Anger not faced doesn't go away; it is redirected. A "divorce
hangover" begins when anger becomes directed toward whatever or whomever
(including yourself) you consider responsible for the divorce. Here's
how to release your divorce-related anger.
Divorce is a profound, life-changing experience. It's painful,
it's confusing, and it turns your world upside down. But at some point,
it should be over.
If it's not -- if the pain, anger, resentment, depression, or
emotional confusion seem to go on forever -- then you're in the clutches
of a divorce hangover. A hangover is an ongoing connection with your
ex-spouse or former life that keeps you agitated or depressed, unhappy,
and stuck in the past.
Anger is the core emotion of divorce. The hangover begins when
clean, honest anger at the losses and changes of divorce is converted
into a secondary, once-removed anger -- usually directed toward your
ex-spouse, his or her new partner, their children, or even your new
partner.
Anger Once-Removed
The losses and changes are so painful that many people will do
anything to avoid feeling them. When you don't face these losses
directly, you don't experience the natural anger that they create.
Anger not faced doesn't go away; it is redirected. A divorce
hangover begins when anger becomes directed toward whatever or whomever
(including yourself) you consider responsible for the divorce. It
becomes a protective device to keep you from feeling the pain of all
that loss.
Grant had loved Jackie since high school and built his whole life
around their relationship. When she told him after two years of marriage
that she had fallen in love with Patrick and was leaving, Grant was
devastated. He simply couldn't face the fact that his great love didn't
love him anymore. He had lost the most important thing in his life, and
on top of everything else, he felt like a complete fool.
Instead of experiencing and expressing his anger at those losses,
he redirected it toward Jackie's new lover. Patrick became the villain,
and Grant could act out against him with threatening phone calls and
even a fistfight, rather than deal directly with his feelings about all
that he had lost.
Clean Anger
Divorce is a kind of death; it is healthy and natural to mourn the
end of a marriage and the loss of expectations, illusions, and false
hopes -- and an important part of that grieving process is anger.
In On Death and Dying, Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross cites the five
stages of grief as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and
acceptance. When you finally admit your loss and experience that pain,
you are likely to be furious. If you let yourself experience the clean,
raw, natural anger of grief, you can avoid a hangover.
You have a right to be angry, and to express your anger. It's not
fair that your marriage is over. You did the best you could and it
didn't work out. You may feel like railing against fate, "I set out to
have a good marriage, I did everything I could, and I wanted it to work
out!" This kind of anger resolves into acceptance, and has an end. At
some point, it's over.
If you can't let yourself grieve the end of the marriage, then
it's not really over for you. Some part of you can still pretend those
losses never happened, or that you'll wake up someday and everything
will be back where it was. It's not that you haven't lost something; you
just aren't telling yourself the truth about it. You're living in an
illusion -- frozen in time, stuck back in the marriage, and unable to
move forward.
Sharon said, "As long as I didn't cry and scream about losing the
house, I felt I hadn't really lost it somehow. Of course, I had lost it.
We'd put it on the market, and other people had bought it and moved in.
But part of me still lived there, even though it no longer had anything
to do with my real life. I felt kind of funny and had to push myself a
little to let go and bottom out, to scream and cry about losing that
beautiful, beautiful home. But if I hadn't, I'd probably still be
'living' there."
Tricky Business
Hangover anger is slippery. You can't control it, you can't
release it appropriately, and sometimes you can't even find it until it
suddenly erupts.
"I just couldn't get rid of the anger," Kevin said. "Whenever I thought
about how she took me to the cleaners in the settlement, I sat down and
fired off a scathing letter to her. I couldn't figure out what else to
do, even though it usually made me feel even worse."
Since Kevin's anger was directed at his ex-wife rather than at its
true source -- the losses and changes that had turned his life upside
down -- it never was released. It was a loose cannon that never stopped
firing, but never hit the target because it was pointing in the wrong
direction.
A Perfect Target
The most frequent target of once-removed, hangover anger is your
ex-spouse: the person without whom there would be no loss or change, the
person who seems to be standing between you and your ability to
recapture the past. That person -- or his or her new mate -- becomes the
villain, the one responsible for all the hurt and pain.
This is not a conscious decision. Usually you are not even aware
of redirecting the anger, but it shows up in a variety of ways. Here are
a few:
- Revenge: Carolyn had tried to ruin her ex-husband in
the financial settlement, and their court battle became extremely ugly.
"I'd lost my marriage and somebody was going to pay for it. I knew --
somewhere very deep inside me -- that he was hurt, angry, and
bewildered, too. But I couldn't have cared less. I was fighting for my
life, and I went after him with both barrels. I made that guy pay for
what he'd done to me and the kids. Of course, he came back at me with
four barrels and two lawyers.
- Blame: Frank, who had left his alcoholic wife, said, "I
kept thinking of her in that house and obsessing that if it weren't for
her damned drinking, I could be living there, too, and we would be
happy."
- Sabotage: Jerry paid all his bills on time except for
one -- his alimony check to Ellen. He knew that Ellen relied on his
check to make the mortgage payment and that the bank charged her a late
fee when it didn't arrive on time. Sometimes he "forgot" to sign the
check so that by the time it was returned, signed, and sent back,
another week and a half had passed. (He admitted that he smiled as he
licked the envelope.) He told me later, "I felt cornered, and so I
attacked. Ellen was the easiest target."
- Forced and Inappropriate Control: Betty told me, "I
just wanted to fight my way out of all the upheaval and disruption, to
find some firm ground to stand on, to somehow say, 'This is who I am.
This is where I am. This is what I'm going to do.'"
One way that Betty made her stand was by refusing to drop her three sons
off at Ted's office on Friday nights. This meant that he had to drive
an hour out to the house, and an hour and a half back to his apartment,
after a 12-hour work day (he worked overtime to provide more child
support). Her lack of cooperation irritated him, started his weekend
with the boys on a sour note, and aggravated Betty's boyfriend because
their Friday nights out couldn't begin until 10:00. And when they
finally did get together, she spent most of the evening complaining
about Ted.
Anger with a Life of Its Own
Hangover anger takes on a life of its own. It doesn't even have to
be triggered; it's just there -- always and everywhere. It becomes your
baseline point of view, the fundamental attitude from which you relate
to other people and the world.
David's anger had taken on such a life of its own that his
ex-wife, Sandy, didn't have to do much to make him furious. He lived in a
perpetual state of turmoil. In his mind, she was the source of all his
pain, the arch-villain who was out to make him miserable.
When she actually did do something -- like take him back to court
-- he went to town, retaliating by telling their friends ugly stories
about her and being late with alimony and child support.
Hangover anger so sapped his energy that even his career was
suffering. In our initial counseling session, he said, "My whole life is
in shambles. Now even my career is up for grabs." Throughout the
discussion, he kept talking about "that damned woman and that damned
divorce."
David saw that he had not wanted to face the loss of his children
and home, so he had misdirected that anger toward Sandy and life in
general. He was no longer angry at people or things; he was simply
angry.
The Ultimate Release
How can you tell if yours is the clean, natural, healthy anger of
grief or the self-destructive anger of the divorce hangover? The clean
anger of grief cleanses your spirit and goes away. Divorce hangover
anger persists and turns ugly, attacking both the people you hold
responsible for your bad feelings and innocent bystanders. If you're
ever in doubt, ask yourself how far removed the anger is from its true
source -- the losses and changes. The farther removed it is, the less
healthy it is.
Peg was chronically furious at her ex-husband because he was not
giving her enough money. She realized her anger was the result of being
broke after the divorce and not yet being able to find good work. The
anger at her ex was futile (he was a disabled veteran) and kept her in
her divorce hangover. When you recognize how you have misdirected anger
over loss and change into anger against your ex-spouse or others, a huge
portion of that anger simply disappears.
The anger that remains is much easier to manage because you
understand it. You know how it works, what it's trying to do, and where
it's likely to show up. You're always a step ahead of it.
There's no magic formula to letting go of anger. It is very
simple. You have to want to give it up -- notice when it raises its
head, and let it go consciously. You have to choose being happy over
being right. The clearer you become about where your hangover anger
lies, how it works, what it is protecting, and what it is costing you,
the more quickly and easily it dissolves. The exercises in "Releasing
Anger" at the end of this article will take you through the process of
releasing hangover anger.
Unmask your Hangover
Hangover anger has many clever disguises. If you recognize it, it
will start to weaken and disappear. It has to stay hidden in order to
survive.
The Cover-Up
Any good disguise presents illusion as reality, so it really does
feel as if you're angry at the other person and that your anger is
justified.
Karen and Charles were divorced five years ago, but she keeps
dragging him back into court to revise the financial settlement. Charles
says, "I don't understand it. No matter how much I give her, it isn't
enough."
When they were divorced, Karen simply couldn't deal with the loss
of their beautiful home, her standing in the community, and the
connection with his family, with whom she was very close. Taking Charles
back to court again and again gave her an outlet for the anger and also
maintained her connection with him, with their marriage, and with his
family.
That's not how it felt to Karen, though. In her mind, she was
doing it so that justice would be done and she would get what she
deserved. He had promised her a certain lifestyle and then broken that
promise. To her, the anger had nothing to do with loss; it was a
question of right and wrong.
Perhaps Karen was right and had a perfectly good claim on
everything she was demanding, but she was ignoring her own
responsibility in the marriage and her participation in the divorce, and
keeping herself in the role of a victim. She was also ignoring the
present reality, which was that she was no longer married to Charles. As
long as she overlooked those two things, the hangover would continue.
Your anger and outrage may seem as real and justifiable as Karen's
righteous indignation at Charles. The giveaway is how you feel. Are you
happy? Are you relaxed? Are you spending energy on the old
relationship, or are you getting on with your life? Are you accepting
your own responsibility in all this? Are you accepting life as it is, or
pretending it's how you would like it to be?
Masks
Everyone masks the hangover differently, but because they are unconscious, these masks are often hard to pinpoint.
If you have a divorce hangover, you have a mask. Without the mask,
you'd have to face the pain, the anger at your losses, and your
responsibility for your life as it is now. If you did that, you wouldn't
have a hangover.
These are a few of the many masks a hangover can wear:
- The Sexual Mask: Bill couldn't say enough bad things
about Cheryl to their friends, but was aggressively sexual when they did
"run into each other." This set up a "star-crossed lovers" drama
between the two of them, which they both enjoyed playing out to the
audience of their friends. "What a great couple they made! What passion!
What a tragedy it didn't work out!" This drama kept them from having to
admit that their marriage was over or feeling the pain of that loss. It
also kept them both out of other relationships.
- The "Poor Me" Mask: Lisa has been depressed ever since
her divorce from Saul two years ago, but whenever he's around, the
depression becomes much worse. When he comes to see the kids, she greets
him at the door with a martyred look, a sigh, and perhaps a "reluctant"
tear in her eye. She doesn't know how she is going to make ends meet
this month with only that small amount of child support, and Tommy's
extra soccer expenses made the burden worse. She's afraid Samantha's "I
hate boys!" stage has something to do with what her father did to her.
She supposes it doesn't matter that she's too old for another
relationship or that men no longer find her attractive; she's just
trying to make ends meet and hold herself together for the sake of the
children so that they, too, won't be ruined by the divorce.
- The Crazed Bitch/Bastard Mask: Boyd and Dayna have been
the original Bickersons since their divorce and just missed being cast
in Hollywood's divorce hangover epic, The War of the Roses.
She tries to bleed him with a new financial settlement almost every
year. When this happens, he delights in revealing the details of his
other relationships, even when the children are present. Last
Thanksgiving, he sent her a dozen dead roses. When he came to pick up
the children later that afternoon, she threw cold, leftover gravy on
him.
Recently, they found themselves at the same cocktail party.
Loud, ugly words were exchanged, and before the evening was over, she
had drawn blood with a fingernail slash to Boyd's new wife's cheek.
These are very powerful emotions, but it's not as simple as it seems. If
Boyd and Dayna's problems were strictly with one another, the anger
would release after it was expressed. The strength of their hangovers
suggests how deep their losses were.
There are as many masks as there are people with divorce
hangovers, and you know best what yours looks like. When you can get
beyond the mask to what you're really feeling, you begin dealing with
reality rather than illusion.
The Faces of Anger
Anger shows up differently in assertive and non-assertive people,
and can turn either outward toward others or inward toward oneself.
Assertive people tend to act out. They move, but they move in
circles. They call in the middle of the night, never miss a chance to be
sarcastic or critical, spend hours figuring out how to thwart the other
person, and may use the children or money as tools to "get" their
ex-spouse. They send their kids to the other parent's house with
messages like: "Dad, Coach says I have to have a helmet to play hockey
and Mom says she can't buy it." They may also instruct their children to
say hurtful things to the other parent's new mate.
The ultimate divorce hangover for this personality takes the form
of actually killing the ex-spouse. All too often we read of the tragic
murders of ex-spouses and even children and other relatives by a crazed
and enraged ex-spouse.
Less assertive people are likely to be depressed, which is anger
turned inward, the "flight" part of our instinctive "flight or fight"
reaction to fear and pain. Rather than acting out, they tend to withdraw
and run away. This is fine for a while if you just need time alone to
heal, but can become destructive if you hide because you never want to
risk being hurt again.
Depression is anger bottled up inside. Life seems filtered through
a screen, without spontaneity or expression. But even depression can be
used to punish the other person if he or she can't get you to talk,
smile, or communicate.
Sometimes depression becomes mired in self-pity. It can be an
attempt to garner sympathy and make others feel responsible for your
situation, but unfortunately, it usually backfires and pushes others
away.
Depression brings on inertia. Everything stagnates and
deteriorates. You don't take care of the house, the kids, or yourself.
Pete tried to save his marriage by working through his "emotional kinks"
in therapy. Just as he felt he was making real progress, his wife,
Helen, "bailed out." He was desperate to make the marriage work and
pleaded with her to hang in there just a little longer, but she insisted
on leaving and they agreed to be friends. There were no children and
they had enough money for each of them to buy and furnish separate
homes.
Helen went on with her life, devoting more time to her career and
eventually becoming interested in another man. Pete knew that there was a
new life out there for him somewhere, but was too afraid to explore it.
He began to feel sorry for himself and lose himself in the inertia of
depression.
He was angry that he had treated Helen badly during their
marriage, and even angrier that he hadn't been given another chance to
show her the man he felt he had become, but he was afraid to say much to
her for fear of driving her even farther away. Instead, he turned it
all back in on himself. He wasn't working, he slept a lot, the new house
went to ruin, and he was preoccupied with the second chance he never
got.
The ultimate divorce hangover for this more passive personality is
suicide. Rosemary became more and more withdrawn in the year following
her divorce until, finally, she rarely left the house. She made it clear
that she wanted to be left alone, and so that's what people did.
Everyone was so surprised when she showed up at a cocktail party one
June night that no one really noticed she was dressed entirely in beige.
She had always worn bold colors. She was gracious to everyone and,
although she left a bit early, her friends were glad to see that she was
making an effort to get out.
A week later, she was found dead from an overdose of pills. All
her affairs were in order and she had even left notes covering every
detail of the children's schedule, down to when their clothes had to be
picked up at the cleaners. Her friends realized that the night of the
cocktail party, she had come to say goodbye.
Take the first step
By deciding to heal your divorce hangover, you'll make a
courageous commitment to yourself and your future. That's the first step
-- and the most important one. The healing process can be a springboard
to a whole new way of relating to yourself, to other people, and to
life. Your success will give you the skills and confidence to handle
anything that comes up. Some of the steps will be easy for you, and some
will be more difficult and require more attention. Stay flexible, and
stay vigilant.
Exercises: Releasing Anger
Recognizing Hangover Anger
1. What forms does your anger take?
2. Next to each behavior, write who the target is.
3. What reactions does your anger prompt from these target people?
4. If there is a reaction from them, what do you do next?
5. What do they do in response to that?
6. Does your anger produce any change?
7. Recognizing that loss and change are the causes of your anger, rank the ones that anger you most.
8. Think of ways, post-divorce, that you can bring some of these things back into your life without harming anyone.
Unmasking Hangover Anger
1. Which mask(s) do you wear to act out your hangover anger? The
sexual mask? The "poor me" mask? The crazed bitch/bastard mask?
2. Is your anger more assertive (directed outward) or non-assertive (directed inward)? Give examples.
3. Do you see a relationship between your hangover mask and the form your anger takes? What is that connection?
