Post-divorce relationship reshuffling with ex’s family

DEAR MARIANN: After sev­eral decades of mar­riage, it ended a few years ago. Dur­ing that time I was always very close to one of my ex-spouse’s fam­ily mem­bers. Now sud­denly that has changed and I am sad­dened by the loss. What can I do?

MARIANN’S RESPONSE: First, my con­do­lences con­cern­ing the end of your mar­riage and sud­den loss of this val­ued friend­ship. Mar­riage is dif­fi­cult enough, and a divorce is even more stress­ful and, at times, heart­break­ing. Unfor­tu­nately rela­tion­ships change, even when there is no mar­riage com­po­nent. I have lost long-time friends for seem­ingly no rea­son, even after apol­o­giz­ing for some­thing that might not have been my fault. Lives evolve espe­cially when peo­ple live far away, and we become less con­nected with dis­tance. You do not men­tion where this per­son resides, but geog­ra­phy might be a factor.

My guess is this per­son has been pres­sured by your ex-spouse to min­i­mize or end their friend­ship with you. The old cliché of “blood is thicker than water” is the dom­i­nant theme in this sce­nario, espe­cially when fam­ily mem­bers are expected to have ongo­ing rela­tion­ships for the entirety of their lives together. Since you entered into the fam­ily via mar­riage ver­sus birth, the “mem­ber­ship” rules change when a divorce occurs. Even though we might have dys­func­tional fam­ily mem­bers, there is a cer­tain level of tol­er­ance we must have for our rel­a­tives, espe­cially as the hol­i­days approach, (which will prob­a­bly merit a col­umn just on that solo sub­ject.) Once a divorce occurs within a fam­ily, all of the rela­tion­ships are reshuf­fled and hol­i­days reassessed as new para­me­ters are estab­lished for how the mem­bers will inter­act, now that that the uni­fy­ing bond, the mar­riage, has ended.

Please do not blame your­self for the loss of this friend­ship, which is easy to do but serves no pos­i­tive pur­pose for you. Due to our elec­tronic age of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, rather than con­tact­ing this per­son via email or leav­ing a voice-mail, I would send a hol­i­day or birth­day card enclosed with a short, upbeat let­ter. It is much more dif­fi­cult to dis­miss a per­son­al­ized note ver­sus the quick dele­tion of an email in someone’s in-box or a mes­sage on an answer­ing machine. Within that cor­re­spon­dence, men­tion that you “miss our times together and hope to renew the rela­tion­ship at some point in the future.” After that, let go, and focus on other friend­ships which might fill the void or become a vol­un­teer for a deserv­ing orga­ni­za­tion. Let this per­son make the next move, allow­ing them to re-establish the con­nec­tion with you, on their terms. This might occur when they are again com­fort­able see­ing you, pos­si­bly when your ex-spouse is dat­ing or has remar­ried, and not feel­ing so “caught in the middle.”

Mar­i­ann Main is a licensed coun­selor and a Delaware native. Her col­umn appears weekly on Sat­ur­days. To sub­mit a ques­tion and have Mar­i­ann answer it anony­mously, visit delgazette.com/life-questions-with-local-answers or send mail to the Delaware Gazette office, 40 N. San­dusky St., suite 203, Delaware, OH 43015.

Posted by Mariann Main on Oct 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.