Breaking up blues

Denise Cullington, London, Routledge, 2008, 282 pp., £40.00 (hardback), £8.99 (paperback)

Why a book on divorce? Cullington, a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist, has first-hand experience of divorce and subsequently wrote Breaking up blues.

Her account is scattered with patients' stories, drawings, and works of fiction. Her style is humane, never patronizing, and she ably puts the most difficult experiences into words:

You find yourself caught up in the emotional rip tides that pull you off your feet; suck you dangerously far out to sea; throw you over and over in the waves before smashing you on the sand or the rocks (p. 4).

Her self-help manual in six parts charts a course through this unfamiliar terrain.

Part One describes weighing up whether to leave, and how ongoing stresses including an affair provoke difficulties, which may result in parting. There is no right answer to how and when to leave, the outcome may be unpredictable and there will inevitably be regrets. Divorce is hard work requiring compromise and understanding, more a marathon than a sprint.

Part Two describes the losses of home, security, family role and structure, contact with children and mutual friends. These can be devastating, particularly for men, who often close down emotionally. The internal losses of identity, ‘innocence’ and self-worth are discussed and the anxiety resulting from the disrupted attachment. There is a chapter on the rage of loss which examines the hatred (25% of children witnessed physical violence at the time of marital break up), the desire for vengeance and punishment:

although you may know, logically, that you need to resist the pull into this exhilarating maw of outrage, accusation and counteraccusation, it can happen so quickly and unexpectedly that it can be hard to resist, and hard to find your way back from (p. 4).

Her helpful conclusion is ‘the best means of revenge is to live a full life yourself' (p. 66).

Cullington describes how the adversarial legal system pola