S Kessler

Stage 1: Disillusionment
Disappointment, doubts, admitting disquiet or negative feelings.

Stage 2: Erosion
A deeper estrangement.

Stage 3: Detachment
May coincide with involvement with another close relationship.

Stage 4: Physical separation
Either a sudden crisis or a joint decision.   

Stage 5: Mourning the marriage
Overwhelming loss or rejection of the partner; turning from love to hate, from anger to grief.

Stage 6: Second adolescence
Plunging into new relationships and activities.

Stage 7: Integrating the trauma
The hard work of re-establishing the ability to cope and be positive.  

• Most marriages do not end with the couple agreeing that their marriage is over.
• Experience is different for the leaver (active) and the left (enforced passivity.) 
• First three stages (disappointment, erosion, and detachment) make up the private part of the journey, the period before separation, when a marriage is beginning to go awry. Divorce/separation not yet public, struggle between the two partners is mostly within 4 walls, tho’ it breaks out now and then if triggered by the level of tension or by outside events. 
• The more public journey begins at separation. The final stages then follow. 
• All 7 levels are likely to be involved once the breakdown becomes ‘public.’ 
• The inner, private journey takes longer than the public journey.