Without A Chair had a controversial ending, without which there really was no book…

Rather, it would’ve been just another divorce story, most of which share so many similar themes, sadly they can be called stereotypical.  It’s hard to understand Gil’s out of the ordinary decisions at the end. Perhaps, because they weren’t so much a choice as they were a manifestation of decades of trauma etched so deep that Gil really wasn’t left with an alternative, at least in his mind.

Gil’s story is burdensome, however it’s the onerous story which illustrates many of the issues through which children and adults who experience divorce go. It’s the noxious story that provides the teaching moment.  As we walk through aspects of Gil’s childhood & adolescence in and tie them to actions and reactions throughout his lifespan, we hope this prompts you to examine the impact of divorce on the development of a child and how this profound trauma creates a new life trajectory for an individual that otherwise would not have existed.  

By bringing together real-life emotion with the underlying psychology, you will gain an ability to go deeper than just beneath the surface and evaluate your own upbringing in light of the relationships to which you were exposed and how they have influenced your current understanding of marriage.  

Societally, and in particular intellectually, we recognize children can be severely damaged by divorce, however, our current culture demands we ignore humanity; that sometimes the harm done is so severe it can’t be overcome and extends well into adulthood.  We’ve grown accustomed to walking by a divorce with the same arm’s length curiosity we rubberneck by a car accident, and convince ourselves that somehow, somewhere down the road, in some way, everything turned out okay.  For Gil Belmont, it didn’t!  Scarred for life, a term too often callously thrown about, really meant that a permanent change had occurred. 

The story of Gil Belmont is certainly a cautionary tale.