing the news of a divorce. During denial, that person then tries to avoid the idea of the pending divorce. From there, the person will often move into the anger stage, where he or she will begin to express the pent-up frustration and emotion about the break-up. The bargaining stage may begin after the anger stage. While bargaining, the person is likely to try to change the outcome of the relationship by thinking about the “what ifs:” what if I brought more flowers, what if I did more housework, what if I paid more attention? 

There is also guilt intertwined in this thinking. During the guilt stage, the person takes on as his or her responsibility the failures in the relationship. The stages that follow bargaining and guilt are depression, followed by acceptance. During the depression phase, the person realizes the likeliness of the divorce and gives into the sadness of it. And in the last part of the cycle, acceptance, the person starts to move forward from the divorce. The benefit of understanding the cycle, Cauffield said, is knowing that there is a range of emotions everyone faces when going through divorce.