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Divorce Psychology
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Add to FavoritesWho gets custody of family friends after the divorce or death? This question has always amazed me because of the results that happen when a couple divorces or a husband dies. I will have to say that the majority of the people I have known where a wife is left without her spouse, shortly thereafter, the wife finds herself without any friends whatsoever. The friends they ran around with and the friends they shared their lives with are "no" longer are available to the wife. After a few weeks of courtesy calls, the telephone never rings anymore and the wife is left without any communication with her once friends and it leaves the wife in a turmoil not knowing why her friends have abandoned her. Not only is the wife left to grieve over a divorce or a death, she is left without the friends she cared so much about.
I feel a deep compassion for the wife left behind because oft times, jealousy comes into play and the wife is considered a threat to her once friends. The wife didn't do a thing to make the women jealous but her single availability makes her a threat to the other "married" women. I often wondered why a husband doesn't speak up, and ask, "Why isn't "Mary Doe" being included in our crowd anymore?" Maybe the husband does discuss it with his wife but who knows what her response to him is. One thing for sure, you don't see the lone wife around the crowd anymore.
I think this is a sad situation because these women never know when they are going to be on the outside looking in themselves. Why these women feel such a threat is beyond my understanding? If the wife was a trusted friend throughout the years, why did she all of a sudden become a threat? I'll tell you why, its because of a large amount of paranoia, speculations, and gossip between the other women. Here they have become judge and jury and a once dear friend is vanished from their midst without being able to defend herself.
I feel these women are cruel...they should realize if their husbands are interested in "Mary Doe," they'll be able to get in contact with her if they so choose without the approval of their wives. I hope I'm never in this situation because I consider my friends, my family, and I would be heart broken if I got this type of treatment.
We all need to rid ourselves of our paranoid jealous thoughts and be a friend to someone we have cared about and shared our lives with in the past. Reach out and touch of the wife who is left with an emptiness in her heart and a need for comforting words from a "real" friend. This will leave you with a feeling of love in your heart and mean the world to someone who is hurting.
Learn more about this author, Barbara Kasey Smith.
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Wife
When a couple divorces, not only are the property and possessions split up, but often so are the mutual friends. Ideally the former couple can maintain ties, although separate now, with all of their mutual friends when they were married, but that is rarely the case.
Friends often gravitate towards one or the other partner for various reasons. One partner may have inflicted so much damage to the other spouse while in the marriage, that the friends decide that they never really knew this person and do not want to associate with that person anymore. Sometimes the friends are only friends because of the couple being married and never had any connections with one of the two people now divorced.
One case occurred when a young wife decided that she married too young and was no longer having any fun being tied down to a house and raising the couple's baby. She left her husband for another man and took her baby with her, only to keep the husband from gaining full custody. She demanded that their mutual friends severe all ties with her soon to be ex-husband and only associate with her. That strategy backfired and their friends decided that she was too high maintenance and since she often made poor choices in the past, would continue to do so. The husband in this case got custody of the friends.
But often women do need emotional support from friends when going through a divorce, especially in cases where the husband cheated on her during the marriage. The husband often buries himself in work and may distance himself from the mutual friends with his new life. The ties with the mutual friends may change and often since the couple is no longer a couple, there may be an awkwardness of being solo at any gatherings with friends who are still couples.
Often the friends revolve around the common interest of raising children and that may be the determining factor in who gets custody of the friends. Sometimes while maintaining past friendships, the wife needs to find new interests or renew old interests that had been put to the side over the years and find new friends with whom to share her interests.
Divorces are rarely civil and usually there is a great deal of mud slinging. The trick for the mutual friends is to stay out of the line of fire as much as possible during the process of the divorce and then the friends decide who gets custody of them afterwards.
Learn more about this author, Carole Ligi.
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