As you may know, the divorce rate continues to hover around
fifty percent, where it has been now for some time. If half of
marriages end in divorce today, it is likely that many of
youlike meare ACD’sAdult Children of Divorce. How has our
parents’ divorce affected us and our own quest for love and
happiness? My parents were divorced when I was three. From
childhood I vowed not to be one of the fifty percentI was going
to succeed where they had “failed.” Yet, I too, became a
statistic when my first marriage of 25 years came to an end,
despite valiant attempts by my first wife and me to save it. So
now my adult children, too, have joined the ranks of ACD’s. Much
has been written about the effect of divorce on children.
However, very little research has been done on the impact of
divorce on adults and the challenges of ACD’s in general. A
recent study at the University of New Orleans sheds some of the
long awaited light. Among the findings of the study, is that for
ACD’s intimacy, trust, commitment, loyalty and passion are more
complex issues than for children of intact families. For
example, many of us crave the intimacy, yet female ACD’s tend to
experience more relationship conflict and to have an increased
number of sexual partners than those from intact families,
though the same is not true for men. There is some suggestion
that in our quest for the intimacy we may confuse casual sexual
relationships with emotional intimacy. We also have a tendency
to get into relationships or marriage at a young age or to seek
to fulfill our emotional needs in relationships that are not
healthy. ACD’s also demonstrate an overall lack of trust with
regard to intimate relationships and marriage. Sadly, many of us
expect our marriages to fail, at least unconsciously, and we may
even sabotage our intimate relationships because of a fear of
rejection and lack of trust. Ironically, while we long for
affection, seeking the affection which we did not see or
experience at home, we may withdraw emotionally from our
partners, repeating a coping mechanism learned in childhood. The
option of cohabitation and availability of divorce as an option
also impact our attitude toward marriage. Adult children of
divorce are more likely to prefer cohabitation to marriage or to
say they do not want to marry in the future. Yet we ACD’s are
more likely to put ourselves in situations that promote
marriage, such as cohabitation. The most significant finding of
the study is that ACD’s are much more concerned with intimacy
and loyalty as well as passion in relationships than are adults
from intact families. Consequently, our expectations are
sometimes unrealistic. We did not see a good marriage model, so
we have created one in our imagination. The picture may be
lovely, but it is not necessarily realistic. On the other hand,
the study found that ACD’s often demonstrate residual strength
and maturity and empathy for others borne of their family
divorce experience. As Winston Churchill observed, “The farther
back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”
Armed with that awareness and our residual strength, we can
begin to change our patterns and create a new vision, to live
our lives differently. One of the things that draws us to the
use of Imago Relationship Therapy in our counseling and coaching
practice, is that Imago allows persons in committed
relationships to heal childhood wounds, whether from divorce or
some other source. It is a priceless tool for creating the new
vision. Divorce is a terrible, painful thing. Yet I know that
sometimes it is the only available resolution to a relationship
in conflict. Perhaps with growing knowledge and understanding of
some of the vulnerabilities that challenge us as adult children
of divorce, we can move forward and experience healing. Perhaps
we can even begin to reverse the divorce statistic.
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