Blame vs. Learning

Who’s to blame for your divorce?

 

Awhile back, I was posting on a divorce forum I’d run across, and it didn’t go well. My three little paragraphs about “learning” went over like a lead balloon.

 

The gist of what came back at me was: it sounds like “blaming” when that’s the last thing someone going through divorce needs. They need comfort, support, and ideas for moving forward.

 

They’re absolutely right.

 

When a divorce breaks open it’s cataclysmic and disorienting – a fundamentally emotional experience. 

 

It was true for mine, and virtually every divorce story I’ve ever heard – personal or professional.

 

At first, it’s “all hands on deck” time: connect with family and friends, make the living arrangements, secure the finances – stabilize.

 

Because divorce happens in the middle of life itself, it’s immersed in all that real world, here and now “doing.”  

 

Pesky little things like parenting and earning a living spring to mind right away, not to mention small items like maintaining the home, time commitments associated with career, community involvement, extended family obligations, etc. The whole package of “things” and “tasks” connected to being a family – living under one roof, with that spouse, and those children – needs to be parceled out, maintained, negotiated, arranged for, and/or left behind forever.

 

Too often, I’m afraid, the all-too-real circumstances of divorce in our modern world end up being “managed” as just another “chapter” in someone’s personal drama – with the net effect that really comprehending what happened never has a chance.

 

How someone conducts him or herself in a marriage – even if it’s exemplary – is filled with lessons and truths that need to “register” if they’re going to make a difference in the future.

 

Recognizing and owning the part your feelings and behavior played in a complex dynamic like marriage takes honesty and courage.

 

That’s not blame, it’s learning.