Is There Really Such a Thing as a Good Divorce?

“Divorce is either slow torture or long torture.” - Baroness Fiona Shackleton

My friends, guests on the Therapy Works podcast and clients who divorce (I include co-habiting couples who separate), have taught me no one wants to end their relationship. Furthermore they really don’t want to break up their family. Most couples have done their best to keep the relationship together and separation is the last resort. It up ends their life as is, the loss of the future they expected and is experienced as a profound loss with a freight train of difficulties to overcome. Every end has its unique causes and its unique pain, but there are universal factors that I think are useful to know.

I would like this newsletter to clarify for you, now you have come to this difficult decision, how to do least harm for you and your family. That brings to mind the term ‘a good and bad death’ are shorthand that in some way diminish the grief that death engenders, and yet there are complexities in someone’s death that contribute it to being ‘a good or a bad death.’ Which can lead to trauma and complex grief. Similarly, in divorce, there are events and behaviours that can shape the whole family’s outcome for good and bad.