DON’T BELIEVE IT! BOB AND SANDRA ARE splitting up!?” “What happened?” “All I know is that Bob moved out last week and left Sandra in that big house with their two gorgeous little girls.” “Is anyone else involved?” “I don’t think so. I know they’ve been having troubles, but all I’ve heard is that Sandra is angry and bitter, and that she’s talking about divorce.” “Unbelievable! Such a great couple.” At-Risk Relationships Marriage is a wonderful gift. It’s something we’re told to honor and uphold (Heb. 13:4). It’s supposed to last for a lifetime. Yet often it isn’t long after two people fall in love and get married that they discover just how vulnerable they are to divorce. Differences appear, conflicts erupt, and the promise of “living happily ever after” quickly disappears. Frustrated by a growing sense of confusion and misunderstanding, many couples end up harboring feelings of anger, disappointment, and resentment as they struggle with their hurts and distress and still try to make their marriage work.

Building a healthy, happy marriage requires constant nurture and attention. It doesn’t happen spontaneously. It takes a lot of time, energy, and investment. And it’s surprising how quickly the relationship goes downhill when you take your partner for granted and lose touch with each other physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Many couples, just as Bob and Sandra, end up getting divorced simply because they fail to recognize the early warning signs that their marriage is in trouble.

There are typically nine warning signs that indicate a couple’s relationship is struggling:

1. Abandonment of joint activities and beginning to live parallel lives.
   
2. Complaints about a loss of feeling as one or both partners begin to speak of no longer being in love with the other.
   
3. Loss of interest in sex.
   
4. Becoming emotionally or sexually involved with another person outside the marriage.
   
5. Engaging in recurring arguments that are never resolved.
   
6. Experiencing feelings of dissatisfaction and unhappiness.
   
7. Being preoccupied with interests and activities outside the marriage that leads to one partner’s feeling neglected.
   
8. Constant arguments about child rearing that tend to divide a couple, leading them to form an alliance with one or more of the children against their partner.
   
9. Experiencing an increased sense of fatigue and inability to meet day-to-day responsibilities.

Aftereffects
When a couple fails to recognize any of these warning signs in their marriage, their relationship is most likely to be filled with an increasing sense of frustration, disillusionment, and disconnection. If these issues are not addressed and resolved, the two will find themselves drifting apart, and divorce becomes inevitable.

Researchers have found that five years after a couple have divorced, 40 percent of people express regret that their marriage ended. They state that divorce could have been avoided if they had only seen the warning signs and received help.

When divorce does occur, it’s almost always a disaster that affects all those involved for the rest of their lives in ways that can hardly be imagined. It can impair an individual’s emotional and spiritual well-being for at least five years after the event, producing a greater variety of long-lasting negative feelings than those produced by the death of a partner.

The church needs to recognize that when a couple separate and divorce, their divorce is not a single event but a process that began long before it became legal. The process started with a failing marital relationship that resulted in emotional withdrawal and lasted long after what is probably the greatest emotional pain an individual will experience in his or her life—the decision to separate and divorce.

Those who seek to understand and minister to divorced individuals need to appreciate the tremendous impact and long-term consequences that divorce has on people’s lives. While it’s easy to condemn or pass judgment on those whose marriage vows have been broken, few, if any of us, really take the time to listen to the full story or to connect with the pain and distress that individuals feel when their family falls apart.

The reality is that divorce constitutes a social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual chain of events that leads individuals into a radically altered lifestyle and the development of a significantly revised sense of personal identity. Research shows that the long-term consequences of divorce are:

Radically Altered Family Structures. Divorce creates divided loyalties and tense family conflicts. It forces individuals to relocate, families to restructure, and parents to readjust their parenting roles drastically.

Emotional and Psychological Trauma. The emotional distress caused by divorce is enormously disruptive and debilitating. Intense feelings of disappointment, bitterness, loneliness, and depression can be overwhelming. Research indicates that both men and women tend to remain intensely angry with their former partner for five to 10 years after the divorce. Family members often engage in escalating cycles of conflict and coercion long after a couple have split up.

Social Dislocation. The relocation of family members means a change in their social networks of support, and a loss of contact with family and friends. This serves only to isolate individuals more, resulting in further hurt, jealousy, and anger.

Diminished Financial Resources. The disintegration of the family often results in the “downward mobility” of the family lifestyle, with each family member being impacted by the change in economic, social, and financial conditions. The parent who has custody of the children (usually the mother) more often than not ends up as a struggling single parent with drastically diminished financial and material resources.

How to Choose a Counselor You’ll want the best-—consider these qualifications: Knowledge: academic degree (masters or doctorate) Credentials: professional certification, license, or registration Training: has had clinical supervision Skill: ability to listen without judging Character: compassionate, strong spiritual values, good reputation in the religious community Relationship with you: shows empathy; has ability to connect but maintains appropriate boundaries -- BY RON FLOWERS, GC Family Ministries Department

Distressed and Confused Children. Children are the innocent victims of divorce; they are the real losers. They lose their family, their security, their identity, and their protection. Judith Wallerstein, in her latest book, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, suggests that the impact of divorce on children is both long-lasting and cumulative. Her research shows that children continue to suffer the emotional repercussions 25 years after their parents divorce, and that the divorce process affects children’s personalities and influences their ability to trust others and cope with change. They fear abandonment and betrayal and often enter adulthood as worried, angry, and self-depreciating individuals.

Changes in Spirituality. Divorce has a significant impact on a person’s spiritual life. Forty-two percent of people change their religious affiliation as a result of their divorce, and 33 percent of women indicate that their divorce was a catalyst for changing their religious understandings. While it often creates a spiritual vacuum, it is not uncommon for individuals to also develop an openness to God that can ultimately lead to a strengthening of spirituality.

Clearly, I am not writing to suggest that the church should condone or recommend divorce. The Christian message of God’s grace does, however, suggest that we respond to the wounded and hurting in our midst with compassion, understanding, and a redemptive attitude—not with a spirit of condemnation and rejection.

Family members and friends of those considering divorce, as well as professional counselors who seek to minister to the separated or divorced, need to be able to help individuals understand their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and respond appropriately to all that is going on in their lives. They need to know how to help them to grow emotionally and spiritually through their divorce experience and keep their negative emotions from further wounding their children.

Up From the Ashes
In order to facilitate the process of healing and rebuilding, here are some simple suggestions on how to help individuals and couples manage the transition through their separation and divorce. While friends may not have professional training as counselors, people need them for support and reassurance. You can be a supportive, encouraging friend if you understand these predictable stages in divorce recovery.

Create an environment of acceptance and encouragement. Christian-ity is about our relationship with a gracious God who comes to us with love, acceptance, and forgiveness. We express our gratitude to Him by showing grace and compassion to others, by listening to their story and creating for them a place of safety in which they feel accepted, affirmed, and safe to explore their hurts and pain.

Help them understand the emotional stages of divorce. Be patient and supportive as people journey through the experience of divorce. No two people experience separation and divorce in the same way. Help them to understand that it is “normal” to pass through several predictable stages on the way to emotional recovery and stability.

First, there is a period of shock, panic, and disbelief, which may be accompanied by disturbances in sleep, changes in appetite, and feelings of anger, anxiety, and vulnerability.

Then comes a “roller coaster” phase, when emotional highs and lows force a person to reflect, react, and review the past. This phase will stir up feelings of shame, self-blame, and depression, generate the temptation to live with near constant rehearsals of “What if . . . ?” and “I should’ve . . .”

As emotions become stable, a third phase emerges in which individuals begin to focus on issues of personal identity, personal potential, and a sense of future possibilities. The final phase involves the development of a new sense of “self”—with new choices, new awarenesses, and new relationships.

These phases can take from two to four years to complete; people can’t be pushed to “hurry up and get over it”! Let them travel at their own pace. Forcing people to make premature decisions about their lives and their future can be disastrous.

During these early stages of recovery, encourage individuals to better understand themselves and what they are experiencing. Encourage them to:

• Come to terms with their feelings of guilt and failure by admitting them and being open about them.
  
• Stop condemning themselves. While the pain of failure and loss is inevitable, it is not necessary to inflict oneself with thoughts that focus on self-blaming or behaviors that are self-defeating.
  
• Avoid playing games with themselves, their partner, or their children.

Encourage them to maintain emotional connection with their children. Research has shown that it is not so much the divorce itself but the way the parents handle the divorce process and their involvement with their children that are the biggest factors affecting a child’s adjustment during divorce. Consequently it is important to encourage parents to:

• Maintain open contact with both their children and their partner.
  
• Refrain from making promises they cannot keep.
  
• Refuse to allow the feelings of rejection by their partner to make them feel and act insecure, non-accepting, or manipulative with their children.
  
• Understand and connect with their children’s feelings. Don’t stop them from asking questions or freely expressing their emotional pain. They too are experiencing feelings of fear, anxiety, abandonment, betrayal, rejection, sadness, anger, frustration, aloneness, and resentment.

Right at this moment both Bob and Sandra need our understanding and support. This is not an easy time for either of them; they are emotionally vulnerable. But typically we don’t know what to do or how to respond. Clearly, they must be allowed to work things out together, for themselves. What we can do is show them a “spirit of grace and acceptance” that doesn’t invade their space, take sides, or compromise their need to “own” the future of their marriage, but enables them to explore their differences and renew their covenant with each other.

One of the best things we may be able to do as a community of faith is to show them that we respect, love, and care for them; and that we encourage them to find the professional help they need to reconstruct their marriage.

The sad thing is that the church is often not a friendly space to be in for people going through divorce. Statistics reveal that nearly half the members of the church who experience separation and divorce stop coming to church within three years. I wonder: Will how we respond to Bob and Sandra make any difference in how they will feel about our church?

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Bryan Craig is the director of family ministries for the South Pacific Division.