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Postdivorce Relationships

Americans continue to favor marriage as a desired and normative adult life transition, but divorce rates remain near 50 percent, and marital dissolution is now an accepted feature of our social landscape. Indeed, the recent advent of “divorce announcement” stationary appears to signal a new level of public acceptance of postdivorce life as a normative life transition. Popular media, for example, are increasingly likely to represent postdivorce adults and single-parent and stepfamilies as valid and functional examples of family. Such trends reflect evolving social norms and expectations of marriage and divorce across the life span, and they represent the larger context in which individuals shape their own personal expectations of postdivorce relationships. This entry focuses on the postdivorce relationship between former spouses in particular, with the understanding that divorce affects the entire family and social network of a couple.

The postdivorce relationship between former spouses builds, by definition, on prior marital dissolution. Divorce is nearly always a disruptive and disturbing experience for the former spouses and their family members. Postdivorce couples often face diminished financial resources and a reduced standard of living, particularly among women. Former spouses must often relocate to new home(s). When children are involved, the postdivorce relationship between former spouses is likely to be much more complicated, but ultimately more significant, given parental responsibilities to provide continuity and care for children experiencing a reconfiguration of their family. Researchers and mental health clinicians (therapists) who study the long-term effects of divorce on adults and children have sought to explain those factors that contribute to positive and negative outcomes of postdivorce relationships. This entry summarizes relevant constructs and highlights significant findings regarding postdivorce relationships between former spouses. Suggestions for future directions in research and interventions are considered.

Concepts Relevant to Postdivorce Relationships

Despite a greater acceptance of divorce in American culture, individuals who divorce generally experience a profound sense of loss, sadness, and even failure. Although the end of a difficult marriage can be a relief and opportunity for growth, divorce most often signifies a loss of an intimate other, an extended family and social network, as well as an imagined future.

For many former spouses and their family members, divorce and the postdivorce relationship can evoke a form of ambiguous loss. Such losses are marked by uncertainty regarding the presence or absence of a loved person, place, or state of being. Certainly, one or both members of a divorced couple can experience a lack of clarity or agreement about the nature of one's former spouse role or place in one's life. The former spouse is still there but not there. Such ambiguity also can complicate the resolution of former social and familial identities and roles for both the individual and the larger family and social network. For example, a noncustodial parent is still a mother or father, but may have more limited opportunities to fulfill his or her parenting role. Similarly, former in-law relatives may still feel like family even when they are no longer legally or socially viewed as such. Pauline Boss, who first identified ambiguous loss as a distinct concept in family stress research, reports that such boundary ambiguity can be particularly difficult to negotiate and can threaten psychological well-being of both the individual and the larger family system if left unresolved.

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