The Divorce-Remarriage Cycle
Our concept of the divorce and post-divorce emo- tional process can be thought of as a roller coaster with peaks of emotional tension at all transition points:
•At the time of the decision to separate or divorce
•When this decision is announced to family and friends
•When money and custody/visitation arrangements are discussed
•When the physical separation takes place
•When the actual legal divorce takes place When separated spouses or ex-spouses have contacted about money or children
•As each child graduates, marries, has children, separates, remaries, moves, or becomes ill
•As each spouse forms a new couple relation- ship, remarries, re-divorces, moves, becomes ill, or dies
These emotional pressure points are found in all divorcing families though, of course, not nec- essarily in this order and many take place over and over again. A general depiction of the process appears in Figure 22.1.
In general, it appears to take a minimum of 2 or 3 years for a family to adjust to this transition-if there are no cutoffs and if all the adults are work- ing at it full tilt. Families in which the emotional issues of divorce are not adequately resolved can remain stuck emotionally for years, or even for gen- erations, although several years after the divorce, if the developmental tasks of divorcing and set- tling into the post-divorce transformed family are satisfactorily accomplished, there are few, if any, observable or testable differences resulting from having been part of a divorced family (Arkowitz & Lillienfeld, 2013).
