232 DIVorCe wItH DeCenCY
that was widely held a couple of decades ago) that divorce truly
presented a creative opportunity for self-improvement. This book
remains extremely relevant today. I would recommend reading it
in its entirety. However, even a brief scanning of its chapter head-
ings gives a great deal of insight into the main theory it embraces.
Chapters such as: “The Promise in the Pain,” “Coming to Terms
with Your Passed Marriage,” “The Healing Process of Mourn-
ing,” “Avoiding the Nine Emotional Traps of the Past,” “Coping
with New Reality,” “New Ways of Relating to People,” “New
Commitments”—all these themes point out the possible positive
results that can be derived from the admitted pain of the divorce
process itself.
Personally, I tend to agree to a large extent with Mr. Krantzler.
After all, if one finds oneself getting a divorce anyway, it certainly
makes more sense to try to turn the whole thing into a positive
experience and an opportunity for personal growth, rather than
dwelling on the negative. Krantzler talks pretty convincingly
about the fact that a divorce provides its participants with oppor-
tunities to rethink their values and their priorities, to exercise new
levels of choice and assertiveness, to learn to live alone without
having to feel lonely.
A divorce can also be an opportunity for parents to rediscover
new relationships with their children and the new levels of under-
standing and closeness that follow. Perhaps best of all, it can pres-
ent an opportunity to open oneself up for a new and improved
level of intimacy in the form of a new relationship or second (or
third, or.. .) marriage.
All of these approaches, which essentially focus on the oppor-
tunity for divorce veterans to find previously unsuspected inner
resources within themselves, present the divorcing parties as
having tremendous opportunities for personal growth and
development. For the divorce resisters, these “opportunities”
may have been reluctantly born out of necessity—but they are
opportunities for (forced?) growth nonetheless. The question, of
course, is whether or not the divorcing parties can come to grips
with all these issues in time, and to the extent necessary, so that
they can indeed turn the whole thing into a positive or creative
experience.