http://www.amazon.com/Uncoupling-Turning-Points-Intimate-Relationships/dp/0679730028 I will relate this to the Russian poem "Жди меня и я вернусь - Wait for Me"
from WWII at the end. Stand by.
Diane Vaughan's "uncoupling" is the best book I read about divorce after I was divorced.
Diane had chosen to divorce her first husband and later was divorced by her second husband.
She saw divorce from both sides. She was also a psychologist.
Diane took out adds in newspapers to find other people who had been divorced and interviewed them. The patterns she noted she reported in her book.
Some of the lessons you learn from this book are applicable to other forms of personal loss, not just to divorce.
Someone who has been divorced will usually take up and activity or possesion that relates to the person who was lost.
But also my Mother took up rose gardening after my father died. Rose gardening was his hobby.
Another woman who had been disowned by her mother over a divorce situation bought a car just like her mothers.
One of the important things to learn from Diane's book is that someone who is considering divorcing their spouse is usually afraid to mention the subject to their spouse.
And they often don't get comfortable with talking about a possible divorce until they have already decided.
This leaves the unfortunate spouse with little warning. The one who is going to be left behind has not enough time to repair the marriage.
One warning sign is when the spouse takes up new hobbies, activities or even affairs outside the marriage.
Another is when they begin to change their appearance by buying new clothes and dying their hair, getting a new hair style etc.
There was even a very popular American song where the writer, Billy Joel, wrote about this changing of clothes and hair style by his then wife, Crysty Brinkely.
Billy Joel knew something was wrong but apparently didn't realize just what.
The lyrics go: "Don't go trying some new fashion. Don't change the color of your hair
You always have my unspoken passion though I might not seem to care."
It's a beautiful song and became a big hit. But I'm told Billy Joel now hates this song he wrote. I'm sure because it reminds him of his painful divorce.
Wait for me, and I'll return - only wait very hard;
Wait until you are filled with sorrow as you watch the yellow rain;
Wait when the wind sweeps the snowdrifts;
Wait in the sweltering heat;
Wait when others have stopped waiting, forgetting their yesterdays;
Wait when even from afar no letters come to you;
Wait even when others are tired of waiting;
Wait even when my mother and son think I am no more;
And when friends sit around the fire drinking to my memory,
Wait, and do not hurry to drink to my memory too;
Wait, for I'll return, defying every death;
And let those who do not wait say I was lucky;
They will never understand that, in the midst of death,
You, with your waiting, saved me;
Only you and I will know how I survived -
It's because you waited as no one else did.
Konstantin Simonov, 1941
The famous Russian WWII poem "Wait For Me" memorized by millions of Russian wives and mothers, was also written by a young man who, in the end, like Billy Joel, was left by the wife he wrote it for.
It is likely that both Simonov and Joel, a generation apart, recognized there was something wrong in their marriages and wrote a poen and a song respectively to their troubled wives.