Change the Language of Separation

We need to change the language around divorce and separation for our kids, and that means changing our concept of marriage too.

When my ex and I decided to separate it was almost a full year before we were able to get even the words out about it to our kids. That time in between was excruciating, living together, completely at odds as two people, trying to hide the falling apart from our then six and four-year-old. We went through mediation, also excruciating. By the time the conversation had to be had with our kids, we had already been through a lot. But despite all we had done in the meantime, telling them was in fact, a bit of a sales job.

I remember their dad wiped tears away in the kitchen (he had already met someone else while we were living together, so if anyone could have stolen that show, it could have been me) but I recall looking at him and saying that, whatever we tell them will be the story they tell themselves. So we have to be positive, to make it okay, without minimising what they might feel. For the four-year-old, it was about as meaningful as crossword in Hebrew, but our eldest was fully aware of the ramifications. And though we both did our best Guy Smiley’s, no kid likes change and not that kind of major one in particular.

But aside from our own grief as two people, and the fear of the unknown for our kids, we were also dealing with a whole narrative around separation and divorce that is so deeply negative. Of course, splitting up can be really painful, messy, and at times really ugly. But added to that there is also this intense feeling of judgement, of being a failure, and particularly in Irish society, of still being a social outlier.

Ireland for all intents and purposes is still a very homogenous, traditional environment when it comes to heterosexual relationships. Most people get married in their 30s, and most of them stay married. Getting married is for many still one of the ultimate life goals and indicator of success. We have statistically one of the lowest divorce rates in Europe, and for that reason, I would say it is one of the hardest places to be divorced, or separated.

That is not just because the state makes separation hard, it’s more they make single parenting hard, but our concept and narrative and marriage is so draconian. “We are scared of divorce because our understanding of marriage is so faulty.” says clinical psychologist and author and Dr Shefali Tsabary. “It doesn’t matter if both people are miserable, it doesn’t matter if they don’t grow. The key indicator of a successful marriage is one thing only, longevity. If you have that definition in your mind, then divorce indicates terror, failure, devastation. So with that in mind, you cannot approach divorce in a healthy way.”

Yet for years, particularly in relation to our kids, the focus has been on our language and behaviour around separation, which in fact is really just trying to undo the misplaced messages already planted there – that there is one true love, one saviour, that marriage is a pact that lasts forever. Shefali says it best. “In order to talk to our kids about divorce in a healthy abundant way, we need to transform our whole understanding of marriage. We need to define marriage on the terms of growth, on the terms of freedom. Can I be honest with this person? Can I be my most authentic self? We are so afraid of change and the unknown which is why divorce has such a bad rap.”

It is, she goes on to highlight, simply the end of a phase. She talks about “The divorce of the dysfunction, divorce from the fear, from the status quo”. So in order to talk to your children about divorce differently, she says you have to really dig deep into your own belief system. “Divorce is just a release of marriage. Cycles change in nature all the time, if they didn’t we wouldn’t have the universe as it is today. If we can view it like that, our children will absorb this message. When they see us abundant and happy and free and happy to have completed a cycle then they would not have this negative view around divorce.”

It is also worth recognising too that the up to very recently the narrative around divorce and marriage has been mostly, if not wholly, written by men. This has meant that either directly or inadvertently women have often been painted as the victims, the losers in the relationship, the cast-offs. “I think that men were allowed to write about their marriages falling apart,” said Nora Ephron, “but you weren’t quite supposed to if you were a woman. You were just supposed to curl up into a ball and move to Connecticut.”

But what if the general perception of divorce was of a transition, a new era, a new liberation, something to be celebrated and welcomed?

I don’t for a second doubt that this is also the story our kids would feel to be true, and live by themselves.

I never aimed for my relationship to end, but I don’t feel I should spend the rest of my life making up for, or justifying its finite nature either. I also don’t want my kids growing up with the false notion that everything must last. I want them to have the best relationships that they can for the times that they are living in, ones where they can be themselves with as much support and freedom as is available to them.

But I fear while society still markets us the notion that successful marriages and families are ones that stay together, that anything less is a loss, then we are in as much danger of creating a generation of people repeating the same mistakes over and over again. “Divorce isn’t such a tragedy,” wrote author Jennifer Weiner, “A tragedy’s staying in an unhappy marriage, and teaching your children the wrong things about love.”

Jessie Collins, June 2020.