Where Were My Cakes and Casseroles?

Guest Post By Sandra Winicur

A month after my divorce I went to my synagogue for services. On my way out, I was approached by an old acquaintance. "Sandra," she said, "I was really surprised to hear that you got a divorce."  "I was pretty surprised myself," I said. "You both always looked so compatible," she continued. "I had no idea your marriage was in such trouble."  "No," I said. "Neither did I."

She patted my arm. "Well," she said, "statistics tell us that 50% of all marriages end in divorce. I guess we just have to expect that kind of thing," and she started to leave. I called her back. "Would you be very upset if your husband died?" I asked.  "Of course I would," she answered. "I don't see why," I said. "Statistics tell us that 100% of all marriages that don't end in divorce, end in death. We just have to expect that kind of thing."  She looked annoyed. "It's totally different," she said. Another friend, widowed some years back, was listening. "It's different, all right," she said. "Death is easier to deal with."

It took a while for that to sink in, but after a few months I began to focus on the fact that for many, perhaps most, women leaving a long-standing marriage, divorce is as much of a bereavement as death, and complicated by three factors:

1. The lack of permission to grieve – there is a feeling, both personally and from the community, that mourning is an inappropriate response;

2. The lack of an established support system for divorce – divorce disrupts and alters a woman's usual support system – spouse, children, relatives, in-laws, friends;

3. The scarcity of good behavioral role models – I knew very well how to be a widow. I'd seen many models. I was totally unprepared to be a divorcee.

We have no good pattern either for being divorced or for dealing with divorced women. The end of a marriage, whether by divorce or by death, is an event to mourn, but the community is not sufficiently sensitive to the divorced woman's need for a mourning ritual and for grief support.

Grief – A woman in a long-standing marriage is committed to the marriage as much as to the husband. There may have been problems, but that has only increased her commitment and pride that problems were being overcome.

Marriage and family therapist Marsha Brook of South Bend, Indiana says that “...the end of a long tern marriage is the shattering of a dream. ...In the generation of women married prior to the ‘70’s, to divorce is perceived as to fail in the most devastating of ways. We were bred to marry for life!” Disruption of such a marriage by divorce rather than by death causes its own heartaches, six of which I'd like to identify here:

Rewriting the past – While both death and divorce change the present and the future, only divorce changes the past. Were the good times, the shared goals, the commitment to the future, all an illusion? Didn't he appreciate how she tried to be there for him? Realizing how much essential communication has been lacking gives a woman a sense of having been betrayed, as she wonders what was really going on for the past several years.

Fury – Note, I don't say "anger." Anger doesn't BEGIN to describe the feelings of betrayal, now that the one person she was most accustomed to turning to for support has not died, but has passed judgment on her and turned away. I remember, in the first year after my own divorce, repeatedly telling people about a cartoon I had seen several years back. It was a snowy scene in the steppes of Russia, and a couple in a sleigh were beating the horses to try to escape from a pack of wolves tearing after the sleigh in hungry pursuit. Leading the pack was a small dog, and the woman was saying, "When I think of all we've done for that dog...." That's how I felt.

Embarrassment – A divorce often makes a woman feel like a victim. In our culture, there is a sense of shame about being a victim, about being singled out by fate. We in the American middle-class believe we should have control over our destiny, and are embarrassed when surrounded by those who seem to be more successful at it than we were.

Disruption of the family – Like it or not, the family, especially the children, are now torn apart in a way that does not occur with death. One or both of the parents is probably angry, and the children are definitely angry, at some level angry at BOTH of these people they love for destroying their home. Extended family are also in chaos, and family occasions will never be the same.

Financial changes – It has been shown repeatedly that divorce generally lowers a woman's standard of living more than death of a spouse does, and more than occurs for a man. This is an especially poignant problem if children are involved.

Guilt and regrets – With the eternal rehashing that accompanies divorce, with time and distance in which to think, with counseling, it becomes easier to see the forces that led to the breakup. This new understanding of self is often accompanied by the feeling that perhaps if this understanding had come sooner the divorce could have been avoided. While this assumption may be erroneous, it brings its own set of regrets and guilts. We divorced women often have the feeling that we didn't do the best we could.

 The tendency to self-blame, may be fed by self-exonerating statements from the ex-spouse of such nature as...

"You cared about the kids more than about me...."

"I always resented the way things were going but you never noticed...."

"We never did the things I wanted to do...."

"I still love you but I want more out of life...."

"I'm not fulfilled...."

"It's my turn now..."

 and my own personal favorite:

"You gained too much weight...."

 So here we have the newly divorced woman from a long-standing marriage, definitely in mourning, definitely grieving as much as a widow is grieving, but at the same time too angry to grieve, feeling that grieving is inappropriate, and with no idea of how to grieve appropriately in this situation. Where does she turn for help?

After several years of thinking about this, often audibly, I believe that we lack patterns for treating divorce, just as the divorced women lack models for being divorced. If my husband had died, everyone would have known what to do. The house would have been filled with cakes and casseroles, as the people visited. The children and I would have taken a week off to bury him and grieve, while our friends and acquaintances came in to feed us and reminisce. We would have said prayers for him. Then we would have put a stone on his grave, and resumed our lives.

After my divorce, I was definitely in mourning. Where were my cakes and casseroles?

People do the best they know. When I think of what my own inappropriate past responses have been to divorced friends, I cringe. Many people called me once. "Call if you need me," they said. As a friend of mine said a few months ago, "You never really understand a need until you feel it yourself." Most people assumed that my primary emotion was anger and my primary goal revenge, and by supporting that, helped to make it so.

Standard comments made to me, repeatedly, were:

"You're still attractive. You'll find someone else soon." Imagine saying that to a recent widow, as if men were interchangeable, and the important thing was to just have one, any one.

"What a jerk! I never really liked him that much." Great – what did that make me for staying around so long?

"You're better off without him." Imagine saying THAT to a recent widow.

"It couldn't have been all bad. You have such lovely children." Now that's a real conversation stopper.

   Some said nothing – worst thing of all to say..........

Friends also sent books. I have a shelf of uplifting books given to me about divorce, self-realization, grief recovery. For anyone else in the same situation, I have some valuable advice. If you find yourself with a similar shelf of books, DON'T READ THEM. They're depressing. If someone offers you a book, ask for a murder mystery. It's much more therapeutic.

So, that's what we don't do for a recently divorced friend. What do we do?

1. Come after her – those of us who are newly divorced know we're lousy company. We desperately need to tell our story, like Coleridge’s "Ancient Mariner," but unlike him, we really don't want to inflict ourselves on anyone.

The most helpful friends I had were those who, having been there before, told me "Don't expect to be normal for a year," and then just listened.

2. Feed and exercise her – after the divorce, I certainly wasn't eating right. I needed those cakes and casseroles. I needed to be invited to dinner. I needed exercise – and will always be thankful for one friend who modified her schedule so I could walk with her on a daily basis, and for another who set a permanent place for me at her table and kept reminding me that it was there.

3. Include her – one friend said: "Join my book club." Another friend took me to the symphony several times. You've got the idea.

Reprinted with permission from the website:

 www.ritualwell.org

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