Couple Rage and Emotional Distancing when a Partner is Dying

Abstract

Drawing on symbolic interaction theory, equity theory, and family systems theory, this article offers a theoretical analysis of why there might be rage and emotional distancing in a couple in which one of the partners is dying. Rage and emotional distancing could arise as the couple struggles to make meanings about the dying, the death, their new relationship, and the future. Rage and emotional distancing could also arise as they deal with emergent equity issues and the changes in their relationship system necessitated by the death. Rage and emotional distancing at the end of life are understandable and even may at times be necessary and helpful, and possibly some couples may be helped through acquiring a theoretical framework for understanding why they might be having those difficulties and why those changes might well be normal.

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Notes on contributors

Sungeun Yang

Sungeun Yang is an assistant professor in the Department of Consumer, Child and Family Studies, College of Human Ecology, Inha University, Incheon, South Korea. Her scholarship interests are qualitative family research, loss and grief in families, and parent-child relationships.

Paul C. Rosenblatt

Paul C. Rosenblatt has a Ph.D. in Psychology and is a professor of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota. Among the books he has authored are Bitter, Bitter Tears: Nineteenth Century Diarists and Twentieth Century Grief Theories; Parent Grief: Narratives of Loss and Relationship; and (with Beverly R. Wallace) African American Grief. His scholarly work on loss focuses on grief in families and across cultures.