Everyone except the
very young or very dull has felt the pain of breaking up with someone
they love at some point in their lives. Grief, whether it is at the
end of a relationship because they slammed the door on their way out
of a relationship or were accidentally squished by a bus on the way to
the post office has exactly the same effect of the psyche of those
left behind. We all go through stages of denial, anger, negotiation,
depression and acceptance.
Not everyone goes through these stages at the same rate (it’s
estimated that it can take someone half the length of a serious
relationship to get over it so if you were married for fifteen years
the emotional effects are likely to live on for another seven or eight
years, and seriously impact on your next relationship(s).
Sometimes you can experience two or three stages at once; sometimes
you barely experience a stage at all. If a new trauma comes along to
awaken old wounds you can go back to an earlier point on your
emotional journey. You can get stuck at one of the stages (and if
that’s happened for any length of time then it’s time to call in the
professionals to help you gain some perspective, seriously - pick up
the phone and dial for a counsellor).
Stage of Grief:
Typical behaviour:
Denial
The ITS
NOT HAPPENING stage.
If you are going through a split this
can be denial that your partner wants to leave you or a belief that
they will change their mind, as they can’t really mean it. Ok so
they called you every name under the sun on their way out of the
door but after all they loved you for all that time, they must still
love you really, no really, deep down they do even if they don’t
realise it.
Anger
Or WHY
ME!!!!!!!
stage
You are angry at the world, angry at
the situation even if you were the one to walk away, angry on behalf
of the others who were hurt by your or your partner’s actions
Negotiation
CAN I PLEA BARGAIN MY
WAY OUT OF THIS?
If I’m a nicer, more desirable,
funnier person will s/he recognise that and come back? Can I
possibly hang on to the dregs of this relationship; surely I can
salvage something here? (Well that’s your dignity straight out of
the window then).
Depression
ITS REAL AND I CAN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.
The reality hits home and so does the
misery. This is when the depression can strike, when alcohol and
other dependent behaviours can take hold, and Prozac seems like a
lifesaver. At this point there is nothing left to lose.
Acceptance
ITS OVER – NOW WHO
AM I
and
has anyone seen where I last left my life?
Based on the work of psychologist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross On Death and
Dying.
So
what has this to do with a second wife? Well its not good news. Men and
Women do not work their way through these stages at the same rate but
even if you were the one to call time on the relationship you will still
go through all of these (and you may have a huge dollop of guilt to deal
with as well).
Your new partner may not have dealt with all his issues before embarking
on a new relationship. Chances are a woman will be just starting to get
her head around the grief of a split when her former partner has gone
through all the stages and launched on his next relationship. If you are
the woman next in line when your partner’s former wife is working her
way through one of those stages then all that ugly raw emotion is going
to be turned directly on you.
Of course if you were involved in breaking up the
relationship then it’s no big surprise if his former partner holds a
grudge in your direction. If you were even partially responsible for
wrecking her family fairytale she’s going to blame you and if someone
did the same to you I bet you’d be just as mad. Even if you had
nothing to do with it, even if you came along years later, or she was
the one to end the marriage then guess what -
it will make no difference.
If she is not emotionally separated from her former partner and that
grief is still raw then you are going to have a very rough ride ahead.
Stage of Grief:
The Second Wife’s
Burden:
Denial
If she is facing up to the reality of
a split then his Ex Wife/Partner can refuse to deal with the
implications of the new situation. As the Ex sees it there’s another
rooster in the hen house, a new significant other in her partner’s
life (note ‘partner’- not ‘former partner’ as she hasn’t drawn that
boundary in her head yet. As far as she’s concerned she’s his first
wife, possibly she is also the mother of his children and you are
the interloper here.
As a second wife you may want to
satisfy your curiosity about this other woman, at the very least you
will want to talk to her about the care of the children. Guess what
she doesn’t want to know you, if she can pretend you don’t exist
then that’s fine by her, at worst she’ll hope you’ll be just a
passing fancy and in the end he’ll see that she was the one true
love of his life. Even if she doesn’t actually want to be with the
reality of him she will still cling to the dream of the relationship
and you are getting in the way. You are a threat to her status as
the Wife, to her status as The Mother, both within the immediate and
extended family (she doesn’t see it as two separate families yet).
She’ll reach for the extended family on both sides to shore up her
position – expect lots of family get-togethers at which you won’t be
invited but your new partner and their children will be the star
attraction.
She may try to prevent your
interacting with the children at all. She will probably insist on
maintaining a relationship with your partner in which you are
actively excluded.
She may even try to act as if she and
he are still in a relationship, many second wives are incensed by
inappropriate behaviour from the ex wife ranging from the
unforgivable enticing him into bed after he dropped off the
children, to a knowing kiss on the cheek or a hand placed intimately
on his arm when she’s stood next to you both, to emotionally
intimate phone conversations and emails.
This is her way of saying quite
clearly he’s still my partner and I‘ll be as intimate as I want
because I’m in control here.
Anger
It’s all your fault. No really,
everything is your fault. Even if she walked out on her husband
they were getting along just fine until you came along. Now he’s
standing up to her, refusing to mow her lawn on request or be an
emotional crutch for her when her new partner isn’t available. It’s
your fault. Their kids now have to adjust and that’s your fault too
that they are hurting.
Suddenly he has other financial
responsibilities which are going to detract from his ability to
support her children, worse still you may have children of your own
and (oh god it’s an earth shattering thought) what if you and he
have children together, your child and hers would be related. She
never thought she’d be in this situation, she didn’t choose you as a
relation, she had no say in it at all, and how dare you impose
yourself on her like this!
It’s at this point that a former
partner uses Parental Alienation most destructively. Sanity has
nothing to do with it, she’s angry, she’s lashing out, she is going
to use the best weapon she has and you are both going to pay
–suddenly the children hear that it’s your fault that she can’t
afford to send them to private school or ballet classes, you are
taking their father away from them and their father is letting it
happen.
Soon he won’t care about them at all
he’ll only care about you and your children, they might as well have
nothing to do with either of you because you can’t possibly love
those children at all, why should you they will never be yours.
Negotiation
She’s realised that she’s losing all
those extra benefits a relationship brings – companionship,
emotional and financial support, and it’s amazing just how many
women think they can hang onto those while losing a husband. She is
losing influence with her former husband and the more aggressive she
is in trying to keep you at arms length the quicker he moves away
from her to be with you.
She may try to be nice because she
wants something – to find a way to be in control of the situation -
and you’ll know it, as every move she makes feels so insincere she
gives Cassius a run for his money as she smiles and plots murder
while she smiles. She’ll try to stay as involved as she possibly can
in every element of what happens in your home. Prepare yourself
ladies. You can’t possibly be expected to know how to care for her
children so she’ll send them over with a daily supply of freshly
laundered clothes. Their friendships, school life, home life in both
homes will all be subject to her control- after all they are her
children and she has every right to judge if you are taking care of
them in your home (and taking good care of her partner too – yes she
still may not accept you and he are a couple, and that she and he
are not).
Either she’ll try to keep you as the
second wife out of it completely or else get ready for the food
parcels, instruction notes and stream of complaints that you didn’t
send little Johnny to school in a warm coat………. (Helloooo it’s a
heat wave in August). You will be slapped down for stepping into her
territory at every turn and her territory may not stop at the
children. It will probably include the school, the extended family
on all sides, her children’s friends, family friends, even her
favourite brand of perfume or designer. Do not get caught wearing
the same coat as her from her favourite high street store even if
you have had it for ten years and so do 50,000 other women.
Don’t be at all surprised if she
comes into your home uninvited and acts as if she has the right to
do that even if it’s somewhere she never lived. In her head where
the children go she goes. She is their mother and there are no
possible boundaries to that.
You probably can’t be expected to get
your new partner a birthday present so she’ll do that for you, and
phone him at work when she knows you can’t possibly intervene to
remind him to collect the children at a certain time, and while
she’s on the line could she ask his advice as to how to fix her
computer (so the kids can use it for school). She may ask you for a
call to say you’ve got home safely with the children, and …..it
won’t stop she’ll have communication diarrhoea. The phone will not
stop (though she still won’t talk to you directly); emails will not
cease, and expect your partner to be subjected to a litany every
time he arrives on her doorstep.
Depression
You have probably blown a fuse by now
or else have left the relationship in search of a single man with no
children. She’ll be miserable, possibly clinically depressed,
potentially using drugs or alcohol is ease her pain. If you are
still around you will either be on medication yourself or will have
insisted on boundaries being put in place and without doubt those
are going to hurt her.
If she’s given the opportunity she
will ask your partner, and possibly even you, to be her emotional
crutch. She won’t give a thought to how you feel or all the pain you
as a second wife have had to deal with so far but she will expect
you to care about her emotional distress every second. She’ll be
clingy with the children and your partner and communication will go
crazy. Its her bed and she’ll lie in it- and won’t you know just how
truly miserable she is every second of the day The children will
turn up with a major guilt trip about enjoying themselves on every
visit – if they haven’t refused to leave her side or washed their
hands of their father and you by now so they don’t have to deal with
the distress of it all. (And yes that will still all be your or his
fault)
Acceptance
This is where you stand a chance of
finding a way through all the mess the adults have created together.
Finally she will see that there is no way back and she has to forge
a relationship for the future – Of course some women deal with this
by concluding that the best way to get on with their lives is to
wipe their previous relationship from existence. They remove
themselves and their children from having anything to do with their
former family, up sticks and make a fresh start somewhere else,
leaving your devastated partner to get on with his new life with you
minus his children.
Some women do come to their senses.
They can see that you are not second cousin to the wicked witch of
the west, that you do care about their children, that you are
competent and capable, and will try to turn things around so at the
end of the day it’s the children who come out of this ok.
The trouble is by this point you are
probably so traumatised by all the emotional trash she’s shovelled in
your direction that you don’t trust her, you don’t like her, you are
allergic to her name, your partner doesn’t want to have anything to
do with his ex this side of the devil getting ice skating lessons,
the solicitors are very wealthy and their children think you and he
are public enemy no 1.
If you can get to this point quickly
then you stand a chance of having less trauma to deal with, less
harm to your relationship and to the children, and everything
settling down so if your partner is rushing around to help his ex to
move house, doing everything he can to play happy families with his
former family out of guilt for the effect on the children, fear of
losing contact or grief of his own, then he is doing himself and
everyone else no favours and you should consider the merits of
asking him to decide which family he wants to be part of
–
The one you and he will create with his children when
they are with you
or
–
the one he had with his ex partner and their
children.
So gentlemen its make your mind up
time………………
Chances are his ex-wife will be a permanent pain in the bum until she’s
worked through her issues and come out of the grief tunnel. It’s
perfectly natural for her to feel like this but it isn’t going to be
pleasant. All you can do is hang on for the ride and remember the second
wives mantra.
These are his ex-partners problems,
You can’t control her behaviour and
make it better,
You and your partner can
only control your behaviour.
