Figure 1.

Illustration of the attachment-related themes that unfold in the context of marital separation and divorce. Between the two members of the dyad are common emotions that are experienced by adults when marriage comes to an end. The emotional experiences within and between people are shaped by individual differences in the emotion regulatory hyperactivation and deactivation; these attachment-related emotion regulatory tendencies are shaped, in turn, by a series of background life events and individual differences, which are illustrated on the left- and rightmost panels in the figure. Above each person, we have illustrated two of the central dynamics—narrative coherence and self-concept clarity— that are characteristic of attachment-related psychological reorganization after an interpersonal loss.