When Is It Actually Over?

The decree came through in March.

By June, Jaya and Irfan were almost friends. He asked her advice on a sofa for his new flat. They had dinner together twice, “for the children”. Once, after the second dinner, he stayed late. She told herself this was what a mature divorce looked like.

In August she mentioned, lightly, that she had started seeing someone.

On Friday a lawyer’s letter arrived. Irfan wanted the arrangements for the children reopened. The letter described her as unfit.

The paper ends the marriage, not the pattern

Bill Eddy and Randi Kreger devote a chapter of their book Splitting to the period after a difficult divorce, and its opening is sobering. With some former partners, they write, the relationship afterwards looks a lot like the marriage did: good spells, sudden confrontation, an explosion, a brief calm.

They connect this to a difficulty with grief. Accepting a loss is the last stage of mourning, and some people stay stuck in the anger that comes before it, for years.

So the question is not whether you will have a relationship with your former partner, especially if you share children. It is what kind.

Too close

Relief makes people generous. The authors say it is common to relax when the case ends and to try for a warm friendship. Sometimes, they add, former partners sleep together.

They advise against all of it. To someone who dreads being left, closeness says you may be coming back, and the disappointment when you do not is punished. To someone who feels entitled, closeness is an opening to ask for favours.

Too cold

The opposite mistake is just as tempting. After years of blame, you may want never to speak to this person again.

If you have no children and nothing else in common, that may be where you end up. Even then the authors suggest easing into it. An abrupt cut can register as abandonment or as an insult, and bring on exactly the retaliation you hoped to escape. They observe that former partners often take offence at what looks like indifference to their news.

Arm’s length

Their phrase for the right distance is an arm’s-length relationship. Consistent. Civil. No confusing intimacy and no hostile silence.

In practice you are pleasant and brief. If they tell you good or bad news, you say something kind and do not open up in return. You keep to the schedule. You answer practical questions and leave the rest.

Your good news is their bad news

Jaya’s mistake was not the new relationship. It was failing to see it as a trigger. Eddy and Kreger list the events in your life that can set off a new round: a partner, a marriage, a baby, a success at work. They note that some of the most extreme accusations they have seen came after the divorce was over.

They also describe disputes over children that erupt two or even five years on, driven less by anything that has changed for the child than by a setback in the former partner’s own life.

Their suggestions are modest. Introduce changes gradually. Float an idea before you act on it. Keep your records going. Know which lawyer you would call.

Acceptance, yours

The last part of the chapter is addressed to you. Some decisions will have gone against you unfairly, and some cannot be undone. The authors suggest an honest talk with your lawyer about whether a fight is still worth having.

They quote a line some of their clients have learned to say. It is a therapy issue now, isn’t it?

They have watched many people rebuild after bad outcomes, and they make an observation I find striking. It is often the one who “won” who cannot let go. The person who accepts what happened, and makes the most of the time and money they do have, is the one who gets a life back.