So you’re no longer denying the fact that your marriage is ending (STAGE 1). And you’re deep into being angry as hell about it (STAGE 2).
Now you’re ready for the next stage of grief: BARGAINING (STAGE 3).
And it’s not pretty. You’re either begging your partner to take you back, or you’re making deals with God to change his or her mind. It looks something like this:
“I’ll start dressing sexier if you stay.”
“I swear I’ll never nag you again or be jealous if you’ll just come back.”
“I promise to go back to church, God, if you will just make him love me again.”
Why would anyone go to these lengths? Why would you want to bargain with or for someone who no longer wants to be with you?
There are 3 distinct reasons why bargaining is one of the stages of grief that we go through during divorce.
- We’re afraid of the unknown.
The human brain is wired to keep us out of harm’s way. This is leftover from prehistoric times when we had to avoid things that could kill us. So our “instincts” told us to stay where things were familiar and not to venture outside of our comfort zone. In today’s world, that is translated into our need to continue doing what is “comfortable” even if it no longer serves us. So our brain is desperate for our life to get back to “normal” where it knows it will feel safe.
2. We’re desperate to avoid the loneliness and sadness.
We’ve all watched friends suffer through divorce, and we don’t want to have to go through it ourselves. It’s true, you will be sad and lonely…for a while. But you will recover, and life will go on. And, yes, you will even be happy again. But we just dwell on that first part, where you know it’s going to be sad and lonely. We forget to notice that those friends who went through divorce are actually quite happy now.
3. We want to preserve the family because of the children.
We’ve all heard the horrifying statistics about children from divorced homes. They’re more likely to do poorly in school, to do drugs, even to commit suicide. If that isn’t enough to make you bargain, then I don’t know what is. But what we’re forgetting is this: children who grow up in homes where there is abuse fare much worse than children of divorce. And abuse doesn’t just mean physical abuse. If your child is hearing constant arguing, yelling, name-calling, door-slamming, or if he sees one or both parents constantly upset or frustrated, that is a toxic environment, and that child’s odds will be the same as a child of divorced parents. You may be able to hide a broken marriage from the rest of the world, but you can’t hide it from your kids.
The bad news about the bargaining stage (besides being very unattractive) is that it lowers our self-esteem. But the good news is that it means you’ve finally come to terms with the fact that your divorce is real — you’re just desperately trying to put it off a little bit longer. You are almost through the 5 stages of grief, and before you know it, you’ll be on the road to finding happiness again.