Reviving Ophelia (21 page)

Many times marriages don’t work because people lack relationship skills. Partners need lessons in negotiating, communicating, expressing affection and doing their share. With these lessons many marriages can be saved. And if these lessons aren’t learned in the first marriage, they will have to be learned later or the next marriage will be doomed as well. So in the 1990s I try harder than I did in the 1970s to keep couples together and to teach them what they need to know to live a lifetime with another human being.

These last decades have been rough on families, and many have broken under the stress. Most adults experience at least one divorce, and many children spend some time in single-parent homes. Single-parent households are tough on everyone. Often the parents are chronically tired from “double shifts.” They have no time for themselves—for exercise, friends, intellectual life or even sleep—and they often complain that their lives are not in balance. They are alone when it’s time to make tough decisions about their children. When they must enforce rules and consequences, there’s no one to back them up. Children in single-parent homes have no court of appeal when their one parent is tired, cranky or arbitrary. They miss the chance to observe in close quarters how couples function in relationships.

Divorces almost always make women poorer. Often families must move and teenagers find themselves in new schools surrounded by strangers. They have left their longtime friends, who could have helped them through this. Often they worry about money for clothes, cars and college.

Divorce is particularly tough for adolescents. Partly that’s because of their developmental level and partly it’s because teenagers require so much energy from parents. Teenagers need parents who will talk to them, supervise them, help them stay organized and support them when they are down. Divorcing parents often just don’t have the energy to give. Adolescents feel an enormous sense of loss—of their parents, their families and their childhoods. And, unlike younger children, when they express their pain, they are likely to do it in dangerous ways.

Adolescents’ immature thinking makes it difficult for them to process the divorce. They tend to see things in black-and-white terms and have trouble putting events into perspective. They are absolute in their judgments and expect perfection in parents. They are likely to be self-conscious about their parents’ failures and critical of their every move. They have the expectation that parents will keep them safe and happy and are shocked by the broken covenant. Adolescents are unforgiving.

Just at a time when feeling different means feeling wrong, divorce makes teenagers feel different. If a parent wearing the wrong kind of shoes can humiliate a teenager, a parent who is divorcing causes utter shame. Teenagers are so egocentric that they think everyone knows about the divorce in all its details. They are ashamed of their families, which they see as uniquely dysfunctional.

Adolescence is a time when children are supposed to move away from parents who are holding firm and protective behind them. When the parents disconnect, the children have no base to move away from or return to. They aren’t ready to face the world alone. With divorce, adolescents feel abandoned, and they are outraged at that abandonment. They are angry at both parents for letting them down. Often they feel that their parents broke the rules and so now they can too. They no longer give their parents moral authority. Instead they say, “How dare you tell me what to do when you’ve screwed up so badly.”

Until late adolescence, children don’t think of their parents as people with needs separate from their own. Rather they are seen as providers of care. Most teens aren’t able to empathize with their parents and prefer their parents to be married even if they are unhappy. They find it frightening that parents can break their bonds to each other. If parent-parent bonds can be broken, so can parent-child bonds.

Often there’s bitterness between the parents that makes it difficult for them to discipline their teenagers. Teens can and do manipulate divided parents. They pit them against each other or live with the one who has the fewest rules and the least supervision. Teenagers are not always good judges of what they need and often choose to live with the parent who promises to buy them the new stereo or take them on vacation. The parent who insists on schoolwork and chores is often the parent they avoid.

Legal actions, particularly custody battles, tear adolescents apart. Often they end up blaming both parents for the anguish they experience and so they have no one left to trust. They discount adults and rely only on peers for comfort and companionship.

Divorce is particularly difficult for teenage girls, who are already stressed by cultural forces. When their families break apart, they have too much coming at them too fast. Girls deal with this situation in various ways. Some get depressed and hurt themselves, either with suicide attempts or more slowly with alcohol and drugs. Some withdraw and sink deep within themselves to nurse their wounds. Many react by rebelling. Here are some stories of girls and how they dealt with divorce.

Lois called for an emergency appointment after she was hit by her daughter. That afternoon in my office she spoke softly, glancing at her daughter with every sentence. Her daughter, Myra, dark-haired and muscular, was much more outspoken. She interrupted, contradicted and insulted her mother at every juncture. Myra was good at blaming, and Lois was good at accepting blame. Watching the two, I could see how things might get violent.

Until two years ago, when her parents divorced, Myra led the life of a pampered only child. Her father was a banker and her mother was an audiologist. They lived in a small community a hundred miles from our city, where Myra was the biggest duck in the puddle. Her father’s grandparents had been the founders of the town. Everyone knew and respected her family.

Then Lois went to a convention in Los Angeles, and when she came home she asked for a divorce. She had had an affair at the convention, but that wasn’t really the issue. The affair made her realize that the marriage wasn’t working, that things were wrong way beyond fixing. She announced that she wanted to move to a city where she could build a life of her own.

I looked at this small, shy woman and was amazed at her boldness. Lois said, “I know the affair was wrong. I’ve apologized to Randy and to Myra, but the divorce was right for me. I have never been happier than this last year.”

Myra groaned. “Yeah, but what about me and Dad? You ruined our lives.”

Lois spread her palms upward in a hopeless gesture and looked beseechingly at me. I could tell that she wanted to defend herself but felt too guilty. I asked Myra to tell me what happened after the divorce.

“At first I stayed with Dad, but that didn’t work out. He spent all his time at the bank and the Legion Club.”

She glared at Lois, who continued the story. “Myra wasn’t getting much supervision. Her grades dropped and she skipped school. Randy couldn’t control her. He had always left the discipline to me. Finally he gave up and sent her here.”

Lois looked at her daughter. “I love Myra. After the separation I tried to stay close, but she was too angry. When Randy brought Myra down, I was eager to get back together but also afraid. I had my own life for the first time, a good job and friends. I didn’t want everything screwed up by Myra’s anger.”

“Nobody wanted me.” Myra tossed her black hair. “I’m pissed. I miss our big house. Now we’re in a cramped apartment. I miss my boyfriend. I hate Mom’s friends and the kids at school. This whole thing is an enormous fucking drag.”

Lois said, “It’s hard for her. She knew everyone in town and was involved with everything—music, sports and the church. The city is a big adjustment. I thought we could work things out, but recently Myra has been hitting me.” She showed me a bruise on her left arm. “I don’t know how to handle this.”

Myra scowled. “I didn’t hit you, I pushed you. You always overreact. I never hit you.”

We spent the rest of that first hour working out a contract about hitting. It was agreed that if Myra hit her mother again she would be grounded for a week. Lois left feeling relieved, while Myra left angry that I had been influenced by her mother.

The next week I saw Myra alone. Like many teenagers, she was much more pleasant when her mother wasn’t around. She said that she hadn’t hit her mom since we talked and then quickly changed the subject to the divorce. She had hated living with her dad, who was depressed and self-absorbed. She had hated eating frozen pizzas and potpies and doing the laundry herself.

She had missed Lois, who was a good homemaker. Even though Lois had worked, she always had time for Myra. She helped her with lessons, sewed school costumes, decorated for holidays and fixed gourmet meals. She arranged parties that everyone in town loved. In short, Lois had spoiled Myra and her father.

Myra said, “After Mom left, there were nights when I sat alone in our big old house, looked at pictures of Dad, Mom and me. I cursed Mom for being selfish and breaking up our family.”

As we talked, things seemed a little less simple, even to Myra. Her father was financially successful but hard to live with. He had expected Lois to take care of the house and of Myra. He drank after work and some days he came home boisterous, other days sullen. He directed most of his anger at Lois, who wasn’t good at standing up for herself. Watching her mother, Myra decided that she would never take anyone’s bad treatment. Still she was angry when her mother made the same decision.

Myra said, “One reason I’m mad at her now is that she was such a great mom when I was little.”

“What happened after your mother announced she wanted out?”

“Dad and I worked on her. Dad told everyone about her affair. She didn’t get alimony. Both sides of the family pressured her. She about had a nervous breakdown.”

I said, “Your mom sounds like she can be as stubborn as you.”

We discussed Myra’s current social life. She had been popular in her hometown, but here she was a loner, going from a school of 225 students to one of 3,000. Even if she wanted to make friends, it would have been tough. But she didn’t want to. Myra particularly missed her boyfriend, who had been her main confidant. He wrote her for a while, but by now he had another steady girlfriend.

Myra had all the ordinary vulnerabilities of early adolescents, plus the pain of losing her family. Her trust level was zero, and she was too angry and discouraged to make friends. I was amazed she talked to me, and when she left I congratulated her on her willingness to trust a new adult.

Our next session began with Myra describing a blowup with Lois. She shouted when she told me about her mother’s refusal to buy her a computer.

“She says she can’t afford it, but I know she could borrow the fucking money.”

I asked her if she had any other feelings besides anger about the incident.

“I’m embarrassed. I know it’s wrong to call her a bitch. She is a bitch, but I shouldn’t call her that.” She said, “I want to kill her I get so mad.”

We talked about anger control. I recommended she punch a pillow the next time she felt angry. I also suggested that she jog until she had “outrun” her anger. It’s hard to be angry when physically exhausted. I encouraged her to write. “Write everything you can think of. Get those feelings out of your chest and onto a piece of paper. Then you can throw the paper away.”

Myra brought me her writing. At first it was pure rage—her mother was the source of all pain in her life and virtually all evil in the universe. But gradually as she wrote the anger softened. She began to write about the issues that the divorce raised for her—the loss of her life as she knew it, missing her boyfriend, her fear of a new school, her concern about being liked and the lack of trust that relationships could work.

I was pleased when the writing became more Myra-focused. She had been so obsessed with her mother that she hadn’t cared for herself. Too much anger, like too much compliance, stops growth. It’s impossible for blamers to take responsibility for their lives and get on with it. But now, after several months, Myra acknowledged that her mother had a right to her own life and had not been placed on the planet to meet her needs. She had expected her mother to live for her but now she could see that this wasn’t realistic. It set both of them up to fail in certain ways. It kept Lois from having a life and Myra from learning she could make herself happy. Myra still had angry times, but her temper tantrums were over. Between arguments, Lois and Myra had some good times together.

As Myra’s anger waned, she had more energy for her own life. She mourned her past, but then she set some goals for her future. She improved her abysmal grades. She exercised and even considered going out for track. She fought back her fears and talked to kids in her classes.

Joan brought Amy in for counseling because she and Chuck were divorcing. Last year Amy had been lively, lighthearted and fun-loving. This year she was quiet, withdrawn and serious.

Joan was an articulate schoolteacher who was venomous on the subject of her husband, Chuck. He was evil incarnate, the Adolf Hitler of husbands and without a good motive to his credit. She poured out her anger while Amy shrank deeper into my couch. Amy looked like she was evaporating as her mother talked, her serious little face grew smaller, her body more childlike.

Joan explained how she and Chuck had tried counseling, but that Chuck, even though he was a therapist himself, wouldn’t cooperate. She had done her best, but he sabotaged her efforts to save the family. And now that she had filed, he was doing everything he could to destroy her life and turn Amy against her.

Joan listed her concerns about Amy. She had lost five pounds since May. She wasn’t communicating and was avoiding friends and activities. Joan finished by saying, “I think she’s depressed by her dad’s behavior.”