Men & Divorce
by
Ellie Wymard
The lonely withdrawal from married life
is very real to men. They express loss in a million different ways. Some men are without
solace, barely able to function, and say that "divorce is worse than death!"
The other extreme is evidenced by men who rage rather than mourn. They endure their pain
by working longer hours, overindulging in alcohol, or by engaging in frenetic sex or
death-defying sporting activities. To show strength, they hide their grief, even from
themselves. Most ex-husbands express their grief somewhere between these polarities. But
it is common for all of them, at some point, to feel desolate because loss is an
inevitable consequence of divorce.
If a man has been successful
solving problems in his job
but can't control his marriage,
he's thrown by it.
Anyone who has mourned the death of a
spouse may not appreciate the comparison, but death and divorce share similarities. Any
experience of loss, regardless of what it is, carries with it similar issues that need to
be resolved. In general, the problems of loss include forsaking the camaraderie,
companionship, understanding, and compassion of a particular person, and accommodating the
loneliness that ensues from separation. Feelings of anger, anguish, confusion, and sadness
also need to be worked through. Even men who accept divorce as the best answer for their
unhappy marriages confront the ultimate questions that death poses: "Who am I now?
What did it all mean? Where am I going?"
Divorce vs. Death
According to bereavement experts, when a
man's wife dies, the mourning husband will come to the other side, and ultimately say, "She
is dead and is not coming back". But when it comes to divorce, certain aspects of
loss become slightly magnified. Cathleen Fanslow Brunjes, Bereavement Coordinator' for
Hospice Care of Long Island, New York, made the distinction by saying,"Bear in
mind that with divorce there's not a body to mourn. It's disenfranchised grief.
"The attendant rituals are
missing: there's no wake or funeral. The day the divorce is finalized may pass unnoticed.
Family and friends aren't bringing food and casseroles. From society's viewpoint, you
couldn't make the marriage work, or you weren't right together anyway. So expressions of
grief are somehow unacceptable. Friends grow impatient. If a man has been successful
solving problems in his job but can't control his marriage, he's thrown by it. All this
works against a man when he feels inside that he has a lot to cry about."
Husbands who are betrayed frequently
claim that a wife's death would have been easier to absorb than the reality of her leaving
for another man or in search of freedom. Douglas Gillette, co-author of "King,
Warrior, Magician, Lover", commented, "When a man is voted against —
when his sexuality, capacity to protect, provide, excite is found wanting — it's a
disastrous blow to self-worth. Men feel abandoned. There's no other message when a wife
leaves a husband."
Men have resisted their grief
because it has made them feel
fragile, unstable, and out of control.
When ex-husbands drag through the day,
lack concentration, lose or gain weight, suffer insomnia or crave sleep, and feel guilt
followed by anger, they are experiencing the normal symptoms of grief. When divorced men
describe feeling emptiness, loneliness, nothingness, and fear that they are going
crazy, losing it, or having a nervous breakdown, therapists agree that they are
consumed by grief. The best prescription is to go through the hurt, and understand why it
is there.
Grief & Divorce
In addition to exploring the unconscious
in order to explain the grief of an abandoned husband, therapists also interpret grief
within a situational and cultural context. For example, among husbands immobilized after
divorce are those who have been taken care of by their wives almost as if they were little
boys. In this childlike position, they turn wives into mothers, and are passive while
their "mothers" wait on them. For most couples, this behavior is not the result
of a rational decision. The comfort of being tended to is seductive, and wives are slow to
see the web they are creating.
Until separation forces them to face how
dependent they have been on their wives for daily maintenance, encouragement, and
understanding, men generally think they are self-reliant. Regardless of how good or bad
the marriage was, many of the ex-husbands I interviewed have described feeling
"paralyzed" or "numb," "as if I had a leg cut off." Even
in a marriage with sparse communication, a husband's support system is often dismantled
when the marriage ends and he is on his own.
Grief is a natural, if unexpected, part
of the divorce process, but men, in general, are surprised by the force of its demands.
Buried deep in our society's subconscious is the stoical image of John Wayne, callous to
sadness and heartbreak. While therapists concur that grief is ultimately cured alone, a
man moving through divorce often thinks that no one else has ever felt the way he does. At
some point in the divorce cycle, a man will feel bereft, helpless, and desolate. But if he
silences these feelings, other men have also silenced them. If he feels guilt and
embarrassment, so have other men. If he is scared by his confusion, other men have also
known that fear.
Grief is not madness, but ex-husbands
often endure it as a shameful secret. Grief is so mistaken as a sign of weakness that men
have aborted mourning by expressing anger and hostility, emotions natural to separation
and divorce, but more "acceptable" for men to vent than sorrow. Finding it
easier to verbalize anger than grief, they blame their wives or themselves for causing the
marriage to fail.
Role Expectations
In the past 30 years, taboos have relaxed
about what is acceptable for a woman to express about her inner life. Not so with men. Men
have resisted their grief because it has made them feel fragile, unstable, and out of
control. They have feared that their symptoms were pathological, when, indeed, they are to
be expected. If men bury their grief, it will only overwhelm them at another time. Role
expectations therefore complicate a man's behavioral response to grief in a way not
generally experienced by women.
Bereavement experts have, therefore,
suggested to me that a divorced man can be reassured that he is not different from other
men, and yet is recognizable as himself, if he understands the stages of bereavement. Once
he accepts the fact that grief is a normal emotional response to the irretrievable loss of
another person, he may gain insight into the range of emotions he is feeling and find
solace in knowing that others have been where he is.
 This
article was
excerpted from
Men on Divorce - Conversations With
Ex-Husbands
by Ellie Wymard.
Excerpted with permission from the publisher. ©1994. Published by Hay House, www.hayhouse.com.
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About
The Author
Ellie Wymard, Ph.D. is the director of the Master of Fine Arts program and a professor of English at Carlow University in Pittsburgh, as well as a national television and radio personality. She is also the author of Talking Steel Towns: The Women and Men of America's Steel Valley; Conversations With Uncommon Women: Insights from women who've risen above life's challenges to achieve extraordinary success; Men On Divorce; and Divorced Women, New Lives. (More info on this author)
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