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SIDS of Pennsylvania - Support Information | |||||||
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Commitment to the Survival of the Marriage
Marriage between two people is the fragile commitment to share lives together and work toward common goals. One of those goals is the conceiving and rearing of children. The hopes, wishes, and dreams created in the marriage are destroyed with the loss of a child. The present and future life with your child are torn away from the mind and soul, leaving pain and suffering often turned into hurt, blame and sometimes hate. These feelings toward yourself or toward your spouse can destroy the bonds that made your marriage safe and recognizable to you before the child's death. Anger and other emotions about your child's dying must be openly acknowledged, or they can be directed at your spouse or other children.
For many couples the question of whether to work or rebuild the marriage in a new form or abandon it to fate becomes a vital issue. How you and your spouse handled stress in the past will give you some information about how you will manage together now.
It is essential to develop ground rules for grieving, both together and individually, so that each spouse feels secure that this is right and normal for them as a couple. This can prevent assumption by one or both bereaved parents that separation or divorce is imminent unless there are ways to reassure and recommit to this marriage. This commitment needs to be reaffirmed frequently as dry spells occur and dissolution threatens each partner.
Celebrate the days when your marriage feels safe. As you regain some of your old patterns,others may remain disrupted and awkward. Have patience as you learn to take risks with loving deeply again. It is not uncommon to have very different sexual needs at this time.
One partner may have a great need for intimacy, while the other member of the couple may find sex repugnant. This can lead to serious consequences unless there is an openness and willingness to work toward some common acceptance of these rights to pleasure, and right to sexual intimacy is a beginning. Letting go of the physical intimacy that connected you with your spouse is simply impossible for some people. Letting go of intimacy and desperately desiring intimacy are opposite yearnings, and some people find it impossible to engage in both of them during the grieving period.
Without special trust and understanding, these problems can lead to emotional, if not legal, divorce. Marriage is not a perfect institution, and every marriage requires work to repair little hurts and damages from time to time. Don't let the old unresolved issues be viewed as intolerable imperfections.
The ultimate escape from the intense pressure and tension in a marriage shaken by the death of a child is divorce. Divorce is a quick solution to the apparently hopeless struggle and disconnected feelings that bereaved couples experience.
But is this what you want? Couples who survive the devastating effects of losing a child and work toward rebuilding their marriage are spared the triple tragedy of the death of a child, a marriage, and a family.
Commitment to Survival by Nancy Hogan, R.N.,M.A.
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©2006 S.I.D.S. of Pennsylvania Suite 250 Riverfront Place - 810 River Avenue - Pittsburgh, PA 15212 412-322-5680 or 800-PA1-SIDS (800-721-7437)
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