Help Your Marriage Survive

Based on intensive interviews of 29 couples who experienced the death of a child, this book offers perspectives and advice on common marital problems experienced by bereaved parents. Although the book deals with pain and marital distress, it offers a message of hope.

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Many parents who have experienced the death of a child struggle with painful and at times overwhelming marital problems. Grieving can create great marital distance, and it can magnify those problems that existed before the child's death. Grieving parents often fear that divorce is a real possibility. This book can help. Based on intensive interviews of 29 couples who experienced the death of a child, this book offers perspectives and advice on common marital problems experienced by bereaved parents. Each couple's problems are unique, but often the problems are connected to couple communication, sexuality, parenting of other children, the use of alcohol and drugs, blaming, and differences in such areas as whether to have another child, how to grieve, how to talk about the child who died, whether to go outside the marriage for support, and what to do with things and spaces that were the child's. Although the book deals with pain and marital distress, it offers a message of hope. Grieving parents can and do get through the hard times, based on respect for differences, mutual understanding, and shared history.