Does Divorce Matter?

In 1997, a prominent psychologist wrote an article which appeared in an American psychological journal. The author reviewed several commonly held beliefs about psychology, and one of his claims was that the brain is quite resilient to the effects of trauma. He noted that rats which had been subjected to trauma as infants developed into apparently well-adjusted adults.

A response was written to his claim in which it was noted that, unlike animals, we humans have language — along with a memory system with which to process it — and that trauma has a unique linguistic way of lingering in our unconscious minds. Humans, just like rats, may give the appearance of being well-adjusted, but, as any experienced mental health clinician has seen over and over, many of the seemingly “well-adjusted” individuals walking around in our society are tormented by inner lives of emptiness and self-destructive despair. Professor, physician, lawyer — they all say the same thing to me: “I feel like mush inside.” And most of them, as children, saw their families shattered by divorce or adultery — often the “adultery” of child sexual abuse. We take divorce so much for granted today that it is hard not to find someone who has been divorced or who has married someone who has been divorced or who has parents or relatives who have divorced. And like that prominent psychologist, we brush it off and say, “It doesn’t matter.”

But it does matter. Children need to have both a mother and a father who will protect them, care for them, teach them, and guide their feet through darkness into the way of peace. Even the trauma of losing a parent to death is less a trauma than losing a parent to divorce, for in divorce a parent essentially says to a child — and to a spouse — “My personal desires are more important to me than is your welfare. This family is nothing to me, and you are just an object to be moved around like a pawn in my self-indulgent search for happiness.” Laboratory rats have only cheese and mazes. What can they say about trauma? Children, however, have phobias, eating disorders, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, sex, unwanted pregnancies, sexual diseases, abortion—and suicide, and guns — to “speak” about their traumas. And yet we continue to look at divorce and say, “It doesn’t matter.”

It does matter and we often need help with divorce issues. Counseling is available. Call us.