Marital Instability And Divorce: A Case Study

Marital instability and divorce will lead potential stressful changes and disruptions in the entire family, which is a complex chain of family transitions and reorganizations that will alter roles and relationships and affect individual adjustment. Dr John Gottman (1993) summarized the “Four Horseman of the Apocalypse” which was the expression of specific negative behavior and gesture between couple that are highly predicative of a marriage dissolution. It included defensiveness, contempt, stonewalling and criticism. There are several stage models help us to understand the stages of marital dissolution. Five overlapping stages of adjustment during the divorce process were proposed by Ahrons, C.R. (Ahrons 1980a). In the initial stage, a decision-making period which one party at least is considering divorce, individual will have feeling of discontentment, stored resentments, had greater emotionally and physically distances. The initiator may experience fear, guilt, self-blame and struggling with the idea of divorce. In the second stage, the couple will encounter greater distress as one’s decision is disclosed. For those non-initiator party

It was also suitable to apply for explaining the process of divorce. The five stages were denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Denial which was the couple refuse to realize there is problem in the marriage or accept there is a marital crisis; anger was the couple became emotional escalation towards one party; bargaining was that one party attempt to compromise and ask for reunion to avoid divorce; depression was the individual become psychological distress after acknowledge that divorce was immovable; acceptance in which that individual would face the fact, solve the problem and started a new