Episode 097

• Listen/ download: http://boundless.typepad.com/podcast/2009/11/097-boundless-podcast.html
• Blog post: http://www.boundlessline.org/2009/11/celebrating-the-day-before-black-friday-episode-97.html

Lisa Anderson: We are opening up this week’s inbox, and I am in the studio with Danny Huerta. Danny welcome.

Danny Huerta: Thank you very much. Gracias.

Lisa:  I just like saying ‘Huerta’. [Laughter]

Okay, Danny is one of our counsellors here at Focus on the Family, which means that he has a degree, and he is officially licensed to counsel, and he just attempted to do so with me for 10 minutes. And we just kind of came up short because he was like, “Lisa, you have too many problems that I can’t even deal with you.”

Danny: And you started to sing and… [Laughter]

Lisa:  I burst out into song… There are all kinds of issues that are going to require additional sessions. [Laughter]

So instead, he’s going to help us answer this week’s inbox question which we’re looking forward to.

Danny: Sounds good.

Lisa:  And we’re going to throw together a couple of different questions that we’ve received from listeners, and wade into a little bit of a quagmire today. So I’m hoping that you’re up for the task.

Danny: Let’s do it! I’m looking forward to it.

Lisa:  We have a listener here, and I’m actually just going to summarise because we’re going to patch two of these together. Basically, talking about dating people who are recently out of divorces, and/or maybe not quite out yet.

Danny: That’s a good topic.

Lisa:  So kind of that concept of someone who’s been approached, maybe by someone who’s going through a divorce and maybe this person tried to start a relationship and then it was like, you’re not divorced yet. So then it’s like back off, and so that happened, now the person’s divorced… Is that, like, an underlying character issue that that first little snafu happened? Should this person give this person another second chance? What does that look like?

And then, too, just the question of, what really is appropriate in dating coming off of a divorce situation? Whether or not there are children, I mean, all the different factors that can come into play. What would your advice be, Danny?

Danny:  Those are a lot of questions all at once. We’ll start with the first one of, is there a red flag if somebody begins to pursue a relationship even when they’re not divorced? There is a red flag component but if you really think about it, a lot of people pursue relationships to alleviate pain and alleviate fear. And when people are going through a divorce, there’s a lot of fear involved. And that love chemical, endorphins, that are hit with that, and dopamine, help take away fear. So that emotion of love, that attraction, initial attraction, lifts that. Who wouldn’t want that? So the person thinks if I can just get together with this person maybe they’ll take away all this pain, this fear that I’m experiencing, and it just won’t be as tough as it might be.

So it’s not necessarily a red flag, but it shows that the person is not necessarily as resilient as he could possibly be. Maybe not as independent either, they depend on another person for happiness. And so the boundary that’s placed there is very appropriate to say, “Hey, you know what, maybe we can talk about this once you’re done with your divorce. And come back and we can talk then.” And they need those types of boundaries placed for them. Otherwise they will go as far as they can with the person that will allow them.

If the person comes back, it certainly would be wise to seek some counsel because there is a lot of baggage coming with that. And generally, what researchers say is that there should be one year of recovery for every five years of marriage that the person has been in. So some people would be married twenty-five years, divorce and expect to be married in a year, and usually that’s not enough time for a person to really re-evaluate who they are apart from the other person. And they need that time apart to develop an identity apart from the other person in order to be ready for a relationship.

Lisa:  Do you think it’s helpful for both parties involved, maybe to have someone in there in a mediating role? Whether it’s a pastor, an elder in the church or a counsellor who can help identify some of those issues so that you know that there’s truth on both sides?

Danny: You know, I really believe in having mentors in our lives. Usually you can run that by a mentor, what’s going on. But then having a mediator is very appropriate. A pastor, a counsellor—if people can afford that, and have insurance to cover that—would definitely be appropriate because we’re trained to look for those signals and coach both individuals as to what would be appropriate, the next steps that would be appropriate.

Those would probably be the two best, not involving family members or anyone else to help mediate. Sometimes people will say, “Mom, you know, this is going on,” or they will involve an uncle or somebody, a sister that’s maybe getting into the field of counselling… And it just is not a healthy thing to do it that way.

Lisa:  What would you say, Danny, looking at emotional attachment and then detachment, is it really possible for a person—I know you said that one to five ratio… I know I’ve had friends who’ve gotten into relationships with someone who either had been engaged for a long period of time and/or married and there were just a lot of comparisons to the other person… You could just tell that they hadn’t made that separation from that previous relationship yet. What are the things to look for as far as that’s concerned?

Danny: As much as we’d like to erase those comparisons, they’re going to be there. It’s just when they’re used to manipulate the other person to say, hey, you know what, this person used to do this. That can be extremely damaging, and that’s where you need to say, “You need to stop that.” You need to know that the other person needs to really realise and be patient with the fact that the other person, their brain’s attached to that person. We’re wired to attach to one person for a lifetime. We weren’t designed to go through divorce; God didn’t wire us that way. So our brain definitely gets confused.

And so when you’re marrying a divorced person, the odds are completely against your marriage, for sure, and your relationship. The brain is still confused; it’s going to have an even harder time attaching to a new person. And so the divorce rate, we know, is close to about 60-70%, sometimes even higher, for second marriages. So we know that attachment’s really an issue.

I would just say there’s definitely a red flag, there’s a lot more work that has to be done premaritally for a person, and attachment is a lot more challenging.

Lisa:  Well, I think people listening to this segment are probably ticking off instances in their own lives, in their own dating lives, where they’re like so this happened to me, and what you said there happened to me, and bla bla bla. So we want to hear from you; if there is anything specific to this that we didn’t address or any angle of this that you want us to tackle in a future inbox, please do write to us at editor [at] boundless [dot] org.