From: noraa@cbnewsk.cb.att.com (aaron.l.hoffmeyer)
Subject: Love love can turn Jekylls into Hydes
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 02:46:14 GMT

Source: USA Today, Friday, August 21, 1992

Breaking up hurts some `in such a fundamental way, they get crazy'

By Karen S. Peterson

Have the celebrity couples who are startling us with messy breakups
left their collective sanity in a bottom drawer?

      * The private Woody Allen makes public statements about romancing
	Mia Farrow's adopted daughter; their "family" is
	self-destructing before our eyes.

      * Sarah Ferguson romps topless with an American millionaire and
	her kids in tow - much to the embarrassment of her royal
	in-laws.

      * _Good Morning America's_ Joan Lunden, who has come to personify
	motherhood and apple pie, publicly complains about the alimony
	she must pay Michael Krauss and says he should be told to "get
	a job."  Krauss, who sued Wednesday for custody of their three
	kids, complains Lunden went off to bed at 8 p.m., leaving him
	alone to get fat on snacks.

Is it normal to go this wacko when relationships crack?

Divorce lawyers say those stories don't compare to what they have heard
in their offices from more common folk.  And social scientists who
track divorce understand the off-the-wall behavior in vengeful splits.

Jay Lebow says his peers in psychotherapy call it the "not me
experience" - behaving as if one were someone else.  "The person has a
sense that this is not me, a sense that his own behavior does not fit
with his self image," says Lebow, a Chicago marital and family
therapist.

"It starts when you separate and usually lasts about two years," says
Abigail Trafford in her 1984 book _Crazy Time_, a divorce classic.
"It's a time when your emotions take on a life of their own and you
swing back and forth between wild depression, extreme timidity and rash
actions.  You are not yourself.  Who are you?  At times, you don't want
to know."

We're not talking about people who are literally crazy, Lebow notes.
"Within normal situations, there is a wide range of normal behaviors,
with many of them being spectacular."

Indeed.  Divorce lawyers say they trade these stories like tattered
baseball cards.

Louise B. Raggio of Dallas tells why she keeps a chainsaw in her
office.  A multimillion dollar settlement was hanging up on a $159
chainsaw both splitting spouses wanted.  "I went out and bought another
one for him to settle it.  Then after it was all over she gave me
her's, saying she never really wanted it in the first place; she just
didn't want him to have it."

And she shows the trophy to other unreasonable clients.

"People sometimes get so focused on their cases they lose all sense of
perspective," says her son, Kenneth Raggio, chairman of the family law
section of the American Bar Association.  "And then the sky - or the
gutter - is the limit."

Says New York divorce lawyer Stanford Lotwin, "People act differently
during this period than at any other time in their lives.  (Many seek)
revenge.  It is a way to deal with the hurt.  And in cases where there
has been a third party (another man or woman), there is just incredible
anger."

The "stuff you see in soap operas is tame compared to what people
really do to each other," says Lynne Z. Gold-Bikin of Norristown Pa.
Chainsaws seem to be the weapon of choice.  She recalls a beleaguered
man disgusted with the concept of joint property.  "He took a chainsaw
and started to cut the car in half, and then he switched to the house."

Surely she jests.

"No!  You could not make this stuff up."

She also recalls a huge battle over access to a safe-deposit box.
"When the wife got a court order to open it, there was a pile of manure
waiting."

A much-used weapon, that.  Ken Raggio remembers "a husband who bought
his mistress a car.  The couple then gets divorced.  And the wife finds
that car and dumps manure in it."

New York attorney Norman Sheresky says people sometimes "go completely
berserk."  Our favorite story is about a client who put up with his
wife's excessive demands during divorce proceedings.  But he finally
freaked out over a bill for a corned beef sandwich.  "His wife woke up
in the middle of the night with a hankering for a sandwich.  She called
a limo service.  By the time the driver got back, that sandwich cost
$134."

Chicago attorney David Mattenson says, "You name it, and I've seen it.
I know of a $100,000 wardrobe taken into the back yard, soaked with
gasoline and burned."

He remembers one irate client who "destroyed her husband's 200-odd pipe
collection, throwing them in the fireplace."  And one of his
favorites:  a very timid guy during his divorce process bought a
Cadillac Eldorado, "hired a blonde with a 42-inch bust, and sat in
front of his wife's house and honked the horn for a half-hour."

The stunt backfired.  "A settlement that would have taken 60 days, she
managed to string out for 2 1/2 years."

Gold-Bikin also knows of a woman who held a yard sale to peddle her
about-to-be ex's most precious stuff.  "She sold his golf clubs out
from under him.  What people do is unbelievable.  They are very
creative."

And they are vengeful.  "Anything you can consider, somebody has
probably done," Mattenson says.  "People who want the furniture will
take the carpeting, the wallpaper coverings, the light switch plates
right off the wall."

Pittsburgh attorney Thomas Mulroy says some experts call the bizarre
"encapsulated psychosis.  People who are fine in every other stressful
situations are hit in such a fundamental way they get crazy.  And that
craziness manifests itself in becoming just radically different from
the people they generally are."

The divorcing often experience "a great sense of betrayal," says
Trafford.  "No matter who initiates the divorce, people feel betrayed"
by each other of by life.  "And that betrayal precipitates great anger
and a sense of vulnerability."

Not all of the anger is manifested in rage, in "acting out," says
marital and family therapist Connie Ahrons, Santa Monica, Calif.  It
may be just acting differently.  "People will do anything to break out
of the old patterns.  They want to say, `I am different now.  Life will
be different.'"

For a period of time, Ahrons says, they will act uncharacteristically.
"You get the typical stories.  A (divorced) woman will become
promiscuous.  A man will fall in love with the first young woman who
crosses his path.  Somebody with no money will take a trip to Europe or
get a new wardrobe.  There is a sense of having to do *something*."

Mattenson says the healthiest of his clients treat the divorce process
"like an operation.  They want to get it done with and get out of the
operating room."

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The only things that caught my attention in this article, are:  1) the
apparent glee that most of the attorneys feel over this pain, anguish
and frustration which is manifested through such ridiculous behavior on
the part of the litigants (our favorite), and 2) the complete
indictment of the litigants and the lack of condemnation of the
adversarial divorce system.  In effect, what all these professionals
are saying is that people in divorces go wacko because of the stresses
of breaking up.  Yet, the divorce system itself, which encourages this
kind of behavior and rewards the most contemptuous litigants, is
absolved.  Funny thing that the lawyers don't think they have anything
to do with this problem, wouldn't you say?

Aaron L. Hoffmeyer 
TR@CBNEA.ATT.COM

walk on the ocean
	- glen phillips

we spotted the ocean at the head of the trail
where are we going, so far away
and somebody told me that this is the place
where everything's better, everything's safe

	walk on the ocean
	step on the stones
	flesh becomes water
	wood becomes bone

and half an hour later we packed up our things
we said we'd send letters and all those little things
and they knew we were lying but they smiled just the same
it seemed they'd already forgotten we'd came

	walk on the ocean
	step on the stones
	flesh becomes water
	wood becomes bone

now we're back at the homestead
where the air makes you choke
and people don't know you
and trust is a joke
we don't even have pictures
just memories to hold
that grow sweeter each season
as we slowly grow old
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