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MASSEY is published by Massey University, Private Bag 11-222, Palmerston North, New Zealand

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MASSEY has a circulation of 75,000.

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Parting Company a guide to successful separation

Allyson Caseley

Love. It’s all you need. As a society we are smitten with love and its endorphin rush and not, understandably, with the misery and anger that all too often accompany relationships when they end, as end they mostly do. What hope have we when Barbara Cartland, the queen of romantic schlock, divorced within a few years of marrying? Look, yes look, at the British Royals.

There’s now the phenomenon of the ‘starter marriage’, a fast-forward marriage that is over before the participants are out of their twenties. And that’s not to talk about the breakup toll for unsanctified relationships.

Breakups seem to be the normal order of things now days. But what a hash we make of them. A relationship breaks up. Two warring camps form. The possessions are divided into his and hers; the friends ditto. Lawyers thrive on the pickings. The rancour may last decades.

Caseley doesn’t talk about breakups, but about ‘separation’, which she sees potentially as a time of “constructive transition”.

Caseley has been there. As the book jacket nicely puts it, she has been participant and observer in the process of separation. The observer status derives from the decade she spent compiling psychological reports for the Family Court. As an author she has the hard-to-beat combination of empathy and objectivity.

Parting Company divides its contents according to a typology of separation: the parting (get mad), the sorting (get sad), rebuilding yourself (get over it), and moving on (get on with it). Much of it dwells on establishing who you are and what your needs are. Interspersed through the text are boxed accounts of people who have undergone a separation.

Some readers may find there is something about the book – the four stages, the ten steps, affirmations, the writing of lists – that feels a bit pat, and the extracts from someone’s ritual of separation, terribly adult though this may be, may make some readers squirm. They did me.

But a world lived according to Caseley’s advice would be far more civilized than the messy one we live in. There would be less breakage, less collateral damage, and fewer damaged children.

If you – or someone you know – are in the throes of a separation you will find this a useful and optimistic book.

Caseley graduated with BA in Psychology from Massey in 1975.