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If you read the authors' article, When Divorce Hurts Too Long, you know that the author of that article coined the term Post Marital Stress (PMS) disorder. The first article describes PMS and indicates that if someone is 2-3 years post divorce and still wrapped up in the sadness, bitterness, and anger from the divorce, then PMS may have crept up behind them and taken over. When this occurs, that person does not move on with life. They may begin to date or even remarry but PMS will sabotage these new relationships.

This article provides a case study of someone who moved into PMS. Before starting the story, it needs to be said that both men and women may develop Post Marital Stress (PMS) disorder. It was a risk to use such a female dominated acronym for the name of this new disorder but there are as many men as women who get stuck and do not heal after a divorce. Neither sex is immune to developing PMS. It is not sex specific. Now on to the case study.

The names in the case study you are about to read have been changed to protect the individuals in the story. Any similarity to specific persons is purely a matter of chance.

Bill discovered his wife Amy had been successfully hiding a secret life from him for over 10 years. Bill is a professional man. He has a Masters degree in electrical engineering and has been working for the Federal Government for 15 years. He is the typical company man. He knew when he took the position that it was a life-long commitment and that he wanted to work his way up in the GS system until he was a high level administrator.

Amy is a professional as well. She has a Masters degree in marketing and was determined to become a top buyer in the high end fashion industry. She knew her choice of careers was competitive and that if she was to be successful she had to move up the corporate ladder make frequent job changes, work 14 hour days, and travel extensively.

Bill and Amy met within the first 3 months of graduate school and were so completely head over heels about one another that they were married within six months of meeting. They understood each others career goals and felt comfortable that they could have a compatible, stable marriage. They both wanted a family but knew their career plans would mean they would have to have a nanny take care of the children while they worked toward personal goals. When they graduated 18 months later, they were soon to be the proud parents of twins. How wonderful they thought...an instant family requiring only one pregnancy.

Amy postponed launching her career until the twins were three months old. She filled her life between the baby's birth and their 3 month birthday recruiting the perfect nanny for the girls and sending out resumes for marketing positions. By the time the 3 month event arrived, Amy was offered a beginning level position with a marketing firm abut 60 miles from their home. Bill, in the meantime, had landed an entry level position with a government agency and was settling in for a long slow climb to the top.

You might already be seeing some potential stumbling points for this couple, right$%:
Yes, life began to get very hectic for Bill, Amy, Molly and Mandy. It wasn't too long after Amy started her new job that she had to be away from home for several nights a week. Both she and Bill knew this was going to happen but they did not count on just how difficult this was going to be for Bill. He became both mommy and daddy in the evenings and had to burn the midnight oil to keep ahead of job responsibilities.

This went on for about 6 months when Bill decided they needed to have a live-in nanny who could help with the girls in the evenings while he worked. This arrangement was also helpful for those days when Amy was home as she also worked 14 hour days.

Amy and Bill had been married about two years and were seeing each other maybe 3 evenings a week. Even then they were both in their home offices working most of the evenings. They had very little in common other than their intense drives to succeed professionally and the girls. One of their consistent arguments was related to the cost of the live-in nanny and the increased household cost of renting an apartment for Amy to stay in as she was now staying in the town she worked at least four to five days a week.

This living arrangement went on for another 5 years. During these five years, Bill's need to work so hard had slowed down as he moved ahead in the organization. This gave home more time to take an active role in raising the girls. He took them to ballet lessons, soccer games, the movies etc. He had learned to really enjoy being a parent.

Amy's career had required her to take a job about 250 miles away from her family so she became even more a weekend mother and wife. When she was home she was pretty self-absorbed and distant. She began begging off going to soccer games and movies saying she had headaches and back aches etc. She and Bill were cordial but not romantic. They talked about household issues, the girls and small talk about each others jobs.

Bill felt the romance was less just because they were "an old married couple" and they both were tired on weekends. He was not ready for Amy's decision to have separate bedrooms because his snoring kept her awake. He didn't argue since she was right, he was a big snorer. He also wasn't ready for her announcement one weekend that she wanted a divorce. In fact, he was dumb founded by it. He loved Amy and he thought they had worked out a pretty good life that let them both have what they wanted. Sure, he and the girls were like a separate family but he always thought of Amy as the wife and mother of the family.

When he finally got up the nerve to ask her if there was another man in her life and she said no. He asked her to go to marriage counseling with him and she agreed to go only because Bill had become so emotional. He cried on the phone every time she called to talk to the girls. In counseling he begged her to reconsider her decision but she stood firm.

Bill lost 15 pounds in a month. He was sleeping only an hour or two at night. He was not able to focus at work. He was having panic attacks and needed to leave work. He felt like he wanted to run away. He cried all the time. He sat in his closet with the door closed and wailed because the pain was so severe. He was able to pull himself somewhat together when the girls were around but he was not able to play with them or feel any joy in being with them.

All he could think about was why Amy would leave him like this$%: What must be wrong with him$%: He must be the ugliest most undesirable man in the world. His mind was ruminating all the time...playing his life over and over trying to see where he went wrong and what he could have done differently to have made Amy want to stay with him.

He even started to drive to the town where Amy worked just to watch her walk in to work and to walk out of work. He followed her to her apartment and that is when he discovered what you have already guessed...Amy did have another man. This new information threw Bill into another tail spin of despair. Now he could add another whole list of negative attributes about himself to make sense of why Amy left him. He was not sexy enough, he did not make love good enough to please her, he was plain just not loveable.

The divorce was pretty quick. Amy wasn't asking for much. She only wanted visitation rights with the girls and half of the family's assets. Bill agreed to all of this probably because he did not have the emotional stamina to fight for anything else. He was a spent man.

Let's fast forward this story to two year after the divorce. When we look at Bill two years post divorce we see he is still obsessed with what he had done wrong to make Amy leave him. He thinks about this probably half of his waking hours. He still isn't sleeping well and he has now lost 25 pounds and is holding. There is a change though, Bill is now obsessed with telling people how horrible Amy was to him and the girls. He takes many pot shots at Amy with the twins and to anyone else who will listen. In fact, most of Bill's friends avoid him because all he wants to talk about is what Amy is doing now that is dumb, stupid and immoral. He has had a couple of dates but the women never seem to want to go out more than once or twice, at the most.

Bill has Post Marital Stress (PMS) disorder. His pain has turned into bitterness and it is ruling his life. He has become a martyr and victim. He is stuck and he more than likely will stay stuck until he learns more about himself and why he feels such despair and bitterness.

The author has worked with numerous people whose divorce pain turned to PMS and decided to put together a workbook that addressed what is at the root of many peoples lengthy period of PMS. The Guide called When Divorce Recovery Lasts Too Long, is a map that helps people with PMS use their pain to understand its origin. The exercises in the Guide help people look at their self-esteem, their perception of love, and their inner child. When the three of these elements are integrated, in the manner the Guide uses, people begin to see why their pain has lasted too long and how to stop the pain. The process is not quick, Growing is not quick. It took people with PMS many years to develop the characteristics that put them at risk for developing the disorder. It will take them time to relearn things they thought to be true.

Now back to the story... Bill was the first one to use the Guide to help him walk through his pain into peace and he has moved to a higher level of peace. It took him 3 months to go through the Guide. The work was hard because it made him be honest about himself and his life. He needed to think about why a marriage with little to no physical or spiritual contact was OK for him. He needed to face his fears of abandonment that were set into motion when he was a small child. He needed to think about why such a successful man would expect so little from someone he loved and was supposed to love him back.

After three months Bill is not so obsessed with what Amy is doing these days and now uses his time to think about himself, his daughters, and his work. He is sleeping and eating better. He does not rely on wine as a sleeping pill. Bill is not cured but he is feeling better and on the right path to kicking the old PMS habit. I don't know how long Bill's recovery will take. Each of us is different and we have our own pace and rhythm for making changes in our lives. I do know that if Bill keeps going over the processes outlined in the Guide, taking them a deeper and deeper level, he will find the peace he id looking for and he will wonder why he ever let himself go so long feeling so bad.