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Boundary Ambiguities That Bind Former Spouses together after the Children Leave Home in Post-Divorce Families

1999; Wiley; Volume: 48; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/585636

1741-3729

Charles Lee Cole, Anna L. Cole,

Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving

Boundary Ambiguities That Bind Former Spouses Together After the Children Leave Home in Post-Divorce Families* The role of attachment in the post-divorce adjustment process is addressed in the context of coparental interactions in Madden-Derdich and Arditti's (1999) thought-provoking article presented in this issue of Family Relations. In their article they develop and field-test a content-process-outcome model. Their findings and conclusions suggest that some post-divorce attachments are a natural outcome of the need for a cooperative shared parenting style and that these attachments are not always negative. This raises intriguing questions about what happens to these families in the post-parenting phases of the family life cycle. Weiss (1975) argues that the persistence of attachments is normative for couples going through the dissolution of marriage process. He also suggests that the negative attachments that endure over time are often still tied to lingering feelings of betrayal and loss. These may become latent if the two individuals enter into new romantic attachments. That the attachments are latent implies that they are still alive and will impact any current or future romantic relationships. These attachment issues also play a role in the relationship both have with their children. Wallerstein and Blakelee (1989) point out in their classic book on longitudinal research of post-divorce adjustment patterns that attachments keep couples connected emotionally long after the divorce becomes finalized in the courts. For example, they note that they are ... amazed at how many divorced men and women carry inside them the nagging voices of their former (Wallerstein & Blakelee, 1989, p 5). Indeed, they report that . one-half of the women and one-third of the men are still intensely angry at their former spouses, despite the passage of ten years. Because their feelings have not changed, anger has become an ongoing, and sometimes dominant. presence in their children's lives as well (Wallerstein & Blakelee, 1989, p. 29). Bowen's (1978) theory reminds us that the level of differentiation is inversely related to the degree to which emotional cutoffs and emotionally fused attachments exist. Kramer (1985) notes that, for differentiation to occur, an individual must achieve a balance between two opposing life forces. Striving for growth and personal authority with autonomy is as necessary as maintaining attachments that provide for meeting the needs for affiliation and emotional closeness. This is at the core of the argument raised in Madden-Derdich and Arditti (1999). Bowen's (1978) dictum that undifferentiated individuals form and maintain attachments governed by emotional reactivity gives the question of whether it is healthy to maintain post-divorce attachments a different meaning. If a couple's level of differentiation is sufficiently high before the marital dissolution, the post-divorce attachments will not be governed by emotional reactivity. New boundaries can be formed that respect and maintain individuated post-divorce alliances. Beavers (1985) and Napier and Whitaker (1978) assert that a couple must complete the business of the marriage before an emotional separation and, thereby a healthy divorce, is possible. In our clinical experience we have seen countless cases where the couple attempted to leave the marriage and move on through the divorce process without bringing closure to the marriage issues. These unresolved marriage issues often had to be resolved later because of post-divorce coparenting problems and difficulties in romantic relationships and marriages formed after the divorce. Shifting Roles and Boundaries Drawing from Bowen (1978), Madden-Derdich and Arditti (1999) suggest that the post-divorce spouses can maintain healthy attachments if they are able to shift the meaning of their relationship by making new boundaries that clarify role expectations. …