March/April Plain Truth
Beyond the Anger of Divorce
Confront your feelings and discover that
God can get you through debilitating anger.
by Launa L. Herrmann
Seated around the table at the divorce recovery group, Pat* spoke up. "I wish Brian would die so I'd never have to deal with him again," she said. "He never sees the boys, then calls and tells them I won't allow him contact. He punishes me with late child-support checks. Friends say, 'Remember, you're a Christian.' That makes me feel like I shouldn't be angry. I feel so alone."
Yet Pat was not alone with her anger.
"I feel the same way," said Carol. "I wasted 20 years of my life. I put Jim through college." Her eyes flashed, then blinked tears. "He left me for a younger woman. How could I have been so stupid?"
"One morning, my wife announced she was unhappy and wanted to 'find herself,'" Ted said. "Whatever that means. How can I trust anyone again? Or God?"
Lori looked at the others, then admitted, "Although my husband snorted coke and beat me up, I sometimes think being married was better than being alone."
Gary spoke last. "I am so angry I pound the steering wheel all the way to work. My wife and kids moved in with my best friend."
Each of these five single-again Christians believed their marriage would last forever. They were all wrong. They were all angry.
One out of four married adults will experience divorce. Anger is a natural response. And just as accepting Christ does not guarantee a lifelong marriage, neither does it guarantee freedom from rage. As a Christian, you have even more to process than anger because you also feel guilty about breaking a sacred covenant.
"Don't tell me love never fails," you mutter, chastising yourself, then thrusting your fist at God.
I know the feeling. I'm a Christian. I, too, believed marriage would last forever. When I faced its failure 22 years later, I became instantly and intimately acquainted with anger.
What Are You Angry About?
- "I don't know who I am anymore."
Divorce punctured my soul as I packed away a lifetime of photo albums under the mental label of "Who I was." I questioned my past discernment and wondered: Did unconditional love blind me to my partner's faults? Why was I so naive and trusting? Did I love too much? Could I ever trust again?
As my most private thoughts and beliefs were exposed and crushed, the pain was discounted by my former spouse and others.
"Forget the past," well-meaning friends advise.
"Get on with life," relatives say.
"Pray and read your Bible more," the books read.
"God has a ministry for you," says the Sunday school teacher.
No one seems to understand you want your marriage back. You do not want a ministry. You want your familiar lifestyle back. You are angry with yourself.
- "My life is out of control and I'm scared."
My marriage did not automatically dissolve with a signature in a law office or a ruling in a courtroom. Divorce slowly raped my emotions, violating my dreams and our goals. I felt rejected physically and defrauded financially. The person who once promised to love me forever had betrayed me. He discarded me like an unacceptable vase.
As you begin to pick up the pieces and live with what you have left, you tackle tough topics: child-care issues, finances and/or reconciliation.
You can't believe your former spouse is uncooperative, doesn't wish you well and treats you as a stranger. Before this person you once bared both body and soul. You feel vulnerable because this person knows how to wound you and how to agitate you. Your mind is sunburned with thoughts too sensitive to touch. You wonder: Am I really so unlovable? Or do I just feel so unloving now because I am angry with my former spouse?
- "No one will ever love me again."
"You promised you and Daddy would never get a divorce," my daughter screamed. "I hate you. I don't want to be anything like you because Daddy left you."
Whether you filed the petition or contested the divorce, are the custodial or weekend parent, you experience anger as one flesh separates into two single-again individuals, forcing you to redefine your family. Maybe the other person is not so single but already snuggling in the arms of another--and your children blame you.
This isn't how you planned your life. You trusted God. Why didn't he do something?
When You're Still Attached
Tear apart a piece of paper. You end up with two ragged edges. Part of the left side remains with the right side and vice versa. This is a good picture of divorce. It rips apart your most intimate spiritual, emotional, physical and mental bond. Parts of who you are remain with your former spouse and pieces of him or her stay with you. You do not recognize who you are or who you are supposed to be. No wonder you feel angry!
"Anger can be used two ways," says Karl Miller, a marriage and family therapist at Covenant Psychological Services in Redwood City, California, who remarried after divorce. "To separate and get in touch with our boundaries, or as a way to keep the other person involved with us."
Miller believes many people have deep primary needs from childhood wounds or a lack of nurturing, which they expect their mate to fulfill. The other spouse feels overwhelmed because his or her love goes into a black hole.
"It's never enough," he says.
"Marriages can't cure individual emotional problems," says Neil Clark Warren, psychologist, marriage counselor and author of The Triumphant Marriage: 100 Extremely Successful Couples Reveal Their Secrets. "I've come to believe that 75 percent of all divorces involve marriages in which at least one partner is emotionally unhealthy."
"Some relationships are hostile-dependent," says Miller. "Anger is a way to hang on to a relationship."
Divorce anger can become a hook to reel you back into the past. Your former spouse may be unable to admit his or her own anger. Your ex may focus on your behavior. You become angry. If you grab this bait by feeling guilty or retaliating, you surrender control over your emotions.
You can also reattach yourself to a prior relationship by casting a hook toward a former spouse, such as "How could you do this to me?" A "root of bitterness" seizes this smallest barb, then slithers into your spirit like a snake. And grows.
Ways to Handle Divorce Anger
What if you feel a valid reason for anger?
- Pat felt manipulated, misunderstood and alone.
- Carol felt used and blamed herself.
- Ted was in shock, wondering if he'll ever trust again.
- Lori feared the unknown.
- Gary felt disillusioned.
Do you pretend anger will go away? Shop away your anger? Blame yourself, then reach for the cookie jar? Kick the dog? Sue for custody or more child support? Decide from now all men or women are jerks?
"I believe it takes a lifetime to process divorce anger," says my friend Marlee Alex, two years divorced, the former editor of Virtue, a Christian woman's magazine. "Knowing good is knotted with bad, hope intertwined in despondency, and joy is tangled with anger helps me live with the pain and process it a little at a time."
How do you lovingly detach from the one who hurt you without losing more of yourself in the process?
1. Take responsibility for your life.
According to Archibald Hart, former dean of Fuller Theological Seminary's Graduate School of Psychology in Pasadena, California, we must confront painful feelings and move beyond them.
In his book Growing Up Divorced, he paraphrases Matthew 18:15-17: "When someone has harmed you, try to talk about it with him or her alone. If that person will not hear you, check it out with another. Ask this other person to go with you. If nothing comes of this, then you are free. Walk away from this person. You no longer have any obligation to put matters right. And this is not a violation of the law of love."
"We cannot go through life feeling guilty or obligated to everyone who has hurt us," Hart continues. "There must come a time, after we have tried everything reasonable to confront our hurt feelings, when we must claim our freedom. It is our God-given right, and our healing depends on it."
When you stop feeling guilty for saying to someone else, "I am not owning your problem. I will own my problems. Yes. I am angry over the divorce, but I refuse to live in the past," then you embark on a new journey with lighter luggage.
2. Choose the road leading toward forgiveness.
"It's OK to be angry," my dad said over the phone. "Just don't let it lead to sin." At the time I wondered, How does Dad know I'm fantasizing about my ex-husband dying so I won't have to deal with him?
Because I did not want to end up a bitter woman, I found the ticket out of Rage City: forgiveness. Forgiveness is a positive response to anger. To forgive, you do not need the other person's cooperation. Giving up your right to get even is not about giving in but about letting go. You are free to move on. But forgiveness is not a onetime option. It is an ongoing choice.
Remember the story of Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his brothers? They knew Joseph had a good reason to hold a grudge and pay them back for all the wrongs. Instead, Joseph chose to do the incredible, turning what was meant to harm into something good.
I can only imagine what Joseph felt. Perhaps he asked this question: Do I have a responsibility to be angry in this situation?
After he realized the answer was both yes and no, he recognized his responsibility to God to step forward and forgive. His choice probably surprised his brothers--and himself.
3. Celebrate what is left in your life: God's plan to recycle your hurt into hope and purpose.
The real world differs from the dreamy ideal world, but it's the only place you have to live. God's original intention in Eden was perfection: No sin, no pain, no unjust gain. No conflict or loss. No death or divorce. Lots of freedom with only one restriction. God wanted to spare us the experience of evil.
"In a way, the Garden is always with us," says John Townsend,
co-founder and co-director of Cloud-Townsend Clinic and Communications in Newport Beach, California. "Our memories of good moments, and our wishes for ourselves and others to be better, keep the image of the ideal in our hearts. At times this encourages us, and at others it torments us, such as when we have thoughts like, 'I shouldn't have made that error--I knew better'" (Hiding From Love).
You can't change the shoulds and shouldn'ts, but you can change the way you think. Jesus Christ died to give new life, "which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator" (Colossians 3:10). Verses 7-14 say to get rid of the negative and put on the positive. Choose healthy ways to handle anger because there is life after divorce. Like Joseph, get radical:
- Dare to pray for good to happen to the one who hurt you.
- Move deeper in faith--upward to God and on to the front porch of your life.
- Howl--when you feel like it--into the night awaiting the dawn.
- Choose to let go of unhealthy anger when it sprouts. Forgive others--and yourself. I long to be the type of person others enjoy. So do you. Maybe you desire another relationship. You want to trust again.
Give yourself permission to confront your feelings. Find someone willing to let you talk about your anger. And discover the God of second chances who can take you beyond it. The choice is yours. You are worth it! q
Launa L. Herrmann is a freelancer living in Castro Valley, California.
*Some names and identifying details in this article have been changed to protect privacy.
My 12 Step Solution1 Record your thoughts in a journal. Documenting the journey and reviewing your progress months later is therapeutic and affirming. 2 Dare to pray for help to move ahead and for good to happen to the one who hurt you. Note: This is an agonizing discipline. 3 Stare down fear by choosing a yearly verse and reading it daily. One year, I wrote Psalm 56:3-4 in my DayTimer to read at work. Another year, I memorized Isaiah 33:6 (NASB): "He shall be the stability of your times." 4 Remember, change is inevitable. Example: Recalling God's presence with me in the past helped me say, "How can I not trust you, Lord, for the unknown future." 5 Discover the difference between giving up hope and letting go of people, places, plans and possessions. Example: I walk to a window, stretch out my arms, palms up and open. I imagine holding loosely whatever or whoever bothers me. Then I release them and say, "You've got a big problem, Lord." 6 Release a former spouse to live life the way he or she chooses. Example: I do not need to know about my former spouse's lifestyle or latest squeeze. All conversations are short and strictly business. I watch for hooks such as "Guess who I saw?" or "Guess what I did?" that reel me back into the past. 7 Refuse to be placed on the defensive. Example: If my former spouse thinks I am "a dumb broad" or "a poor mother," that's OK. Everybody is entitled to an opinion. Until the day he dies, he might think this way. I do not need to prove otherwise in order to believe that I am a smart woman and a good mother. I refuse to give him the power to define who I truly am. The only one who should play God in my life is God. 8 Realize life is an individual journey, not an Olympic competition. In heaven, the Lord won't scan my chest for medals, such as a 50-year marriage. He'll notice what no one else sees, whether I have been faithful to him whatever. 9 Act from the will and not feelings. Example: Did I want to forgive my ex-husband? No. Did I feel forgiving? Of course not. Instead, I determined to forgive. For me, forgiveness is not a onetime option but an ongoing choice. 10 Reach out to others for comfort and accountability. Charles Stanley, author and pastor of Atlanta's First Baptist Church, says a friend is "somebody you can laugh with and pray with, somebody who understands you and somebody you trust and can share secrets with." He says we need godly friends who point us to God and we need to be a godly friend to others. 11 Embrace being single again. Example: The first weekend, I sat on a different couch in a smaller house in another town and said, "I will learn to be content right here this moment in this place." Contentment energized my life and regenerated my capacity to love and laugh again. 12 Learn that truth needs no defense. Example: Upon discovery of my former spouse's many infidelities, I was devastated and became angry. The truth is my hateful thoughts toward him and his adultery are both sins. God is angry at sin, not with the sinner. He sent Jesus to earth to die for sin and to save sinners. I am a sinner. So how can I say, The one who hurt me does not deserve forgiveness? |