Description
With marriage dissolution, the marital identity is deconstructed and one comes to live a new moment, in which the setting of new existential projects and the opportunity of restoring
oneself lead to a new significance of the individual identity. Based on such assumption, this dissertation aimed to comprehend the feelings that emerge in men and women when they lose the power of marital bond. The research followed the qualitative model and had as its participants three divorced men and four divorced women, who reside in the city of Recife and its metropolitan region. The instrument used was a semi-structured interview and the data collected were submitted to a Thematic Content Analysis. The results indicated that the most frequent feelings and emotions were equally present in the interviews. Among the positive ones are the feelings of freedom, happiness and peace. The negative ones evidence the sense of alienation, jealousy and anger, mixed with sadness, failure and missing. Regarding the mourning characteristics shown during the marital break-up process, we found that the majority of the people interviewed had feelings linked to the divorce. However, three of the participants
apparently did not experience the mourning, which just came lately, that is, the emotional reaction rose after some time of the loss occurrence, in an exaggerated and intense way, which was no longer compatible to their moment. Attempting to identify the interferences caused by the divorce in the health of the people interviewed, we noticed again a certain balance: now the termination influenced to keep or seek for a better quality of life, now it influenced negatively, affecting their health. About the strategies used to grant new significance to the individual identity, we observed that searching and establishing a new affective bond was a tool used by the individuals studied, in order to support such new significance . The majority of them achieved granting new significance to their individual identities and could become self-reliant and able to develop their own individuality. They experienced the process of subjectivity that put them in touch with themselves, from what they could achieve individual and meaningful changes, and deconstruct marital identities and make possible living new perspectives of themselves. They created new existential projects able to contribute to their own singularity, growing and maturation, including their being towards the other. We hope that this academic work has enhanced the discussions about the theme, as well as innovations in the assistance services offered by the legal bodies to such target audience, favoring the rescue of individual identity.
