Your Child - Your Divorce

Participants present affairs as arising by chance and based upon love and mutual adoration. The relationship advances from flirtation to infatuation. This can happen quickly or over considerable time. Eventually there is an expectation that the affair advance to sexual behaviour. The participants then claim each other as true love partners who understand each other better than their own spouses. It sounds so romantic and so beyond their control. The relationship continues in secrecy.

Scratch the surface and what may transpire is one emotionally vulnerable adult and another adult seeking sexual gratification. More often than not, it will be the woman who is emotionally vulnerable and the man who is seeking the sexual gratification. Upon this scenario, the man professes his love and the woman in part feels completed by his attention and in part badly about herself for the context of the relationship.

What is most important for women to realize is that this is not a healthy loving relationship. More to the point, these relationships can be insidiously emotionally and psychologically abusive of women.

Affairs are secretive by nature and represent a betrayal of fidelity. Hence they contribute to marital turmoil and demise. Because of these factors, affairs also diminish personal integrity. It is hard to feel good about oneself entirely in this situation. If one does feel good about oneself, it may be through a psychological process of disassociation or splitting. Through these psychological processes a person cuts him or herself off from those parts of oneself that are distressful. Hence the person is not fully integrated in terms of feelings, thoughts and actions. It is a way to cope with loss of integrity.

Decent men do not subject the object of their affection to such harm. Decent men would not place a woman in conflict with her marital partner, family, children, friends and community… or with herself. Men who engage in such activity tend to be working towards their own sexual gratification over the needs of the woman. The approach then, often involves a process of grooming towards the sexual encounter. The man pursues, the woman resists, the man continues and escalates displays of affection and adoration, and the woman succumbs. The period of grooming will depend on the vulnerability of the woman and the intensity of the pursuit. Guilt and shame are the most common of feelings when the intoxication of the moment subsides and the woman is left to ponder the experience.

If a fellow truly admires a married woman, in the first place he wouldn’t compromise her marriage, family or integrity, but in the event feelings deepened and were mutual, he would resist the relationship so that the woman could choose how to deal with her marriage first – without the complications imposed by an affair. In the event the fellow is also married, his transgressions are threefold; one against his spouse, the other against the married woman as described above and the third to himself. He has also participated in self-demeaning behaviour.

Affairs are about anything but love. Romance has nothing to do with it. Harm to the participants and bystanders is an inevitable conclusion. Hardly the example anyone would want for their children.

No wonder affairs only happen in secret.

About the Author:

Gary Direnfeld is a social worker. Courts in Ontario, Canada, consider him an expert on child development, parent-child relations, marital and family therapy, custody and access recommendations, social work and an expert for the purpose of giving a critique on a Section 112 (social work) report.

By DK Simoneau

Divorce these days surrounds us. Children everywhere are affected. It affects our grandkids, our nieces and nephews, our neighbors, our students or patients, and many other kids that touch our daily lives. Sometimes on the outside it’s hard to know what to do.

After all, these kids are missing their parents. They are subjected to different rules and routines. Sometimes they are even the victims of intense emotional battles that rage between their parents. From the outside looking in, it’s a helpless feeling watching these situations. So just what can you do? Here are ten suggestions to help make a difference for a child of divorce you might know:

1. Give lots of hugs. A child who is being bounced around between homes may not be getting the kind of love and attention she needs. Don’t force it, but be ready to show affection when she needs it. Pay extra attention to the children. Mom and Dad often don’t realize how neglectful they have become and the kids need all the love they can get.
2. Listen. When a child is feeling comfortable enough to talk to you about the situation, just be there and listen. You don’t need to offer suggestions just give them a safe place to share what they are feeling.
3. Suggest a support group. If you have the kind of relationship with either parent that you can make suggestion, you may want to suggest a support group. There are divorce groups for the parents as well as grief organizations (such as Rainbows.org) for kids.
4. Don’t talk down about either parent. Children need a safe-haven for discussion and if you insert your feelings, especially negative ones, the child is less likely to feel comfortable talking with you.
5. Read together. Reading out loud can be very soothing. You may wish to include a few books on the subject of divorce or split-family living. It may be enough to help them realize the feelings they are keeping inside and begin opening up about them. It also helps them to realize they are not unique in this kind of lifestyle. If it seems appropriate give or lend the books to the parents to possibly begin their own conversation.
6. Stay neutral. No matter how bad you want to take sides, don’t. Keep those feelings to yourself and help the children feel comfortable about confiding and sharing feelings.
7. Do not get involved. Unless you are legally required to do so, do not get involved. It is very difficult to know both sides of a story, nor do you probably want to. You may some day need support from both parents for some unknown reason and you do not want to have burned any bridges.
8. Stay firm. Whatever rules or expectations were in force in your dealings with the child should not change. Softening your expectations sets the child up to use his circumstances to not be the best he can be. Staying firm can be one step that can prevent a child from spiraling into poor behavior.
9. Start a new tradition. Offer to take the child to the library and start a book club where you each pick a book for the other to read. Maybe go for ice-cream on Tuesday afternoons. Do something to reinforce your relationship with the child.
10. Learn the routine. If you show frustration with the schedules and routines, children will see that. If instead you accept the routines and try to make the best of it, you will take extra frustration out of the child’s life, and he doesn’t feel like he is doing something so unusual.

Source: We’re Having a Tuesday

Divorce is certainly an emotional time for families. In fact, it ranks as one of the most stressful experiences in life. However, it is not only the adults who experience this stress. If the adults are parents, their children often suffer greatly. Their suffering can not be entirely eliminated. A certain amount of grief at the ‘death’ of their parents’ relationship is to be expected. Nevertheless, while the adults are going through typically arduous legal wrangling it is important for them to remember the needs of their children and put them first. Deciding to cooperate for their sake will help to protect the children’s emotional well being by maintaining their sense of security and need for unconditional love. Marital breakdown is difficult for everyone - especially children. There are several ways in which loving, responsible parents can cooperate for the good of their children. Even though the marriage may have broken down, the parental relationship is ’till death do us part’.

Child and youth counselors emphasize that children need lasting relationships with both parents. More often than not joint custody is granted because of this accepted understanding. Ideally, the relationship of the parents should be business-like and cooperative for the sake of the children. Children should not witness hostility between their parents and should not hear negative statements about either parent. It is recommended that parents commit to regularly scheduled meetings, in a neutral location for the purpose of discussing child-related issues. Education, medical, religious and moral issues that concern the children’s well- being need to be dealt with by both parents. If emotions prohibit calm conversation, there are often family justice counselors available in the community to facilitate these important meetings.

Children going through the divorce of their parents usually have many questions and worries. Compassionate responses are required and it certainly takes mature parents in order to put aside their own issues and help their children gain some understanding about a situation over which they have no control. Unfortunately, many children experience guilt and often blame themselves for the marital breakup of their parents. Counseling - whether group or individual - can be an effective way to lessen this destructive burden. The objectivity of the counselor may help the child open up and share his/her feelings. As children mature, their questions will differ so the issue of their parents’ divorce is never really over. A commitment on behalf of both parents to open communication with the children will reassure them greatly.

About The Author
Jean Mahserjian is an attorney and the author of numerous websites and books devoted to helping consumers through the process of divorce. To download free excerpts from her divorce and custody books, visit: http://www.millenniumdivorce.com.

When you are standing at the altar saying “I do” with 300 of your friends and family around you, the very last thing on your mind is the possibility of a divorce in your future. Damn the statistics, it cannot happen to me, you think.

Think again. Recent studies have shown that the divorce rate is almost at the 50% mark for couple being married in the past 5 years. What is the cause of that? Are people being too reckless with their commitments? Do people really think that the love they feel will see them through anything?

The biggest problem leading to divorce is a lack of communication between the partners. It really is a partnership, where each needs to know what the other is doing and thinking on a regular basis, as in daily. You need to make sure that you are both marching to the same drummer with the same goals in sight, both short term goals as well as long term goals, and without that communication, divorce is almost inevitable.

Is this a difficult thing? It should not be, but in today’s world where most households have both spouses working, it can prove to be difficult. When both spouses arrive at home after a long hard day at work, both are tired, perhaps irritable, neither feels like fixing dinner, and communication can often be the last thing on either one’s mind. Yet if that communications does not happen, it is inevitably that the two of you will take different paths, start creating separate goals, and pretty soon you find that divorce is the only viable answer, since your paths have parted so widely that there is little chance your paths will ever rejoin.

Divorce can be a comparatively simple procedure or it can be long and drawn out. It is in your best interests to get a good divorce lawyer. Really? Yes really. If the communications between you and your spouse have broken down to put you on separate paths, you cannot be sure of what your spouse will require or demand in the divorce process. Make sure you do not get hosed in that process, and without a good divorce attorney, that can easily happen before you are even aware of it.

Things can get messy if children are involved or there is a fair amount of capital holdings that were acquired since the wedding day. But even these items can be negotiated and worked out with good divorce attorneys, plus the desire to “just get it over with peacefully” on the part of both spouses.

If divorce is really the best or only option available to you, plan it with the same attention to detail that you used when you planned your wedding. Preparation and a thorough knowledge of what is involved and what can be negotiated is paramount in making sure that you don’t walk away with absolutely nothing. Almost anything is negotiable as far as “who gets what”, but be very clear on what are your rights, what are the rights of your spouse, and how to effectively manage the division of assets, including cash, stocks, and bonds.

About The Author