Apart together

A ‘good divorce’, there is no such thing, — unless you are talking about the amount of money that changed hands — I thought to myself as I wrote those two words.

The divorces I have seen — and there have been a substantial number — have been contests in all things negative, such as anger, bitterness, betrayal. Ex-couples who cannot bear to speak to each other, let alone see each other, are the norm. In this well-trodden, though never dull path, drama is aplenty and cheer absent. So who benefits from this entire process, other than lawyers?

More than 20 years ago my parents got divorced, ending a 15-year-long marriage. My sister and I were in boarding school, at a developmental stage where blending in with peers was of prime importance. And we certainly didn’t want to wave the ‘my parents are divorced’ flag. Whatever our individual emotional responses were on the subject then and since, we agree that our parents were paragons of restraint and cooperation, when it came to the joint custody of the two of us. School events, annual days, birthdays, vacations were negotiated, attended to and attended in such a way that unless we explicitly said so, our classmates could not tell that there was anything amiss with our family. It was not perfect for us, of course, and we have our personal traumas, but really, it could have been so much worse.

Making it work

I did not think it could get better, till I met G and M. They came to see me for the first time about a year ago. They had been friends for a long time but realised being married to each other was not working. They had been seeing a psychotherapist to help them with their difficulties as a couple. But for various reasons had decided that they could no longer remain married to each other. However, they had a six-year-old child and they were aware that just as they had been helped, they needed to help him.

When I first met them, I found the ‘couple’, struggling less with what they were going to tell their son and more with how they were going to break this news to their parents. Theirs had been a marriage across states, languages and cultures and I got the impression that their respective parents had been somewhat tight-lipped and sombre-faced about it to begin with. I sensed that both G and M felt more ill at ease and squirmy facing their own parents than anything else.

M had tears in her eyes as I pointed this out. And the father, who clearly used humour as a mask, laughed at himself, his parents and their predicament. I referred them to a colleague who was nearer where they lived, so that their child could have easier access to the psychotherapist, if he took to the idea.

I heard from them a while later. G and M had split. Father was now staying in the opposite building in the same apartment complex. This they hoped would allow their son to better adapt to the new situation. This time they had come to see me as parents, not as a couple splitting up. They were clear that they had been friends before they were married and wanted to not only remain parents to their son but also preserve their friendship. Our session was to be about ‘how do we divide time?’ and ‘how do we react when he sees us together and hopes we will get back together as a family’?

G would at times go over to the other apartment to read his son a bedtime story, and would have him over for the weekends. We spoke in detail about how a seven-year-old boy needs his father. What the father can mean to him, and the child’s emotions that the mother might not always have access to. M agreed with me that their son was protective of her feelings and reserved when it came to expressing his own. The father had noticed that like him, his son brushed away painful subjects by laughing over them. The boy was getting a lot of practice at covering up his emotions.

G and M are remarkably attentive and perceptive parents. So far, they have achieved something extraordinary — deconstructing their roles as spouse and parent. They were disregarding the convention of ‘thou shalt hate thy ex-spouse’. They were avoiding the classic trap of ‘splitting’ their feelings into all good or all bad. Because of this maturity, they were able to keep communication open.

Their parents, I was told, could not understand this new situation. According to the elder parents, you were either together as a couple, or not. There could be no in between. This is the typical social reaction to a divorce but what then of the child, who does not see it that way?

Most divorcing parents do not manage to spare their children the anguish of being split in two, and often turn a blind eye to it. A 13-year-old once told me, “I feel like I am Kashmir.” Another child, a 12-year-old would speak to his mother in terms of politics and ask her ‘why do countries have to split up?’ Children, of all ages, feel like they are being forced to make a choice. My work is often as simple, and as complex, as helping parents acknowledge that the child is not the one being divorced; that the child wants a relationship with both parents for as long as they are alive. That they will remain parents forever. You can un-marry, but not un-make your child.

Child in the ring

The task for these parents then is to find a way to remain father and mother and not get entangled with the anger, envy and hatred that is often harboured for ex-partners. The challenge for ex-couples is to realise that their personal betrayal, disappointment and hurt is separate from the relationship between the child and the other parent. This is difficult because often the presence of the child is a potent reminder of the presence of the ex-partner in the world, since the child was a joint creation. As a result, the child often becomes a pawn for one parent to prove that the other is unreliable, disinterested or amoral.

Children can also blame themselves for a divorce, especially if they are below the age of 10. It is an unavoidable consequence of their stage of mental development. They can only see the world from their own perspective and so see themselves as the centre of the universe. Add to this, an often punitive conscience and the result is a personal theory that mummy and papa would still be together if the child had been ‘good’, though what that means is a mystery. It boils down to ‘it is my fault’ and ‘I should have done something’.

The post-divorce child who is going off the rails and getting aggressive with mother, father or peers or the one who is retreating into a shell or crying themselves to sleep, is often struggling with the ordinary messy feelings of hurt, anger and guilt. Since our feelings are never neatly arranged and certainly do not appear one at a time, messiness is a guarantee. Children may also feel forgotten or abandoned by parents who are preoccupied by this huge change in their lives.

The task for the child of divorcing parents is to acknowledge — often prematurely for their cognitive and emotional stage — that their parents are not perfect, that they may have serious flaws but that they are still loved and it is worth preserving a relationship with both. Most of us are lucky if we can become conscious of this by the time we hit 30!

Many divorcing couples, and other adults in the family, often display their vulnerabilities, go into a rage or lack the awareness about what a child does not need be exposed to. Naturally, this overwhelms the child.

A 12-year-old told me repeatedly that he was upset that his father spent hours on the phone with his relatives, complaining loudly about his ex-wife. The boy did not want to witness that. He did not want to be part of his father’s anger toward his mother. He wished he could be saved at least that. A 13-year-old was enraged with her grandmother who had been grieving out aloud and crying for months about her son and daughter-in-law getting a divorce after almost 15 years of marriage. For the young girl her grandmother’s reaction was salt on her wounds. She could have used her grandmother’s affection and understanding and they could have shared their grief, perhaps. Instead, the grandmother’s reaction was so ‘over the top’ that the girl felt she had no space to air her own. She felt dropped from the minds of the adults who were absorbed in themselves. Who would listen to her if they were so busy falling apart? So she kept quiet about her loss and her anger till she found a psychotherapist more than 10 years later.

G and M are working on something I have rarely come across, to live apart but to keep their minds together for their son. So far, they are getting themselves a good divorce.

Nupur Dhingra Paiva is a clinical child psychologist in private practice and teaches at Ambedkar University, Delhi

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