Oppositional identities and rhetoric in divorce

Using data gathered through participant observation and in-depth interviews, this article considers the phenomenon of non-mutual divorce in terms of the oppositional identities that divorcing partners establish through discourse. Divorcing partners describe feelings of mutual ambivalence prior to divorce, but they almost always transform themselves into dumpers (initiators/leavers) and dumped partners once their divorces begin. Most importantly, divorcing people establish these identities by invoking a cultural rhetoric of individualism on one side and a cultural rhetoric of commitment on the other. Although the two identities and their associated rhetorics are transitional, emerging only at the moment when one partner declares I want out and subsiding once the divorce is accomplished, they are significant means by which divorcing partners resolve ambivalence, account for their divorces, and impose a general sense of order onto the dissolution process.