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I read in a book several months ago that you should have a divorce ceremony. Get some pictures and mementos from your M put them in a box and burn it or bury it.

The book said you have to mourn the death of your dreams before you can go on.

Another guy wrote a little something on the subjetc... I believe he labelled it melancholia. I know I suffer from it at times....

Mourning Theory
I originally posted this in whole but due to the number of copies floating around the internet without my name on them, it is now available for download from tradebit. I am posting this for people who have more of an interest in understanding the grieving (mourning) process.


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This paper is very academic and a bit dry because it was part of my undergraduate thesis and, of course, contained footnotes in the original.

The footnotes are not contained in the paper for copyright reasons but this is about a year’s worth of research and reading and writing. If you need a reference to something, please let me know. Although academic and dry, it gives a good overview of healthy grieving and why it’s important and what happens when you don’t grieve. It also contains a good amount of attachment theory by John Bowlby who is one of the major influences on my work.

Although written with death as the loss, the grief process is the same no matter what the loss and there is a lot here to explain the emotional process after a breakup.

If you have questions, please let me know and if you cite to this please give me credit but please please please don’t take this information from here as it is NOT properly footnoted. The reason for that is that this represents about a year’s worth of research and I don’t want to risk someone just taking my work and slapping their name on it. The original contains all the footnotes so please don’t copy this because I don’t want to be sued or accused of plagiarism or of not documenting my sources properly. Thanks! This is for informational purposes only.

From Freud Forward: Mourning Theory by Susan J. Elliott

Copyright 1999 Susan J. Elliott No part of this may be copied without the author’s permission.


In 1917 Sigmund Freud wrote “Mourning and Melancholia” to explain the “morbid disposition” of unresolved mourning. Contrasting the process of “normal” mourning to the pathological state, Freud intended this treatise to be recognized for its important focus on the complicated aspects of melancholia and its relationship to his earlier studies on depression and hysteria. Instead, the paper became the foundation for all psychological studies on mourning.

“Mourning and Melancholia” was one of the papers that resulted from Freud’s communications with Karl Abraham, who was studying depressive psychosis as a condition of unresolved mourning. Both Abraham and Freud were exploring the normal and pathological variants of mourning, responding to and amplifying each other’s writings. They agreed that mourning is a natural and necessary psychological reaction to loss and even though it “involves grave departures from the normal attitude to life,” it should not be treated as a malady. Freud’s writings focused on the significant loss of a loved one to death but said mourning would also result after “the loss of some abstraction which has taken the place of one, such as fatherland, liberty, and ideal or so on.”

The work of mourning is the reordering of object relations or letting go of the ego’s attachment to the object (loved one). This process involves a difficult struggle—definitive of the work of mourning—between wanting to hold on and needing to let go. It is carried through slowly, under great expense of time and cathartic energy. Because of the enormity of the work, the mourner often attempts to modify, delay, inhibit or stop the process before it is complete. When the psychologically necessary phases of mourning are interrupted, the conditions exist for the pathological variant, melancholia, to develop.

Freud...

Wow John, I am interested....will have to track it down and read the rest. Thanks.

You know, I had to do a little studying on Freud when I was in classes for my psych degree. Say what you want, but the guy had some really good points. I mean, if you want to take the whole theory behind a person suffering an MLC, it is due to some trauma in their early childhood that was not dealt with. That is the basis for most of Freud's teachings. It is also true that many times we do not deal with the issues because they are too painful, but choose to sweep them under the rug. I think maybe if more of us (and our respective spouses) dealt with these issues, we probably wouldn't be here!

Hey BBJ, just a few more thoughts that may or may not help you and others (myself included). We all read books and articles and honestly I am not sure about any of this....Freud or anybody else. This is not a mathermatical theorem that needs to be proven or some scientific certainty. It is life, our lives.... we hang on here becasue we have made virtual friends that we can relate to becasue of our life experiences. Maybe help each other somehow....well with that in mind, please read the following: it is from another web site and I hope it helps a little regarding what you would like to hear from Dan....here goes......

The only TRUE closure comes from inside you.

When you tell someone else that you need them to give YOU something so you can have closure, you have given them power over your life and your healing that they do not deserve. The person who hurt you cannot give you closure…nor should you want them to or expect them to or give them that kind of power. You need to move on from where you are FOR YOU no matter what they say or do.

Closure is part emotional healing work and part decision. At some point you have to decide to turn the page to DECIDE that it’s time and it’s enough and it’s over and thank you and goodbye. At some point you have to CHOOSE the time to move on. And that is the time of closure…it comes after the hurt and the anger and the confusion…but it comes. And it comes from you and you alone. It is a side effect of walking through the pain but also of saying “This is it. I’ve had enough of this pain and anger and not living….it’s time to move on.” and then you MOVE ON.

That is closure. It is the integration of having experienced a loss, having worked through the emotions of that loss, of having decided that it’s time to move on, of recognizing the new self that is moving on, of committing to becoming the best new self you can be, and then going forward. That is closure. It happens for you and inside you. And only you. You get it from within.

And even if you have all the questions in the world, closure is possible down the road. You have to decide the answers don’t matter. It’s NOT going to make sense. You hurt, you are angry, you are confused, you are every emotion in the book, but you can survive even without knowing the answers to everything. At some point you have to accept, it is what it is and you may never understand exactly what that is. Then you Move on.

That is closure.

WONDERFUL JOHN!!!!

That was better put than anyone I've ever heard describe it. Thank you so much.

I read something like that too. It said that when a person experiences a death in the family, people rally around them to support them, love them, and know they don't have to go through the painful experience alone. However, when people go through a divorce, it is all hush hush, don't talk about it, just try to ignore the elephant in the room.

The suggestion was to have a ceremony, even like a funeral, to be able to move on. It is a part of the grieving process, and just because it is not an actual death per se does not mean it is still not a form of a death.

I've been wanting to sell my wedding ring and some earrings that my H gave me as a kind of ceremony. They have no meaning to me now--they are only reminders of pain and I will never wear them again. I was thinking that I could use the proceeds to go on a trip to Central America or to Argentina. I've wanted to go there for a long time. I used to travel a lot, but my ex H never wanted to. I thought it would be symbolic and facilitate "me" at the same time.

Any ideas for selling jewelry? I like the "divorce ceremony" idea! It seems like a healing process.