How does grief affect marriage?
Grief Can Create Marital Conflict Sometimes, when the grieving partner struggles to understand or express their feelings, these negative emotions truly are misdirected at the spouse. As a result, a spouse may become defensive, hurt, or angry in response.
Does grief cause divorce?
After the loss of a child, many bereaved couples can experience serious marital difficulties within months following the death of a child. The divorce rate among bereaved couples has been the subject of controversy after Harriet Schiff published a book illustrating that 75 percent of such parents eventually divorce.
What happens to a marriage after the death of a child?
Marriages that have sustained the loss of a child through death experience the same valleys and peaks as any other marriage, just in a more exaggerated form. Whether they become better or worse, the one sure thing is that the marriage will never be the same again as it was before the child’s death.
Why is there so much family misunderstanding after a parent dies?
Here’s the problem, death and grief can make people act kind of crazy and it can seriously rock a family’s center of balance. If the death happened within the family, then there is fertile ground for family misunderstanding as family members try and deal with changing roles and dynamics, different grieving styles, and complicated emotions.
What happens to a family when a member dies?
When someone dies, the whole family system is thrown off. Grieving family members find themselves disinterested and/or incapable of behaving in the ways they used to. Not only do people have to cope with grief, but they also must deal with the fact that a vital piece of the family is gone.
How long does grief last after the death of a spouse?
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist. There is a prolonged sense of loss for many years and it is not unusual for it to last sometimes even as long as 20 years. It is believed that the average grief stage for the death of a spouse is two years, but it is four to five years for the death of a child.