"The Grief Cycle of Divorce"

Counselor lent Wife a book he thinks we should both read before we tell the boys about the divorce.  It's called The truth about children and divorce: Dealing with the emotions so you and your children can thrive, by Robert E. Emery.  I started it today and a lot of what he says makes sense: a lot of it is about adopting a businesslike attitude towards your ex so that your children don't become a dumping ground for your negative emotions.

But to set the stage, right at the beginning he says that divorce involves grieving: even if you are sick of each other, you are both losing something that was a big part of your lives up till now.  And so yes, grief is part of the package.

He also says that the "grief cycle of divorce" is a little different from the famous "Five stages of grief" when somebody dies.  Specifically, he says it involves cycling in rotation from love to anger, from anger to sadness, and from sadness back to love.

Cycling through love, anger, and sadness?  Shit, that sounds like a summary of my whole marriage.  It got me to thinking that in some ways our entire marriage -- or at least most of it (and it's 28 years old at this point) -- has been one long divorce.  Or it looks that way from my side.  Every time Wife took a new lover, every time she spent outrageously on something pointless, every time ... hell, I can't make a list.  Every time she did something crazy, it was like one more twist of the knife, or one more rip in the fabric.  And every time, I would plunge into crazy anger, followed by deep listless sadness, followed finally by a new (if battered and rueful) level of love.  Maybe that's why now I can be so calm about it all ... because I have already spent decades grieving the loss of the marriage, and so now I can focus on the mundane business of burying it.