The other night my eldest yelled that his father and I suck at divorce. We had spent the afternoon at a dance recital and all the disparate pieces of my children’s extended family had converged. My ex’s family and my family. We had come together to celebrate. But tensions, awkward hugs and tightly smiled platitudes were my son’s take-aways from the event. An event that could have been joyous and relaxed in an alternate universe. In a different family. And had his parent’s not gotten divorced.
While my son’s sentiment was still fresh I wondered why a good enough divorce is not part of the therapy world’s parlance. Divorce makes you guilty. You try forever to make up the loss to your children. This started me thinking about good enough mothering. Donald Winnicott, a pediatrician who studied the mother child bond, dubbed the term.
In summary, good enough mothering allows for the world to disappoint your child, while not abandoning your child during the disappointment(s). See? There’s a lot of room for interpretation. That’s what I always liked about the theory too.
Introducing the good enough divorce: the art of letting the loss of divorce wash over your child, while you wait on the shore for their sputtering, spitting, disillusioned persons to arrive. After all, what more can be done? Sure, we can do therapy. We do. We can talk at home. We do. We have. We can rationalize, explain and listen. But in the end divorce fractures a child’s life. And all we can do is pass them a glue stick. They have to make a collage they can stand being part of.
And on days like after the dance recital, when you’ve been divorced five years and your kid sometimes still reels, let the hot adrenaline sent to fix the pain, fix the pain, fix the pain my child is in, reabsorb. Because you my friend, have a good enough divorce. Nothing more and nothing less. And you’ve got a seat on the shore next to me, and millions of others.
For the record, my ex and I do suck at divorce. Doesn’t everyone?
That’s rhetorical.
I don’t want to hear about the ex’s who like each other more than ever, the ex’s who are best friends, or the ex’s who vacation with their new signifigant others. Those stories are the exceptions. Right? I’m right, right?
(image: GoogleImages)
Lisa
January 20, 2012
I’m there! I totally suck at divorce. It’s a suck-ish thing, I don’t thing anyone could excel at it.
Those “ex’s who like each other more than ever, the ex’s who are best friends, or the ex’s who vacation with their new significant others” are imaginary or psychologically whacked.
Hayley Krischer
January 20, 2012
For me, it’s such a cycle. Sometimes it’s all working fine, and then we just teeter off the edge. I guess it’s similar patterns like the marriage. When the “boundaries” mantra is working, then we’re usually getting along fairly well.
Miriam Novogrodsky
January 20, 2012
the boundaries mantra — i like that.
Suzanne Hegland
January 24, 2012
Great piece – esp like sputtering kid washed up on shore and the glue stick – excellent. Not being divorced I’ll have to take your word at the “good enough divorce,” but I’m right on-board with the good enough mothering, and sometimes? The Good Enough Marriage.
Jordon
January 24, 2012
It is unfortunate that you do not want to hear about ex’s that can put their past conflicts with each other aside and work for the good of their kids.. maybe those kids take a bit less glue to hold them together.
Trista
March 7, 2012
I just love this post. I can’t tell you how many times I felt this way.
Glad to have found you on the Ms. Mag blog – I will be back!!
Miriam Novogrodsky
March 9, 2012
Trista, glad you found us — come back soon – miri
Laura
March 29, 2012
Working together for the good of the kids is not the same as vacationing with the ex and his new spouse. The point of the piece is that the best we can do in a fractured family is the best we can do, and when most of us can’t make it all “okay” all of the time, as much as we try and as much as we’d like to, we can give ourselves a bit of a break about it.
My parents split up and spent their lives “putting it all behind them where we were concerned,” except they didn’t really, because nobody really can. If you ask me, pretending nothing ever happened, creating happy little myths and swallowing your own misery while the children wonder without explanation why mommy is sad, even though she says she’s fine… well, that’s not so great, either.
I’m one year in, and still finding my footing with all this, but the one thing I can tell from the experience so far is that the body blows are going to keep coming… the first time the kids meet the girlfriend… the first time they meet the girlfriend’s kids… the first time they spend a holiday without you… and on and on. Hell, we’re only now getting down to the actual paperwork, so we’re much more amicable than most. The pain is a fact of life now, though, and some of that is going to bleed through, well… forever. I know this, because lived it as a child. Does that mean the children and I will never be happy, ARE never happy? Of course not. But to deny the fact of the rupture in our lives will not make it any less true, will not make them better adjusted as adults.
Thanks for this discussion. For some reason, today, I went looking for blogs about single motherhood from a feminist perspective. Oh, I know. It was the death of Adrienne Rich, may she rest in peace.
– Laura
Ana S
July 7, 2012
Thank you for this post and for your site. For your outlook. I’ve often conjured up The Good Enough Mother image to help me out. Now I can, must, will expand it to The GE Divorce. Jeez, today was a long one….but the virtual camaraderie helped.