The many-sided feeling called love builds bridges from one loneliness to another. These bridges can be fabulously beautiful, but they rarely last forever. K.Horney Only bridges are drawn beautifully...(ts) “We have finally decided to get a divorce...” the couple with whom you have been working for a long time on “overcoming marital differences” announces to you... Divorce is a small thing a six-letter word, the official death of a relationship... A word that means so much: for some, a heart broken into many pieces, trust that cannot be returned, dreams that can no longer come true, for others - new opportunities and prospects, for some it is a way to survive... Marriages are concluded for different reasons and are dissolved with different feelings... For example, the joy of divorce (“liberation from painful bonds”) of people who essentially bought each other is understandable; it is, say, a position in society , and he - her beauty, energy and youth, and those who were deceived in their calculations or who over time found the “best option” for investing capital, etc... Yes, it happens: People glow twice with happiness And laugh twice with happiness: The first time - when they get married, and the second - when they get divorced. (E. Asadov)But, infinitely more tragic is the end of a relationship when love and faith were initially present in the marriage... In such cases, regardless of whether the decision is mutual or it is made unilaterally, I catch myself feeling deep sadness... It’s sad to be a witness death... The death of a relationship that was born in love, mutual admiration, the joy of merging two “I”s into one fragile “we,” ups, downs, adventures, overcoming difficulties together, shared pain of loss and touching hope that “ in good and bad, in poverty and in wealth, in sickness and in health, until death do us part” - not just words... Marriage is akin to an operation when two people are sewn together, and divorce is an amputation, and it takes a lot of time to heal. The longer you were married, the more difficult the amputation, the harder it is to recover...Elizabeth Gilbert Divorce (for most people) is traumatic. Trauma of loss...And, a person who goes through this process (and this is always a PROCESS!), experiences stages of loss similar to those listed by E. Kübler-Ross in the situation of the death of a loved one: 1. Stage of denial (shock, numbness). It is difficult to come to terms with divorce right away. Defense mechanisms are activated: rationalization (“Finally free”), devaluation (“in fact, the marriage was terrible, there is nothing to regret”), denial (“This can’t be”), etc.2. Aggression stage. A feeling of anger towards the abandoned partner, a state of frustration caused by the collapse of plans and hopes.3. The "bargaining" stage. "I will change!" Attempts to restore the marriage. Various manipulations in relation to the abandoned partner, including sexual relations and possible pregnancy.4. Stage of depression. When denial, aggressive actions and negotiations do not bring any results, a depressed state occurs. A person feels like a loser, his self-esteem and trust in people fall. And finally (in the positive case): 5. Acceptance stage. Accepting the fact of divorce and adapting to changed living conditions... Not everything necessarily happens exactly like this, but, as a rule, the experience of loss is a rather long, painful “assembly process”, “recovery from the ashes”, a slow turn from trying to bring the abandoned partner back, to the return of one’s own integrity and adaptation to further life without him......Sincerely believing (and knowing!) that a marriage (in many cases) CAN be improved with the help of therapy, how difficult it is sometimes to maintain a position of NEUTRALITY and not get involved with great enthusiasm “reanimation” of the relationship, even if “the autopsy showed that the patient had died long ago...”. Sometimes, like a child, you want a “happy ending”... So that the truth is “happily ever after”... Of course, we are not talking about cases of violence and the presence of clinical pathology in partners. It often turns out that: “Highly unsuccessful marriages oftenare extremely viable and actually last until the death of one of the partners, and less problematic marriages often show a tendency to dissolution and seem to be dissolved more often than difficult ones..." (Guggenbuhl-Craig A.) It happens after a couple has decided to divorce , contrary to all logic, you think, was it possible to do something? They came to marital therapy, talked about their readiness to “work on the relationship,” about how important it was for them to stay together, discussed the causes of conflicts, looked for solutions, recalled their shared past etc. Still, 15 years together, four children, “not strangers”... But the decision is made by the couple, AND ONLY THE COUPLE... The therapist’s task is to help the couple make a decision and cope with the consequences... To help means, first of all, to create a space for dialogue, where there is an opportunity to hear yourself and others...Despite the prevalence of divorces, most people cannot get used to them and perceive this event dramatically...Although, if earlier divorces were traditionally classified as non-normative crises, now, looking at the statistics, they can rather be attributed to the norm... In those countries where divorce is not associated with legal and religious problems, marriages are dissolved very often... But why should the abandoned partner care about statistics at such a moment?... Divorce is a crisis, it requires a serious restructuring of the entire marital relationship or the family system, and not everyone is ready for this...Even if from the very beginning it is obvious that “marital relationships have long been not just sick, but in agony” and “rest” only on the inability (or unwillingness) to resolve financial issues, the notorious phrase “we we live together only for the sake of the children”, fear of loneliness and lack of hope for creating new relationships, many people do not dare to break up, and come to therapy believing that it will DEFINITELY help them maintain the relationship... Do they go to therapy in order to realize as a result , that it’s time to get a divorce? Who really needs her?...But, unfortunately, “it takes two to create a family, but one is enough to destroy it.” The partner who is more interested in marriage has only 50%... Therapy is the ability to call a spade a spade... But the reality is that, sometimes in the process of work (and especially personal therapy), the spouse (or spouses) come to the conclusion that having entered into marriage at 20 and having lived together for about 15-20 years, at some point they became completely different people, and their relationship, at a minimum, requires serious restructuring, for which one of them (or both) is not ready, because one of them is all satisfied, he would like everything to remain as it was before, and, agreeing to therapy, he hoped that the specialist would help his partner understand this. But, instead, in the process of therapy “SUDDENLY” it becomes obvious that the marriage has long been preserved for account of the “figures of silence” and the endless “sacrifices” of one of the spouses, who gave up on his personal interests and completely abandoned himself. In this case, therapy - especially personal or group - of one of the partners - is really dangerous for the relationship. She “reveals” the truth, “revealing” what a person has been “loudly silent about” for many years, something that he was often afraid to admit even to himself. For example, that he has long “grew up” from his usual relationships, and they are at least “squeezing” him a lot, and at maximum “suffocating” him... He is tired of living in painful “loneliness together” and is no longer ready to “sacrifice” at the marital altar " - “the Procrustean bed “We” is the opportunity for one’s own development and personality revelation... It is at this “revolutionary moment” that couples (?) (often under pressure from a partner more interested in changes) decide on MARITAL therapy. And here we are faced, to put it mildly, with different visions of the “picture of marriage”... “The collapse of illusions” is painful... And we need to learn to somehow deal with the feelings that this reality evokes... Bunnies, cats and suns are getting married, and goats, bitches and deer are bred!!! (c) It is very important that at the stage of mutual reproaches and accusations, spouses remember that their common goal is not to destroy each otherfriend, but remain a couple / (if this is so!, and their common enemy is the usual cycle of interaction (which can be changed, and the therapist can help them with this), and not at all a stubborn partner who does not want to admit his guilt... This is a particularly difficult period for those who have lived for a long time in a “cocoon of fusion” - in a cozy “cradle” - “I am you. You are me.” But it is stupid to pretend that the spouses are absolutely the same, they want the same thing. at the same moment, and that marriage does not require sacrifices at all (from each of the partners)...Marriage is a constant confrontation..., and marriage vows are often given at such a young age, when neither the groom nor the bride is able to finally understand who they are and what they want from life (and from relationships), and they certainly don’t think twice about promising each other to stay together all their lives, that in ten, twenty years they will become different people... and their marriage vows will require revision... I I believe in romance, but I know that even in the brightest and purest love there are always two sides, passion passes, what attracted us at the moment of falling in love, when we fell out of love, often irritates us, but the relationship does not necessarily end there... Surprisingly, , sometimes, I get the feeling that when people get married, they are guided solely by pictures from advertising videos, where happy couples wander around a flowery meadow day and night, and a cute playful child frolics (moderately!) next to a small beautiful dog... That's all family members are ABSOLUTELY and FINALLY happy... For them there is nothing but light and endless joy, and 24 hours a day they smile tenderly and hold each other in their arms... And, of course, they never quarrel... But in fact, our life is it is the daily coincidence or discrepancy between reality and our expectations. Two people who received different upbringings, have different ideas, different needs, and are simply different - begin to build a “common paradise”, and often end up in hell. Where initially there is a lot of “charm”, subsequently there is a lot of disappointment... Any spouse after some time after the wedding, he is faced with some “pathological features” of his partner’s psyche. I don’t know about you, but perhaps due to the specifics of my profession, I strongly doubt that there are 100% normal people and absolutely harmonious marriages (I don’t believe in Absolutes , and the absolute fault of One as well). Most of us (if we’re lucky) are more or less neurotic... Everyone, due to the “biographical (traumatic) aspects of their past, solves development problems in their own way, achieving this by the time they meet with a partner of greater or lesser success. But, we all, one way or another, strive for a feeling of security, we go through a stage when, being dependent, like a child, we simultaneously try to be independent, do everything to separate ourselves from our parents (or other authority figures) and at the same time desperately need their care and support, we doubt ourselves and others, we make mistakes, we yearn for close relationships and experience fear of absorption and dissolution, we are afraid of our own and their aggression, pain, the possibility of loneliness and rejection, we experience the need for power and the desire to obey, we experience love and hatred, often at the same time (and the greater the love, the greater the hatred), pride and moments of our own humiliation... If we are lucky, we solve at least some of these problems before marriage, but, more often than not, we bring all our “developmental pathology” into relationships with partner. And, when the “wedding march has sounded”, the fog of idealization has “dissipated”, we find ourselves faced with a sad fact - our partner is not at all who he seemed... And, if we have the courage, then the next thing we are forced to admit is that we are too are quite far from ideal (and often there is something that irritates us in our partner, but we do not accept it in ourselves, or we desperately would like to have it)... And then comes the moment of choice - do we want to solve these problems together or do we do it separately? Staying does not mean that one of the partners should take on the task of “growing up” or eternal., 1997.