Chapter One
A New Story About Divorce
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Neighbors, friends, even some of the women in Liddy Pennybaker's book group knewabout James's infidelities, so when word spread that Liddy had asked for adivorce, everyone thought they knew why.
James frequently went to social events alone, and just as frequentlyleft with an attractive female on his arm. But to Liddy, James's affairswere more in the nature of a last straw than anything else. By the timereceipts from out-of-town hotels began appearing in the Pennybakers'American Express bills, Liddy was already halfway out of the marriage.She resented James not spending more time with the children. She hadgrown tired of his scowls when she ate anything with more than a hundredcalories in it. She was sick of his aloofness and condescension whenshe had friends from her church group to the house. She hated James'ssocial climbing and phony laugh when he was around powerful people.
In truth, Liddy felt almost grateful for the affairs—not that she likedbeing hurt and humiliated, but the affairs finally focused her, forced herto face a truth she had been resisting for two years. The marriage wasover!
Before, when Liddy thought about divorce, she thought about it theway a child thinks about being a grown-up—as a kind of fantasy game.Liddy would spend hours trying on new lives, imagining what it wouldbe like to have a career or to be married to someone else. But whenevershe sat down and actually analyzed the costs of divorce, the price alwaysseemed too high.
The thought of telling the children was especially frightening. Andleaving would mean ignoring, trashing everything she, the minister'sdaughter, had been brought up to believe. Oddly enough, the marriageitself also made Liddy hesitate. It still had its good moments and so didJames, despite all his lies and deceptions. Walking out on her marriagewould make Liddy feel as if she were tearing down a home she had builtwith her own hands, a home a part of her still loved and felt safe in.Besides, what would she be walking out to? She hadn't worked since hermarriage and she didn't have a degree. She had dropped out of college tomarry James.
The ambivalence, the weighing of hopes against fears, of past happinessagainst current dissatisfactions that Liddy Pennybaker wrestled with indeciding to divorce occurs in most marital breakups.
Every divorce is a unique tragedy because every divorce brings anend to a unique civilization—one built on thousands of shared experiences,memories, hopes, and dreams. That wonderful Two-for-the-Roadsummer in Europe, the first day in the new house, the heart-stopping tripto the emergency room—only the people who shared those momentsknow what it means to lose them forever. So divorce takes a uniquelypersonal toll on the divorced. But the experience of divorce also hasmany commonalities. The end of a marriage always, or almost always,produces heartache, fear, self-doubt, confusion, and of course manyanxious questions.
What happens to me and my children now? What should I expect,fear, hope for? What kinds of challenges and pitfalls do I face? And howdo I go about building a better life?
Like other books on divorce, For Better or For Worse offers answersto these questions. But the answers you will find here are different. ForBetter or For Worse has a new story to tell about divorce, and it is animportant story because it is based on the most comprehensive examinationof divorce ever conducted: an in-depth examination of nearly 1,400families and over 2,500 children, many followed for more than threedecades. When I finished my research, the adults I had met as youngmen and women were now in middle age and most had been remarriedfor a decade or more, and the children I had met as preschoolers werenow teachers, accountants, computer scientists, and engineers; manywere married; a few had already gone through a divorce of their own.
The unparalleled scope of my research has produced new and surprisingfindings about divorce and its immediate aftermath, findings thatwill make us better able to anticipate the consequences of marital failurefor ourselves, our children, and for future partners and marriages.
Among the most important findings to emerge are:
—How divorce changes people's behavior, feelings, friendships,health, and, in the case of adults, their work and sex lives
—Why even people who are eager to leave a marriage often questionthe decision later
—Why the end of the first year is usually the most painful point inthe entire postdivorce period
—Why casual postdivorce sex is more emotionally risky for womenthan men
—Why divorce heightens vulnerability to psychological problemsand physical illness
—Why preadolescent girls usually adjust more easily to divorcethan boys
—Why men and women rarely marry the person they leave a marriagefor
—Why a familial history of divorce is a greater divorce risk to awoman than a man.
For Better or For Worse also has a second, even more important storyto tell. This one is about a new kind of experience created by divorce.Traditionally, marital failure has been viewed as a single event, one thatproduces temporarily intense but limited effects. People suffer, theyheal, and then go on with their lives. What happens to them later, as singleparents, in a new romantic relationship, or in a second marriage, isdependent on the conditions they encounter later. Or so the traditionalview holds.
But as I followed my families over the years and, in many cases, overthe decades, I found this view to be insufficient. Marital failure cannot beunderstood as a single event; it is part of a series of interconnected transitionson a pathway of life experiences that lead to and issue fromdivorce. The quality of life in a first marriage influences adults' and children'sresponses to divorce and experiences in a single-parent family,and these in turn cast a shadow across new romantic relationships, a secondmarriage, and life in a stepfamily.
Sometimes I saw happy second marriages heal painful, divorce-inducedemotional scars. But reactions work the other way around aswell. Unhappy second marriages and unhappy stepfamilies can reopenold divorce wounds, and a legacy of fear and mistrust from a first marriagecan erode happiness in a remarriage.
As I studied nearly fourteen hundred families across time, I realizedthat the divorce revolution begun in the 1960s had created entirely newpatterns of intimate relations, with less stability and fewer certainties butmore options. People were not just marrying and staying with the samepartner, the traditional pattern for married life. Half of this new generationwere divorcing, and they were taking diverse pathways from maritalbreakup. Some were opting to cohabit or remain single or to havemultiple romantic partners. Others were forming relationships withpartners of the same sex. Others again were remarrying, often severaltimes.
On one level, For Better or For Worse is a portrait of the new waysAmericans have learned to live and love and parent in a divorce-pronesociety. On another level, the book serves as a primer on what might becalled the postnuclear family experience. For Better or For Worse explainsthe options that have become available to the newly divorced over thepast few decades. Based on the experiences of my study families, itexplains which options are most likely to lead to postmarital success orfailure, and why.
At the center of the primer is a new and, I think, more balancedview of divorce and its consequences. After forty years of research, Iharbor no doubts about the ability of divorce to devastate. It can anddoes ruin lives. I've seen it happen more times than I like to thinkabout. But that said, I also think much current writing on divorce—bothpopular and academic—has exaggerated its negative effects andignored its sometimes considerable positive effects. Divorce hasundoubtedly rescued many adults and children from the horror ofdomestic abuse, but it is not just a preventative measure. I have seendivorce provide many women and girls, in particular, with a remarkableopportunity for life-transforming personal growth, as we shallsee later.
The reason our current view of marital failure is so unremittinglynegative is that it is based on studies that have only examined people fora year or two after their divorce, and a year or two is not enough time todistinguish between short- and long-term effects. Additionally, manydivorce studies do not employ a comparison group of married couples,and thus are unable to distinguish between problems common to all familiesand problems unique to divorced families.
Once you remove these distortions by doing what I did, examiningmen, women, and children for over twenty years and including a comparisongroup of non-divorced married couples, many of our currentbeliefs about marital failure turn out to be myths. Six examples of themost common myths follow.
Myth One:
Divorce Only Has Two Outcomes: Win or Lose
Divorce is too complex a process to produce just winners and losers.People adjust in many different ways, and these patterns of adjustingchange over time. The most common include:
• Enhanced. Two decades after divorce, the 20 percent of individuals who were classified as Enhanced came closest to looking like traditional postdivorce winners. Successful at work, Enhancers also succeeded socially, as parents, and often in new marriages, though in one key aspect the group did depart from the conventional picture of postdivorce winners. The Enhanced flourished because of the things that had happened to them during and after divorce, not despite them. Competencies that would have remained latent if they had stayed in a marriage were fostered by the urgent need to overcome the challenges of divorce and single parenthood.
• Competent Loners. Men and women who do not remarry are often considered divorce losers. But the 10 percent of men and women in my research who were classified as Competent Loners looked a lot like Enhancers; the only major difference was that they were more emotionally self-sustaining. A Competent Loner did not need—or, in many cases, want—a partner; he or she was fully capable of building a meaningful and happy life without a marriage or a longtime companion.
• Good Enough. For the people in this category, divorce was like a speed bump in the road. It caused a lot of tumult while the person was going over it, but failed to leave a lasting impression—either positive or negative. Two decades later, Good Enoughs (who represented 40 percent of my study sample and were my largest postdivorce group) had different partners and different marriages, but usually the same problems.
• Seekers. Seekers were distinguished by a desire to remarry quickly. Alone, the average Seeker, who was usually a man, felt rootless and insecure. He needed a spouse and a marriage to give his life structure, meaning, and a secure base. Unmarried Seekers often became desperately unhappy and clinically depressed; they also had more drinking problems than other divorced adults.
• Libertines. The polar opposites of Seekers, Libertines wanted freedom, not a new set of restrictions. They came out of marriage, as one member of the group said, "ready to live life in the fast lane." Plunging necklines, trendy clothing, tight-fitting jeans, and sports cars were the symbols of their intention. Libertines had the highest rates of casual sex and singles bar patronage in the study.
However, by the end of the first year after divorce many Libertines felt that their life was empty, pointless, a dead end, and they began to seek more stable, committed relationships. As one Libertine said, "After awhile even a sexual smorgasbord gets to be a bit of a bore."
• The Defeated. The men and women in this group succumbed to depression, to substance abuse, to a sense of purposelessness. Some of the people in this category lost everything—jobs, homes, second spouses, children, self-esteem; others managed to rebuild a halfway functional new life, but it was joyless. The Defeated often remained embittered over the life they had lost.
Myth Two:
Children Always Lose Out After a Divorce
This is another article of faith in popular wisdom and it contains anundeniable truth. In the short run, divorce usually is brutally painful to achild. But its negative long-term effects have been exaggerated to thepoint where we now have created a self-fulfilling prophecy. At the end ofmy study, a fair number of my adult children of divorce described themselvesas permanently "scarred." But objective assessments of these"victims" told a different story. Twenty-five percent of youths fromdivorced families in comparison to 10 percent from non-divorced familiesdid have serious social, emotional, or psychological problems. Butmost of the young men and women from my divorced families looked alot like their contemporaries from non-divorced homes. Although theylooked back on their parents' breakup as a painful experience, most weresuccessfully going about the chief tasks of young adulthood: establishingcareers, creating intimate relationships, building meaningful lives forthemselves.
Most unexpectedly—since it has seldom been reported before—aminority of my young adults emerged from divorce and postnuclearfamily life enhanced. Uncommonly resilient, mature, responsible, andfocused, these children of divorce blossomed, not despite the things thathad happened to them during divorce and after, but, like Enhancedadults, because of them.
Myth Three:
The Pathways Following Divorce Are Fixed and Unchanging
The effects of divorce are not irrevocable; they do not lock a personinto a particular pattern of adjustment. A negative experience atone major transition point, such as divorce, can be offset by a positiveexperience at another point, transforming a Defeated individual intoa Good Enough or a Good Enough individual into Enhanced. But theopposite can happen, too. A person can go from Good Enough toDefeated.
Also, the direction of change is never predetermined. After adivorce, to a great extent individuals influence their own destiny. As weshall see later, a single mother's decision to go back to school to upgradeher work skills, or a divorced man's hurried remarriage, or an adolescent'sdecision to terminate a pregnancy can close or open the gates to anew life path.
Myth Four:
Men Are the Big Winners in Divorce
In the tabloid press, men always seem to be leaving their wives foryounger, slimmer, and prettier women, so-called trophy wives. But inreal life, it is usually the women who do the leaving. Indeed, men-as-divorce-winnersmay be the biggest myth about divorce. In myresearch, two out of every three marriages ended because the wifewalked out.
Furthermore, women did better emotionally after divorce thanmen did. They were less likely to mope and feel sorry for themselvesand also less likely to continue to pine for a former spouse. Womenwere better at building a new social network of friends and at findingways to assuage their pain. And while the economic disparity betweenmen and women following divorce continues to be great, with thewoman's economic resources declining by about 30 percent and theman's by 10 percent, this difference is beginning to close, thanks tobetter education of women and stricter enforcement of child supportlaws. Still, many women, even middle-class women, fall into povertyafter divorce.
Myth Five:
The Absence of a Father—and Consequent Poverty—Are the TwoGreatest Postdivorce Risks to Children
Fathers do contribute vitally to the financial, social, and emotionalwell-being of a child. But the contribution is not made through a man'ssheer physical presence. A child does not automatically become psychologicallywell adjusted or a competent student just because he or shelives with Dad. Qualities like stability and competency in children haveto be nurtured carefully and patiently by active, engaged fathering.
In fact, we found that if a man was psychologically absent beforethe divorce and a custodial mother is reasonably well adjusted andparents competently following divorce, single-family life often haslittle enduring negative developmental impact on a child, particularlyif that child is a girl. An involved, supportive, firm custodial motheroften is able to counter adverse effects of both the lack of a father andpoverty.
Myth Six:
Death and Divorce Produce Similar Outcomes
Both death of a father and divorce are associated with the lack of afather in the household, yet children from widowed families show fewerproblems than those in divorced, mother-headed families. Why? Theconflict associated with the end of a marriage is one reason. Another arethe experiences and attitudes of divorced mothers. Widows get moresupport from families, friends, and in-laws; to some extent there is a"well, you brought it on yourself" attitude to the divorced. Widows alsocommunicate idealized images of their dead husband to their children,whereas divorced women are likely to put down and belittle their ex-spouses,much to the confusion and pain of their children.
However, the death of a marriage, like the death of a loved one,often does produce a mourninglike sadness and grieving. But unlikedeath, divorce does not provide a sense of closure, of a chapter ending.The unresolved issues of divorce can retain their emotional stingbecause their source comes by every Saturday morning to pick up thechildren. Moreover, divorce breeds complicating factors of continuedconflict and guilt. Questions like "Was I too selfish?" "Did I try hardenough?" "Could I have done more?" can grate like sandpaper on aguilty conscience.
Although our work uncovered many myths about divorce, on one criticalpoint my research does confirm, resoundingly, the conventional wisdomabout divorce:
The end of a marriage is usually brutally painful.
In their worst nightmares, few if any of the middle-class womenin my study imagined that they would ever find themselves in a welfareoffice filling out application forms, or moving back in with a parent;but after divorce a surprisingly large number had to do one orboth. Similarly, I don't think that many of the divorced men in mystudies ever imagined sitting up night after night watching reruns ofStar Trek and M*A*S*H to avoid an empty bed in a half-furnishedapartment. And I know none of them ever thought that talking totheir children would become almost as difficult as talking to astranger.
To the boys and girls in my research, divorce seemed cataclysmicand inexplicable. How could a child feel safe in a world where adults hadsuddenly become untrustworthy? Marital failure was so outside a child'snormal range of experience that the only way many youngsters couldmake sense of it was to blame themselves. Small wonder, then, that onefour-year-old confided to me: "My daddy left my mommy and mebecause he doesn't like me anymore."
From the Pain of Divorce to the Satisfaction of
the Postnuclear Family
One of our newly divorced men, a geography professor, started worryingabout his sanity when he began looking up at birds in the branches ofthe trees and shouting, "Get off that branch, you God-damned bird!"However, once the confusion of divorce had passed, the man realizedthat his bizarre behavior had a purpose. "Somehow it gave me somethingto vent my anger on," he said to me one day. "It gave me a sense ofpower when everything was so out of control."
Another, a very buttoned-down young banker, was appalledwhen he found himself crouched behind a boxwood in his old frontyard, peering through a window, watching his former wife and astrange man making love on the living-room floor. "I don't knowwhat's happening to me," he told me later. "I've never done anythinglike that before. I've never even thought of doing anything like thatbefore."
It was easy to understand their concern. Behaviors like PeepingTomism and harassing birds are worrisome, but they are also fairly normalin the first year after a divorce, as are erratic mood swings, vulnerabilityto psychological disorders and physical illness, and doubts aboutthe decision to leave.
But very few of the millions of men and women who get divorcedeach year anticipate these reactions or know that they are usually temporaryand self-correcting. The newly divorced also tend to be blind to thelong shadow that the past casts over their new lives. Although For Betteror For Worse is not a self-help book in the conventional sense of theword, it does explain what to expect and when to expect it. It describeswhat happens to men, women, and children at one and two years afterdivorce and at five, ten, fifteen, and twenty years.
To guide you through the challenges and options confronted inpostdivorce life, I will describe some of the pathways taken by families Istudied over the years. Through their experience, you will be introducedto strategies that can ease adjustment to a marital breakup and producesuccess in a new single family or a second marriage. I think you will besurprised at how commonsensical some of the strategies are and hownovel others are. For example:
—Selecting the right kind of school can measurably increase achild's chances of successfully navigating life after divorce.
—Parental monitoring and supervision are particularly critical withadolescents because children from divorced and remarried families aremore vulnerable to peer influence.
—Timing is often key to succeeding in a second marriage. Remarriagesthat occur prior to a child's adolescence succeed more often thanthose that occur when a youngster is in his or her early teens.
—Marrying a person from an intact family significantly reduces thehigher risk of marital instability carried by adult children of divorce.
Continues...
Excerpted from For Better or for Worseby E. Mavis Hetherington Copyright © 2003 by E. Mavis Hetherington. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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