Getting a divorce is many times a painful and traumatic experience. Your plans for the rest of your life have been crushed or dramatically altered.  The person you once thought would be your partner for life is now going their own way, without you. No matter how amicable and agreeable you and your spouse were concerning the divorce, there are bound to be some feelings of abandonment and even feelings of betrayal by both you and your spouse. These feelings are often perceived by, and transferred to, your children. Children feel the tension, anger and sadness being experienced by their parents as the marriage crumbles and eventually dissolves. The difference is that often times the children are to young and emotionally inexperienced to understand these feelings and process them in a healthy way. They have usually spent their entire lives viewing you and your spouse as a single entity, something that was a cornerstone of their mental landscape and a reference point for their perception of everyone and everything they encounter. All of that changes in their fragile little minds when their parents get a  divorce, and the emotional scars incurred from this huge trauma so early in life can often have a detrimental effect on the children throughout their development and on into their adult lives.

It is very important that parents involved in a divorce maintain their awareness of the children’s feelings and fears, and then act and speak in a manner that will make the amount of trauma experienced by the children as minimal as possible.

Most couples have experienced times in their relationship where they were asking themselves whether the relationship was worth continuing, or if it would be better to end the relationship and move on. Human beings tend to be very sensitive, somewhat irrational creatures, and this is never more true than in the case of interpersonal relationships.

While marriage is a time honored, and often beautiful custom, it is much more difficult to dissolve a relationship cemented by matrimony than a relationship not so encumbered. Divorce is often a painful, expensive, depressing ordeal. Breaking up is (almost) always hard to do, and this is doubly true for married couples.

While in some cases there is no hope of reconciling, many, if not most divorces happen before an appropriate amount of effort has been directed toward reconciliation. After all, this person you are considering severing bonds with was once the apple of your eye. Try to remember what it was you admired about your spouse the day you proposed. Does her/she still possess that quality or attribute? Is that quality still as important to you as it was then?

If the answer to both of these questions is “Yes”, then you owe it to yourself, and your spouse, to at least consider taking steps toward reconciliation. Marriage counseling, by a trained professional or perhaps a clergy member, is often a very effective method of determining if the two of you have something worth saving or if indeed it is time to sever ties and go your separate ways.