Divorce: Before

1
Divorce Before After

• In prior times, marriage was as much an economic
  or political contract between families as it was
  a personal matter for 2 people.
• Today, marriage is seen as a strictly personal
  relationship. It is premised, not on economic
  contracts between families but on emotional
  happiness and feel good qualities.

2
Uncoupling by Diane Vaughn

• Uncoupling is the coming apart of a relationship
• There are predictable stages or steps that often
  occur.
• These are not inevitable and the relationship CAN
  change direction at any point, but the stages
  commonly happen.

3
Marriage is a definitional process and
relationship

• The constructing of a coupleness occurs through
  a series of steps that have been widely
  acknowledged and studied dating, courtship,
  engagement (or co-habitation) and marriage.
• The Uncoupling process has NOT been carefully
  studied nor acknowledged.
• One day they are a couple the next history
• and friends often say I had no idea.

4
Coupled identities

• Beginning well before marriage or co-habitation,
  couple identity expands and requires the
  reconfiguration of all other relationships.
• The new reality becomes objectivated
• - personal ties become publicly recognized and
  enforced.
• You are a couple.

5
Uncouping also a process

• Initiation
• Accompanying reconstructions
• Self validation outside of marriage
• Trying
• Objectivation (of spearateness)
• Divorce
• Continuities

6
Initiation

• One partner or the other begins to hold doubts
  about the relationship the other usually assumes
  the relationship is okay.
• A process of redefinition begins as the
  initiator sees self as separate person.
  Sometimes the redefining is shared with the
  partner in an effort for them to forge a NEW
  joint identity.

7
Accompanying reconstructions

• The initiator may try to re-envision the
  relationship in a more tolerable way by
  redefining
• a. The coupledness itself
• b. The identity of the significant other
• c. The identity of the initiatior

8
Validation outside the marriage

• The initiator may seek meaning from other
  activities
• education, family, hobbies, an affair
• This provides ideological support for the
  uncoupling a new basis for belief in the self
  not related to the partner
• These arent clandestine activities they may be
  desperate attempts to preserve a sense of self.

9
A separate subworld

• The initator may find a whole new world of
  meaning.
• The new identity is reinforced as others come
  to see and recognize the initator in this new
  role or setting.

10
Results of new identity

• Support group of friends
• Deepening commitment to the new self with
  lessening commitment to the partner
• Recognition by partner of a troubled
  relationship

11
Trying

• Often at this point, if there is mutual
  recognition of a troubled relationship
• a considerable period of TRYING follows.
• For the initiator, the uncoupling process is well
  underway, and change back calls for real effort.
  
• But both are hesitant to sever ties.

12
TRYING (cont.)

• Counseling may be undertaken
• if both see the possibility of a new identity.
  It will help them to define the situation as
  savable or unsavable.
• The act of counseling will objectivate or make
  more public the troubled relationship.

13
Separation restructuring

• However intended, separation objectivates for
  all the troubled relationship.
• Privately, they now cannot deny it. It is a
  physical, and symbolic reality. One moves out,
  or the household living arrangements change-
  separate bedrooms, separate coming and going,
  etc.
• Persons must be told parents, children, friends

14
Divorce ???

• There is nothing to stop the reversal of the
  uncoupling at any point. It is NOT inevitable
  once its begun.
• Somewhere in the midst of these several stages
  comes DIVORCE but it is ONLY a legal step
  that makes a record of the social change going
  on. It is the result, not the root of the change.

15
Continuities

• Linkages that cause persons to continue relating
  to one another.
• Children biggest and longest-lasting
• Shared business requires on-going contact
• Families Social ties-
• Partner may hold these continuities as a way to
  stay in touch.

16
Some reflections from D.Vaughn

• Language is critical in understanding what is
  happening. Relationships are socially
  constructed worlds built by the language 2 (or
  more) people have shared the buzz words, pet
  words, gestures, etc.

17
Reflections

• Caring about one another even in the heat of
  struggle is impressive.
• Couples can be closely linked (fusion??)
• OR
• Couples can be loosely linked (differentiation??)