Anguish Of ‘Stock’ Splits
TWENTY years of marriage – and it collapsed just like the Dow.
“Cindy” and “Tom” met at a high school in the city and stayed together through thick and thin – attending colleges in different states and then different graduate schools.
Cindy (not her real name) wanted to be the city’s best teacher; Tom set his sights on the lucrative investment-banking world.
A wedding was always in the cards for the seemingly perfect couple.
Tom became a bond trader at a household-name bank, working 60 hours a week and raking in as much as $1 million a year.
As Tom’s star rose and his income spiked, Cindy quit teaching and focused on raising the couple’s two young kids.
Then disaster struck.
The housing market collapsed. In December, Tom was laid off.
And Cindy simply turned to Tom and said, “Fix it.”
Refusing to scale back, she booked a house in the Hamptons for this summer, splurged on shopping trips and continued the posh interior redecoration of their city home.
When Tom discovered Cindy had begun cheating on him since he was laid off, their marriage was about as stable as a hedge fund.
Three months later, with Tom still out of work, Cindy packed her bags and hired a divorce lawyer.
“I lost my family, lost my kids, lost my income, lost my identity,” Tom told his divorce lawyer, Dawn Cardi, the founding partner at her Park Avenue firm.
So much for staying together through good times and bad.
City lawyers say “economic divorces” are skyrocketing as the stock market slumps, Wall Street jobs are cut and bonuses are banished.
Manhattan divorce lawyer Joshua Forman, whose firm handles several hundred divorces a year with many clients who work on Wall Street, said he’s seen a 20 percent surge in divorce filings in the past six months.
“They have to cancel the country-club membership, no more expensive summer camps, cancel the three-week trip to Europe. It’s hard to keep up with the Joneses when your job’s in jeopardy. And it takes a toll on the marriage,” Forman explained.
One of Forman’s clients – who made more than $1 million a year at one of the city’s largest financial firms and shared a fabulous, multimillion-dollar Manhattan apartment with his wife and two children – was let go after the bank downsized in late January.
Fights started to escalate over finances. He began complaining about her spending habits and gave her an ultimatum: Stop wasting money or get back to the work force. She refused.
Things came to a head when they couldn’t afford to send their kids to their favorite, but exorbitantly priced, summer camp.
In June, they both approached attorneys and are taking steps toward divorce.
Similar stresses broke up Tom and Cindy. After five months of negotiations – with Cindy continuing to spend wildly and Tom’s severance package running dry – a divorce settlement seems far off.
Fights like these are common these days, according to Alton Abramowitz, vice president of the Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers and a partner in a Manhattan firm, who said he’s so overburdened with caseloads that he’s had to hire a new lawyer.
When one Manhattan client’s bonus, which made up the vast percentage of his income, is cut in half, questions started pouring in.
“Keep the country-club membership? Vacation in Europe? Lease the BMW?” Abramowitz recalled from conversations with his client.
It became too much – his client started internalizing what was happening at work and “stopped functioning well at home,” he explained.
Divorce was the next step.
Peter Bodnar says his White Plains firm for divorces has seen a 20 to 25 percent “increase in interest,” mainly from clients who work in “hedge funds and large brokerage houses.”
Couples counselor Dr. DeAnsin Parker is so “extraordinarily busy” that she’s had to wait-list prospective clients and, for the first time in her career, turn people away.
“It’s the fault line that finally cracks,” said Parker of the worsening economy. “It’s the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Many of her clients are refugees of the Bear Stearns collapse – one of whom booked an appointment after he lost $50 million in 24 hours.
“He had to grieve – there was enormous grief,” Parker said. “He had problems figuring out how to explain it to his wife and children.”
But it’s not only the men who have to contend with the adjustment.
“These wives are accustomed to seeing [their husbands] as strong. But now they’re weak and vulnerable,” Parker said. “Women, typically, if they’ve lived one particular lifestyle, assume that their husband should just solve the problem.
“Many times women can’t cope with the fact that a man can be emotional and fragile,” she said.
Many times, these women will start comparing their husbands to other, more successful men, and adultery becomes an issue, Parker said.
“These people sincerely believe that their lives are over.”
Additional reporting by Janon Fisher – scahalan@nypost.com
Divorce or stay together?
Just how much are kids affected by divorce?
Would they be better off if their parents had stayed together?
Is there any way to help make marriage stick?
Is there any way to help make divorce less destructive?
For several decades, these questions have been at the forefront of many psychologists’ and sociologists’ minds, as divorce morphed from something affecting a small marginalized segment of society to being part of mainstream family experience.
While divorce may be commonplace, with approximately 40 percent of marriages ending in divorce, it has a sharp impact on families. The exact nature of this impact is the subject of much debate and controversy.
Divorce is an enigma about which nearly everyone has an opinion or personal insight. And because the issues at hand in divorce are so personal and emotional, sifting facts from feelings can be a muddy process. If staying together is better for kids, then some people will feel validated, others guilty or defensive, including those researching this topic.
“The culture wars invade the interpretation of divorce research,” says Robert Emery, director of the Center for Children, Families and the Law at the University of Virginia. Emery, author of “The Truth About Children and Divorce,” said via e-mail that studies can be manipulated to help advance various political agendas from family values to the benefits of alternative families to fathers’ rights.
While some researchers show that young adults who grew up as children of divorce suffered serious negative effects from their parents’ divorce, new research points to divorce having very little impact on children’s behavior.
Divorce disadvantages
University of Portland professor of sociology Robert Duff has been teaching a course on family and marriage to college students for 30 years. In that time, he has seen a giant shift in the way students, researchers and society view marriage and divorce.
Divorce used to have a stigma. “It was a mark of immorality and lack of character.”
Now people are much more sympathetic. But divorce still comes with problems.
Duff says it is associated with many disadvantages, including economic hardships and loss of contact with fathers.
“I think children really want to have a mom and a dad in the same house, and once that is fractured, they have a really hard time,” said Dawn Cardi, a Manhattan lawyer who has worked for decades with divorce and children. “It’s like a breach of trust.”
Duff indicates that most research shows that a majority of kids experience a one- to two-year crisis period after divorce. These children can be stressed out and have academic, social and behavioral problems. This is normal, according to Duff.
“The controversy comes in terms of long-term consequences,” said Duff.
Well-known psychologist Judith Wallerstein closely studied a group of 60 divorced families from Marin County in California for decades. Her research showed a “sleeper effect” for children whose parents had divorced. As adults, many of these subjects had a difficult time forming long-lasting personal relationships, and they suffered psychological problems.
Many other studies from sociologists show a much different picture, in which the “vast majority are able to pull their lives together,” according to Duff. On average, the studies show about 75 percent to 80 percent of these adult children do OK.
Emery found that most children from divorced families did not experience long-term psychological problems. But many, “perhaps most, do experience a lot of short-term and often long-term psychological pain.” The difference between pain and problems is huge. Psychological problems include depression, ongoing behavioral disturbances or not being able to have normal relationships. Psychological pain includes sadness, anger or worrying about your parents fighting.
“Pain isn’t pathology, but pain is huge in psychological importance, including the fact that, in the long run, many people grow in emotional richness and depth as a result of experiencing pain,” said Emery.
Elizabeth Marquardt looked at the long-term consequences of divorce in her 2005 book, “Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce,” which argues that there is no such thing as a good divorce.
“When it comes to the suffering of children of divorce, too often our society falls silent out of deference to the feelings of divorced and single parents,” said Marquardt via e-mail.
Marquardt uses the results of a telephone survey of 1,500 adults ages 18-35 to highlight the ongoing pain people experience growing up in a divorced household.
Those growing up in a divorce without a lot of conflict (which Marquardt called a “good” divorce) were more likely to say their childhood was stressful and were more likely to say that they experienced many losses in their lives than children from either happy marriages or unhappy, low conflict marriages. When asked what they did when they needed comfort as children, 69 percent of those from intact families said they went to one or both parents, whereas just 33 percent of children of divorce sought out a parent for comfort.
“In my study the children of even ‘good’ divorces fared worse than those who reported their parents had an unhappy but low conflict marriage,” said Marquardt.
In the past decade, many government agencies and nonprofits, likely inspired by this kind of research detailing the downside of divorce, have started marriage promotion efforts throughout the country.
New research
Not all researchers, however, believe that divorce causes behavioral problems in children. Allen Li, the associate director of the Population Research Center at the RAND Corp., published new research last week suggesting divorce does not create problems for children.
Many previous studies Li examined compared children of divorce with children from intact marriages. He believes this approach doesn’t take into account the immeasurable differences among families.
“Each family is kind of unique in its own way,” said Li. “What’s really important is how parents treat their kids.”
And that is a very difficult trait to measure.
Li’s study tries to eliminate this issue by comparing the same set of children before and after divorce. This study uses data collected from divorced mothers of more than 6,000 children ages 4-15.
The moms were asked to report whether their children exhibited 28 behavioral problems, including crying a lot, arguing, cheating and being disobedient. While some kids’ behavioral problems increased after their parents divorced, others decreased. On average, Li found that divorce had zero effect on behavior in children.
“I’m hoping people will think about what are the necessary by-products of divorce,” said Li.
He would like to see the debate move away from whether parents should get divorced to how to best help parents.
“We have to recognize the fact that at least a proportion of divorced parents have been successful in helping children stay on track.”
Further, Li is not sure that promoting marriage is an effective public policy strategy that translates into increased child well-being.
Emery supports Li’s findings to a point, saying that “many problems that get called ‘consequences of divorce’ actually precede a marital separation and therefore cannot be consequences of divorce.”
He notes that studies similar to Li’s have found consequences of divorce and that Li’s research focuses on psychological problems, not on pain, “which seems to be a much more prevalent consequence of divorce for children.”
Better off together?
“What feels unhappy to adults can often feel like stability for children, so long as the parents are not engaged in high conflict with one another,” said Marquardt.
She believes children fare better in these “good enough” marriages than in a peaceful divorce. And she doesn’t think parents can simply wait until their children are older to divorce.
“When you break up, your children, at any age (even grown) are usually devastated. Your relationship with your children could rupture and take years to heal,” said Marquardt. “Of course the parents must make the decision that they think is best for them and their family, but at any age, divorce is never easy on anybody. It might solve some problems, but it also opens many new and unexpected and often unpleasant doors.”
Cardi encounters many families that don’t seem to put much energy into making their marriage work.
“People have already checked out emotionally or psychologically.” They file for divorce before ever seeing a counselor.
“Younger people are less willing to tolerate difference and quicker to move to get divorced,” said Cardi.
Instead of focusing on the well-being of children, parents could consider focusing on each other. That’s what University of California professor of psychology emeritus Philip Cowan and his wife Carolyn Pape Cowan found in their decades-long research on couples. They discovered that couples who joined a group for parents for several weeks around the birth of their baby fared much better in terms of marital satisfaction than those doing it on their own. These couples were able to see that other new parents have similar problems and they were able to learn good ways of communicating. Cowan sees the parents’ relationship as the missing link in the discussion about parenting and divorce. The first step in being a good parent is for the parents to have a strong, loving bond.
“They think it’s selfish to spend time (alone) together; but no, it’s good for the kids,” said Cowan. “Staying together is not going to help if the relationship is not going well.”
Duff says his students don’t like the idea of their parents staying together “for the children.”
“A lot of kids say, ‘I would feel terrible if they stayed together just for me,’” said Duff.
Sacrificing in this way used to be viewed as heroic, now it is seen as hypocritical.
Emery says that “Should we stay together for the children?” is the wrong question to ask. While his research supports the idea that children may fare better in an intact home, he does not believe parents should avoid divorce for the kids.
“Parents need to take responsibility for their own decisions, whether the decision is to stay or leave. Making either decision ‘for the children’s sake’ is a responsibility dodge, and a huge guilt trip for children,” said Emery.
Divorce may have become commonplace, but that doesn’t mean it is easy for the families involved. Parents hoping for a clear answer from the research are sure to be disappointed, but the studies and commentaries can help them learn what issues to consider and how to examine the potential effect on their children.
Alandra Johnson can be reached at 617-7860 or at ajohnson@bendbulletin.com.
Are You Headed for a Split?
Divorce is like a freight train, experts say. But while most everyone sees the faint light in the distance long before its iron chassis and churning wheels are right on top of them, many like to ignore the impending end and convince themselves that the light is really nothing.
“There are always signals but you may not understand them,” said Bonnie Russell, a Del Mar, Calif., divorcee and owner of a professional referral service, who has her own experience with the topic. “You bump into people and they aren’t as friendly as they normally were. You think, ‘That’s odd,’ but looking back, you realize that they knew that your spouse is having an affair. You may not know that they are cheating on you but everyone else does.”
While many marriages end because there was an affair, research varies on just what percentage of divorces are the result of an extramarital relationship. A common percentage cited is 20 percent, based on 35 years of research conducted by John Gottman, Ph.D. But psychiatrist and former columnist of Psychology Today, Frank Pittman’s findings from a 1997 study, point to a much larger percentage: 50 percent.
Several marital attorneys who have a steady diet of divorce daily agree that the number of divorces they litigate due to infidelity is larger. “Probably it’s more like 60 percent have had affairs or are having affairs. But that’s anecdotal,” said Dawn Cardi, a matrimonial lawyer of 28 years, currently in private practice in Manhattan. “I find they will blame the affair for the breakup, but often the affair is the catalyst or the symptom. And when I speak to the parties, I find they say this marriage has not been functioning for a very long time, long before the affair.”
When an extramarital affair is the precursor to a divorce, the signs leading to divorce can be a little bit different, according to some experts, often adding a dimension of secrecy or outright lying to the mix on the part of the spouse who is cheating.
But overall, most agree that the following signs are indicative that your marriage is ripe for ending.
1. A fall off in frequency and quality of intimacy.
“There is a definite lack of interest in sex and they don’t communicate about it and don’t do anything about it,” says Cardi. “Or they are in very different places on it. Basically, the trigger is that sex is not working and hasn’t worked in a while.”
2. Fighting or bickering more frequently than in the past.
According to Lauri Puhn, a family and divorce attorney-mediator in New York, N.Y., and author of “Instant Persuasion” (Penguin), the arguments are redundant and never get resolved. “It’s the about the same topic over and over again,” she said. “You are arguing over the same issue and it increases in frequency. And there is no resolution. It doesn’t go anywhere.”
Puhn says at the bottom of this and most relationship problems is communication. “It’s all about knowing good communication skills and how to resolve conflicts. My research shows that 69 percent of divorcing couples have reported unresolved arguments which lead to feelings of hopelessness.”
3. Over-scheduling commitments and/or spending lots of time on the computer or Blackberry.
Less face-to-face time, when it is intentional on one or both spouses parts, is strong indicator that a marriage is in jeopardy. “Look, there’s a certain amount of work that a person has to do but if you see it’s becoming more and more and more, and it continues to increase, especially over the holidays, that’s called distancing,” said Cardi. When one partner is unwilling to spend any time for personal time for the two of you, she says, you have a problem. “If you don’t spend any time together you can’t have intimacy” she said. “You can’t just e-mail each other to keep your marriage together.”
4. Change in the manner in which a spouse handles his or her money.
From a lawyer’s perspective, according to Cardi, the shifting around of accounts is far more telling than a spouse may let on. “People will come to me and say, ‘My husband changed accounts. He’s moving money.’ That’s a sign to me that he’s already ready to get out of the marriage and move onto the divorce stage.”
5. Daydreaming about being single or with someone other than your spouse.
According to Puhn, this is the most serious sign of all because daydreaming often happens right before the divorce. “Daydreaming happens because all the other things make you start to feel hopeless,” said the 30-year-old mediator. “You begin to think what would life be like if you weren’t together. Maybe you don’t actually want to get divorced, you want to stay together, but you are so disillusioned that you allow yourself to wonder what would today be like.” Which usually leaves you open for an affair, she added. “If you are daydreaming, you have the greater responsibility to lead the charge or go to counseling.”
The list can go on and on, but often times varies from couple to couple. But the question that hangs in the air is: How to stop the freight train in its tracks? “Talk about it and face the fact that the communication problems exist. It helps to have a third party – a professional — involved,” said Puhn. “But quite frankly, you have to fix your marriage when you start your marriage. It is a natural state for people to discover more differences and pull apart as their marriage moves along. In order to stay connected, it requires a lot of devotion and attention to detail, that’s part of the plan to not get divorced–addressing it when it happens.
Lenore Skomal is author of nine books and columnist of an award-winning weekly column in the Erie, Pa., Times-News, she also teaches college journalism in Pennsylvania.