Chapter 8

Grief

“There’s This Terrible Feeling of Loss”

Grief is an important part of your divorce process. You need to work through the emotions of grief in order to let go of the dead love relationship. An intellectual grasp of the stages of grief can help you become emotionally aware of grief. Then you can do the grieving that you may have been afraid of before.

Weekends are…

All the lonely hours poured into remembering,

All the lonely thoughts poured into trying to forget,

The harder we try to forget, the easier it is to remember.

The past can’t die and the future can’t live,

But the present exists.

If silence is deafening, then what is quiet?

Quiet is weekends and weekends are hell.

Wake up and face reality—why?

Weekends enforce reality, weekdays subdue it.

Saturday—it’s a world of two plus two,

Where one has no meaning and no value.

Sunday—the body rests,

But where’s the “off button” for the mind?

—“Honey”

We are now entering one of the most difficult and emotionally draining parts of the climb. All along the path sit people who are crying mournfully. Some will stop crying for a while, then suddenly start in again. Others are trying to comfort them but seem uncomfortable and not quite sure what to do. What is happening?

These people are experiencing grief. Whenever there is a loss of someone or something important in our lives, we suffer grief. Perhaps you had not been aware that grieving is a part of the divorce process. For death, there is a set ritual, with a funeral, a casket, and acceptance that grieving is important. For divorce, there is no prescribed ritual other than the court hearing, and grief is often not acknowledged or accepted. But the death of a love relationship is more than enough cause for us to grieve.

The Many Faces of Grief

Many forms of loss occur when we end a love relationship. Most obvious, of course, is the loss of the love partner, which many people do grieve. There are other losses: the future plans as a pair; the love relationship itself; the role of husband or wife or lover; the status associated with being a couple. Many changes occur as one progresses through the transition from being married to being single. For some people, the loss of the relationship is as important as the loss of the partner.

There is the loss of the future. When you were married “till death do us part,” there were plans, goals, joint careers, and a house that had become a home. Now all of these future parts of your life are no longer there. The future is a very difficult loss to accept, and many will need to grieve that loss for a long time.

The pain of ending a love relationship often forces us to look at past pain. Many people have not properly grieved a loss in the past, such as the death of a loved one. Reexperiencing a past pain intensifies the grieving process. For those who carry an unresolved loss from the past, divorce grief will be especially painful and difficult.

Similarly, a history of unfulfilled emotional needs—perhaps childhood deprivations—may become prominent during divorce grief. Dan reported that he dreamed frequently about childhood experiences on the farm while he was working through his divorce. As he talked about his divorce grief, he realized that he was grieving the unhappiness he experienced during his lonely childhood.

Many divorced people are forced to move from the house they lived in while in the love relationship, and they may have to grieve the loss of that house. Single parents may have to grieve the loss of children when they are with the other parent. And the children must also grieve the loss of a house, a parent, a family—which are all part of the divorce process.

A Fable of Grief: The Check Mark

A favorite device of Bruce’s, useful in understanding grief, is the fable of the “check mark.” It goes like this:

Once upon a time, there was a little creature called Jot, living a good life, oblivious to the Black Cloud hovering over it. Suddenly, the Black Cloud let loose, and Jot’s lover went away. In the anguish of lost love, Jot tumbled down a huge slide so long that Jot could not see the bottom of it. There were no handles to hold on the way down the scary slide, and the ride was painful, but Jot finally landed on a soft rainbow. Looking around, Jot spied stairs that led up into the sunlight again. The stairs were very difficult to climb at first, but they became easier and more exciting as Jot neared the sunshine and began to feel completely renewed.

You might like to know what Jot’s trip was like, since you will have to take the grief trip someday.

Some of Jot’s companions on the grief trip see a mean Giant Dragon with fangs that’s breathing fire at the top of the slide. The Dragon frightens them right past the slide. They bury their heads and imagine that the Dragon is wearing a T-shirt that says such things as: don’t go down the slide…you must control your emotions…don’t cry or show weakness…you aren’t strong enough to take any more pain…you may end up crazy. So they stay in this self-chosen hell until they somehow muster the courage to confront the Giant Dragon, only to discover that the sayings on the Dragon’s T-shirt are only myths. At last, Jot’s companions risk the slide, and they, too, discover the steps leading to the warm sunshine.

Are you willing to risk the slide into pain, like Jot? Or do you see a scary dragon in your path? What do you see on the dragon’s shirt?

The check mark fable offers a good perspective on the divorce grief process, illustrating many of our fears about grieving. An intellectual understanding of the grief process may help us to emotionally understand our feelings as well. Eventually, however, each of us must allow ourselves to experience grief, not just talk about it.

Symptoms of Grief

Let’s see what we can learn from a head trip. As a beginning, a list of the grief symptoms commonly felt during divorce will help you see that your feelings are much like those of others.

Many people talk continuously about their situation until they drive away their friends and then need to seek new ones (the “verbal diarrhea” stage). The grieving person needs to stop talking about irrelevancies and begin to express their genuine feelings of grief. (If you find—or friends tell you—that you continually repeat yourself, this is a likely indication of a need to express your feelings rather than talking about them. Later in this chapter, you’ll find some help with this.)

Grief has a push-pull effect. Having been hurt, you have a big, empty feeling in your gut, and you expect friends to help you fill it. You try to talk with friends and get close to them, but at the same time, this empty feeling—like a big wound—is very vulnerable to being hurt again. When people get too close, you tend to push them away to prevent further emotional pain. Thus, you pull people toward you emotionally, but you push them away when they get too close. Quite a mixed message for your friends!

With grief, feeling emotionally drained and not sleeping are frequent problems. Many grieving people have trouble falling asleep at night without using drugs or alcohol. They often wake up very early in the morning, unable to go back to sleep, yet too tired to get up. At a time when sleep is needed most, they have difficulty sleeping, and the hard emotional work has them tired all day long. Grief is hard work, and you will likely feel tired continuously until you have finished your grief process.

Eating is another problem during grief. You may have a feeling of tightness in your throat and find swallowing difficult. Sometimes your mouth will be very dry, also making eating difficult. You may not have any appetite and have to force yourself to eat. You may have an empty feeling in your stomach as though you were hungry, but you do not feel hungry. For these and other reasons, most people lose a great deal of body weight during the grief process (although a small percentage may actually gain appetite and weight). During a break in one divorce seminar, several participants were comparing their loss of body weight during divorce grief. Of the six people present, all had lost at least forty pounds! While the amount may not always be so dramatic, the unanimity is not surprising.

One of the most useful questions on the Fisher Divorce Adjustment Scale asks about sighing often. People are often not aware that they are sighing, but it is an indication to others that the person is grieving a great deal. Not only does a sigh release body tension, but the deep breathing of a sigh seems to “carry feelings from the gut” that need release.

Rapid mood changes are typical during divorce grief. Even after you have moved from the black pits of grief and are finally starting to feel good again, you may suddenly—without apparent reason—feel out of control emotionally, unable to keep from crying. The mood swing may have been triggered by something a friend or acquaintance said to you or did for you. You were feeling fine and in control until then. Your return to the depths of grief leaves that person confused and sad, not understanding what he or she did to upset you. For your part, the downer is made even worse because you feel bad about feeling so out of control. The incident is a clear sign that you have not completed your grief work yet.

There may be a sense of loss of reality, of being in a daze, in an unreal world. You observe the environment as though watching a movie, remote and detached from the events happening around you. You are unable to wake up from this dream into the real world.

You may experience a period of lack of contact with your emotions. You are afraid to trust your feelings because of your inability to control them. The emotional pain is so great, you have to protect yourself from feeling too much by deadening your emotions. You may sense an emotional “numbness.”

Many people experience quite a bit of fantasizing during grief. You may fantasize that you see your former love partner or that you hear his or her voice. You may fantasize that a part of your body is missing, as though your heart were removed, symbolizing the loss of the other person. This fantasizing may be frightening if you do not recognize it as a normal part of grief.

Loneliness, lack of concentration, weakness and helplessness, depression, guilt, lack of interest in sex, and perhaps even a feeling of impotence or frigidity may accompany grief. Self-criticism—a need to continually question your errors and how you would relive the past differently—persists.

Anger is a part of grief that results from the apparent unfairness of the loss. Anger directed toward the former love partner may approach rage in its intensity. We will look at this in detail in the next chapter.

Suicidal feelings are common during divorce grief. Approximately three-fourths of the participants in the Fisher divorce seminars admit to having experienced some suicidal thoughts during their grief periods. Research indicates a much higher than normal rate of suicide among people engaged in the divorce process.

All of these feelings can be overwhelming. Uncontrollable mood swings, loss of reality, fantasies, depression, suicidal feelings…one may wonder fearfully, Am I going crazy? For most people, this is a difficult fear to discuss. And holding that fear inside makes it even scarier, even more crazy feeling. The “craziness” is a real feeling, but it is related to the situation rather than to a permanent psychological diagnosis. You may well be experiencing a normal grief reaction if you feel like you are going crazy.

These grief symptoms may be handled by acknowledging them, accepting that they indicate grief work to be done, and allowing yourself to feel the pain without denial. Crying, shouting, and writhing are other nondestructive actions to express your grief. Make a decision to manage the grief by deciding on an appropriate time and place to do grief work. On the job, for example, is not the time to cry and grieve. At work, you must put the grief aside—“on the shelf,” so to speak—and concentrate on your job. Because you have set aside time to grieve, your emotions become easier to control at other times, and you do not become caught in the grieving. But be sure you do grieve during the time you have set aside for grieving! If you do not manage the grief; it will manage you.

If you do not do your grief work, your body may express the feelings of grief in symptoms of illness. You may have simple ailments like headaches, or you may develop, such as ulcerative colitis, arthritis, or asthma. Unresolved grief puts a great deal of stress on your body and may increase your medical and hospital bills.

Often people are reluctant to participate in the seminar or another divorce recovery program because they do not want to experience the pain and crying of grief again. This reluctance may be translated as their need to complete grief work. Somewhere deep inside, you will know when the grief work is completed because of the feeling of letting go that you’ll experience. You cannot be pulled down into the grief pits again!

Stages of Grief: The Work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

During this part of the climb, it is helpful to identify the five stages of grief identified by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. An overview of her fine work will help us to work through the five stages emotionally.

Stage 1: Denial. The first reaction to the sense of loss is to deny it: “This isn’t happening to me. If I just wait a while, everything will be okay and my lover will come back.” There is often a state of emotional shock, numbness, and a lack of acknowledgment of any feelings. One may enter into a robot-like phase, acting as though nothing is happening. Best manners are extended toward the former love partner, in the hope that it is all a bad dream and that person will not really leave. No one wants to tell friends and neighbors that a love relationship is ending. Indeed, we don’t want to tell ourselves.
Stage 2: Anger. As one gradually begins to move away from denying the ending of a love relationship, a feeling of anger develops. The anger that was initially turned inward is now turned outward, toward others. Expressing the anger feels good, but there is also concern that the other person will not return because of the anger, thus there is some guilt and ambivalence.

The frustrations that have existed in the relationship for years begin to come out. Friends may wonder how you have tolerated that person when you have been so emotionally upset in the love relationship for so long. In turn, you may go to great lengths to convince others how terrible your former partner was, resulting in a lose-lose situation. If you talk about how good that person is, how do you stay angry? But if you say how terrible that person is, then the question becomes why you chose to love such a terrible person in the first place!

You have started working through the grief process when you admit and express the grief anger.

Stage 3: Bargaining. Beginning to face the fact that the love relationship is ending, yet reluctant to really let go, one may start bargaining: “I’ll do anything if you’ll just come back. I’ll change my ways and put up with anything. Just take me back!” This stage is dangerous in the divorce process because many people do get back together, for the wrong reasons—to avoid the loneliness and unhappiness of ending the love relationship. They are not choosing to live successfully with the former love partner, but rather choosing the “lesser of two evils.”
Stage 4: Depression. The fourth stage of grief is, in a sense, the darkness before the dawn as one moves toward letting go of the relationship. The depression of this stage is different from the sadness that often occurs during the denial stage—it’s a “blah” feeling: “Is this all there is?” There is much internal dialogue about the meaning of life: “Why am I here on earth? What is the purpose of my life?” Despite the deep depression that can take hold here, this is a stage of personal growth to build a stronger identity, to find a deeper purpose for living, and to make life more meaningful.

A number of people feel suicidal during this stage: “I’ve tried so long and worked so hard, and here I am down in the pits again. I don’t want to let go!” Because this stage sometimes comes so long after the actual separation, people are surprised to feel so depressed again. It is discouraging to have worked so hard but to feel so little progress. People who are aware of this stage tend to get through it much more easily. They are comforted to realize that there is a purpose for the depression they are feeling, that it will not last long, and that it is different from that of early-stage grief.

Stage 5: Acceptance. The grieving divorced person who has dealt with the painful issues of denial, anger, bargaining and depression is ready to accept the loss of the love relationship and to move on. At the final stage of the grief process, the person begins to feel free from the emotional pain and the need to invest emotionally in the past relationship. Now one can continue to move up the mountain toward fuller personal freedom and independence.

It is critically important to work through these five stages of grief before one enters into another love relationship.

Allow the Children to Grieve

Children, too, must grieve an important loss, although sometimes it is difficult for parents to let them do the grieving they need to do. When we see them in tears over the loss of the marriage or because they miss the other parent, we want to just take away the pain and reassure them, “Now, now, don’t cry, it’ll be okay… . Daddy will be back… . You’ll get to see Mommy soon.”

Reassurance is not necessarily what kids need; rather, they need to come to some sort of acceptance: “I know you feel very sad that your father isn’t living here anymore. It must be so hard living away from him when you love him so much.” It is easy for us to get our own emotions and guilt involved instead of allowing the children to express their feelings and emotions. Children tend to cry and grieve more naturally than adults unless we take away permission to do so and start interfering with the process.

The same can be true with the anger stage of their grief. Children may get very angry about being separated from a parent and having to undergo a lifestyle change. But when they start expressing that anger, parents often make the mistake of trying to take it away by saying things like, “Well, you’re just going to have to grow up and understand. Someday you’ll see that we made a choice that’s better for everyone.” It’s important to allow your children just to experience their anger, acknowledging their emotions: “I can see that you feel very angry about our divorce.”

Children will go through Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief as well. They will start out by denying that their parents are separated and believing they’ll get back together. As they proceed through the stages of anger, bargaining, and depression, children need to be allowed to work through all five stages. All of the information in this chapter, plus the checklist at the end, can be very helpful for children as well as for adults.

Obviously, there is a difference between your child’s loss and your loss: the child isn’t being divorced. The parent-child relationship will persist, it is hoped, although in many cases, the child doesn’t see one parent as much—and in some cases, unfortunately, not much at all.

As with all other feelings, a parent who shows the child how to grieve is far more influential than a parent who tells the child about grieving. Children will emulate a grieving parent and will gain much from experiencing that healthy and needed release.

Working Through Your Grief

Many people are afraid of the grief process because it can seem to bring out signs of weakness or maybe even of “going crazy.” It is reassuring to find that other people experience many of the same feelings and symptoms of grief. You can effectively work through the grief stages, overcome your fear of grief, and come out on the other side of your grief work feeling safer and on more solid ground.

Take time now to get out your handkerchief and see if you can let go of some more grief while you rest on the trail. Now that you understand the grieving process and have permission to grieve as a mentally healthy activity, you may feel freer to do some needed grieving (perhaps over a past loss as well). Call upon a trusted friend, family member, clergyperson, or counselor to provide support (without interference) while you allow yourself to express the depths of your grief.

As you do so, a homework assignment you may find helpful is to write a “good-bye” letter to what you’re letting go. It may be your home, your relationship, or a long-ago loss. This is a difficult assignment, so you might want to start with something more superficial. Eventually, you’ll grow ready to say good-bye to major aspects of your life. The letter may or may not be mailed to another person; it is really for your own benefit. In most cases, you will not want to share the letter with the person you are grieving.

On the following page is an example written by a woman who attended a Fisher divorce seminar. It will give you insight into her thoughts and feelings, maybe help stimulate what you’d like to write. Read it thoughtfully, then begin work on your own letter(s).

Now, dry your eyes and read on. As before, please be sure you have dealt thoroughly with this rebuilding block before you go on. Grief is a tough and painful stage. Do not just bury it! And do not try to get through it in the time it took you just to read this chapter. Use your lifeline friends (see chapter 6) for help as you work through your grief. The mountain will still be yours to climb when you are ready.

How Are You Doing?

Here again is a checklist for your review. Take a few minutes to consider these statements honestly and to consider how much grief work you may have to complete before you move on up the mountain.