Published Articles
By Dr. William R. Morrow

“Good Guys and Bad Guys In Divorce”

Divorce is not just divorce; it is not just calling off a contract. Something else frequently happens that doesn't even deserve the name divorce. I'd call it "The Mother of All Vengence".The new name demands capital letters because it takes on an evil life of its own. Two perfectly nice people are often turned into monsters beyond their own recognition. The retro-memory of great-days-past goes numb in favor of demonizing the spouse. In the old days, married partners could see and cope with the mixture of good and bad behavior hovering, Yin and Yang, in each person. In this new and wretched time of coming apart, mates can go weird: All the bad seems to loom in the other person, All righteousness seems reside in the self-perceived innocent party. It is a rerun of movies of the Old West, simple division of the good guys and bad guys, as if, in this high emotional state of divorce, the wounded parties can't cope with the more complex emotions. But complex it is, because hurt becomes anger, and guilt morphs into blame. Run the soundtrack: Overture to the War of 1812.
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Here's the scenario: John and Mary are a nice couple with some occasional conflicts. After a heated discussion in which both say things they don't mean, John throws his trump card at Mary about the possibility they should get divorced. He doesn't mean it, but he's so frustrated, he makes the ploy. Mary thinks this could be serious and that John might drain their joint bank accounts so she pulls her money out in a pre-emptive move. John now suspects that Mary is going to "take him to the cleaners", (and maybe run off with the kids) so he hires an attorney to "protect his rights". Although Mary's attorney is reluctant to encourage this nice couple to go to war, he none-the-less advises her to make document-sure she and the children are protected. Now there are two adversarial parties, each with their own legal advisors. It gets murky; no real "good guy" will emerge. Acting defensively, they have each already begun to think of their spouse as the enemy. The battle has begun. Worse than anything John or Mary could have thought up themselves to fight about, the lawyers feed them new ammunition to hurl at each other. As things work toward a climax of spilled blood, the lawyers, in the name of protecting their respective clients, battle each other. These lawyers, who tell me they don't relish this warfare, get heated up over many emotions they don't understand. They themselves need somebody to untangle their nasty inter-professional behaviors, a kind of divorce of its own. After all, they have to prepare themselves for custody and visitation disputes.
Now mental health professionals are hired to prove that each parent is the better one, and they will testify to such, as experts. I haven't yet heard of one of these experts declaring neither parent can qualify as capable based on their recent hateful behavior to each other.

The phenomenon of basically good people turning into hateful adversaries is a very unpleasant scene. Bad things happen to good people, and, yes, it is possible that good people can behave badly without becoming the enemy. There are some truly abusive situations of a marriage that require protective action, but the majority of the divorce reactions, I believe, are unnecessarily polarized and hurtful. With a little self-examination, two grown-ups can make the best of a bad situation.

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