Divorce Balance

Negotiation > Recovery > Enhancement

Friday, November 12, 2004
"...Two Words to Describe That Idea: In. Sane."

Thus goes the succinct wisdom of Tom Arnold, playing the role of secret agent "Gib" in the 1994 Schwarzenegger blockbuster, True Lies.

"Do you dance, Ms. Skinner?"

But the "in"-"sanity" that's really moving me here came some 31 years earlier. The first chapter in Mr. Arnold's autobiography is titled, "Daddy, Did You Ever Have a Real Mommy?" Riveting pages describe his parents' divorce. He was four years old.

It's not a story for the faint of heart. Then again, divorce stories never are.

And don't let your guard down if you make it through this first "gut-wrenching" trip along a memory lane far-removed from Pleasantville. The next chapter gives us his child's-eye view of stepparenting, starting when he was nine. The saddest thing to me was that everyone seemed to have been victimized by someone there.

I'm compelled to write here not because True Lies was on AMC this week — but because the parental strife that's described in How I Lost 5 Pounds in 6 Years is a true reality in the groups I serve.

Two cases this month, in fact.

I know: "A moderate level of conflict between parents is surprisingly helpful to youngsters as they begin the task of coming to terms with the reality and finality of their parents' divorce." This is from the late Dr. Neil Kalter of our own University of Michigan's Center for the Child and the Family. The book is Growing Up With Divorce.

But conflict has typically declined in 80% of divorces by the two-year mark, according to research by Dr. E. Mavis Hetherington.

If it has not subsided by the third year, "...it is unlikely to abate on its own," warns Caught in the Middle. Adding to this frustrating dance, recalcitrant cases may be exacerbated by our ultimate source of relief: The court.

Caught in the Middle authors Carla B. Garrity and Mitchell A. Baris write:

"By its very nature, litigation determines blame and punishes guilty parties. A strategy of alienating parents, similarly, is to convince an authority to pronounce them worthy and their ex-spouses bad parents. Court proceedings often undermine healing and reinforce alienating parents' principal emotional defenses: denial of painful feelings and the tendency to blame others for their problems. If they lose the court battle, alienating parents are even less likely to build insight and to heal; they will probably be outraged by the public humiliation and the failure of the system to acknowledge their point of view. In such cases the conflict is likely to escalate, and the children are likely to remain in the middle of their parents' battles."

And therein lies the rub: The same co-parents who can't reach agreement on their own will invariably find ways to undermine any plan or procedure imposed upon them. Garrity and Baris provide perspective, structure, and facilitation details to address these realities — benefiting families and the professionals serving them.

Returning to the dance floor, what's that again we hear from Gib on the tranceiver?

"Oh, no. Tango"

—posted by Dell Deaton @1:25 PM EST 11/12/2004 [500]

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