The New "Normal"?

In my clinical practice, I see couples struggling with various aspects of their marriage. It may be sex, money, infidelity, childrearing, communication, you name it. For many couples, by the time they make the decision to seek therapy, significant damage has already been done to the relationship. Highly toxic attitudes and patterns of interaction may have developed which make it extremely difficult to pull the marriage back from the brink of dissolution. And so some of these couples end up divorcing.

As a therapist, my task then becomes helping them navigate the process of divorce with as little emotional damage as possible. If there are children, this involves helping them forge a plan for coparenting that keeps the best interests of the children front and center. Even when there is significant animosity between the ex-spouses, emotions must be managed so that parents are responsible and cooperative caretakers. The children's needs always come first.

Another therapeutic task is helping the partners to begin to utilize the divorce process as a vehicle for personal transformation. Yes, divorce feels like a tragedy to many people. It can lead to feelings of depression, lowered self-esteem, even worthlessness and hopelessness. But, like all life crises, it holds the potential to help us discover new or hitherto untapped aspects of ourselves. For instance, if one has been financially dependent on a spouse, divorce may force us to become resourceful and self-sufficient. If one has never lived alone, it may require that we learn to tolerate solitude and loneliness.

There are a number of common emotional responses to divorce. The partner who wants the divorce may feel an overwhelming sense of relief. For the partner who wants instead to save the marriage, feelings can range from anger to fear and anxiety to depression. An almost universal response to divorce is the sense that one has failed at something that was meaningful, a major life task, as well as a primary source of one's identity.

It's common for those who've gone through a divorce to view a previous marriage as "failed". After all, the " 'til death do us part" clearly didn't work, did it? We rarely marry with the thought that we'll divorce. Most of us still hold to the fairy tale ideal of "happily ever after". This may carry us through the stress of wedding planning and the honeymoon. The real test of the marriage begins the day after the honeymoon ends, however. The newlywed couple now begins to settle into daily life. Stresses and strains of jobs, finances, and in-laws can quickly take their toll. The newlyweds may find themselves arguing and unable to resolve conflict.

While at any given time, more than half of us are in a first marriage, a second marriage is not uncommon. Approximately forty-three percent of all first marriages end in divorce within the first fifteen years, but seventy-five percent of those people will go on to remarry, usually within the first three years after a divorce. An interesting fact is that, for most of this country's history, remarriage occurred after a spouse had died. By the late 1980's, less than ten percent of those who remarried did so because they had lost a spouse.

This certainly lines up with what I observe in my clinical practice, in which it's not all that rare these days to see a couple, one of whom is in a second or third marriage, and the other one in a third or fourth marriage. Given the prevalence of divorce and remarriage in our culture, perhaps it's time to reconsider what "normal" means in the context of marriage. Our ideal, for many years, has been monogamy--one man and one woman (please note that the question of gay and lesbian marriage is a different topic) for life. Of course, this often takes place after an extensive period of dating numerous other people until we find the "right" one. The expectation is that we will then settle down and be sexually and emotionally faithful to our spouse.

The subject of divorce, infidelity, and why monogamy seems so fragile in this society is a vast subject and requires attention in a separate piece. But the reality is that, while we continue to pay lip service to monogamy, many of us will end our first marriages and enter into a second marriage--perhaps even a third and a fourth--as time passes. As a culture, we're still devoted to the institution of marriage and the ideal of total, eternal commitment. We still believe we can "make a go of it" with another person, that this time we've found the right one. Statistics tell a different story. The odds of second and subsequent marriages lasting decrease with each new marriage.

So, we hold onto the hope that our marriage will last forever. And, if both partners give it their very best effort and cherish the relationship, it probably will. However, for approximately one-half of us, something goes awry. We get tired of working on the marriage, we begin leading parallel lives, we get careless with outside relationships and an affair develops, and so on. The outcome is divorce and, in many cases, remarriage. We tend to refer to this pattern, somewhat tongue in cheek, as "serial monogamy". And perhaps this is the new "normal" for love and marriage, American style.