Abstract
Alan’s words reflect the complexity of feeling—conflict and anger—experienced by one father eight years after separating from his wife. His experience is not unique. This chapter demonstrates how experiences of conflict are related to wider issues of gender and power from a relational perspective. Following on from the previous chapter, it probes more deeply the dark side of relationships within divorced family life. As Alan’s comment indicates, parents in the ‘conflicted couples’ group generally could not walk away from relationships and remained connected. Some parents obtained support from family members, which often accentuated the conflict as extended families became embroiled in the battle.
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Notes
- 1.
There is some contestation regarding the contribution that vengefulness and resentment make to claims to rights and justice, and Barbalet discusses these in greater detail.
- 2.
In addition, in this chapter I shall, at times, refrain from directly naming the source of the quote. I believe that this will make it more difficult for research participants to identify the responses of others.
- 3.
In characterising their former husbands as bullies they set up their telling of their experience as a moral story. They are aware that I have spoken to their former spouse and they want to tell me that they were right, that they behaved correctly. As Hopper (2001, p.129) noted, the identification of oneself as either an initiator or a non-initiator helps divorcing people to address the morality of their position, to form accounts that ‘neutralise their own culpability’.
- 4.
While this experience is similar to the experiences of fathers in Chapter 5, the responses of the fathers in this group to being removed from the family home differ: they seek revenge for what they see as a injustice.
- 5.
The Judicial Separation Act 1989 specifies six grounds upon which the court may grant a decree of judicial separation. Section 2 (1) (a) refers to applications based on the grounds that the respondent has committed adultery, while Section 2 (1) (b) refers to applications based on the grounds of behaviour.
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Moore, E. (2016). Conflicted Couples, Enduring Conflict and Getting Even. In: Divorce, Families and Emotion Work. Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43822-5_7
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