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Separation: A New Beginning or the Beginning of the End? |
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Sometimes, of course, separation does not lead to divorce. Many times couples will separate in the hope of saving a marriage. Sometimes this can work. After all, just getting distance from a painful, antagonistic situation can provide you with enough perspective to come back together weeks or months later and sort things out. |
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One couple we know did just that. The man, a newspaper reporter, left his wife in Boston and went on assignment in Russia for a year. Their marriage had been on the rocks, but during the year apart the two developed an e-mail correspondence that brought them new intimacy and understanding. When they came back together after 12 months apart, they were ready to really commit to the relationship and even decided to start a family. |
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Most of the time, though, such plans backfire. Another couple we know, this time from Dallas, opted for a long-distance relationship as a means of gaining perspective. The decision was facilitated when the woman was offered a job in Des Moines. Unfortunately, her husband began feeling so resentful when she really left that ultimately, he could not accept her back into his lifeand he felt this way despite the fact that he was the one who had encouraged her to leave in the first place. |
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In other marriages, separationas opposed to divorcebecomes a permanent way of life. We know of a couple who stayed separate but married for some 20 years. (Indeed, they exist in that state to this day.) The woman, happily ensconced in a townhouse in Miami, played tennis during the day and spent evenings with her lover, another woman. The man, who enjoyed the city life in a Manhattan penthouse, ran a successful business and pursued a series of monogamous relationships that fell apart, one by one, when he refused to divorce. For this couple, divorce held nothing positive. It would have eroded their joint fortune and diminished the money available to their children (they had two), and, in the man's case, made him available for remarriage, an idea he hardly relished. |
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For mostpeople, however, separation is a preamble to divorce. As the very name implies, it is the first step along the journey to separate lives. Not quite permanent or irrevocable, separation enables the two individuals to get a taste of what it would be like to exist apartto manage separate households, separate finances, separate selves. We know one woman who married the first boyfriend she ever had right after college. As the marriage went on, he became increasingly critical and angry at her (psychological abuse, in fact, is the word that comes to mind). Yet because she'd never really been alone, she could not imagine life without him. Finally, through therapy, she was able to take what she |
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