Divorce experiences in Tunceli province

Across the Turkey there is change in the roles of men and women in marriage due to the increase of divorce and today, many arrangements are made for the family institution. The arrangements based on a patriarchal system and corroborating the secondary position of women are based on social differences, historical and cultural processes. In this direction, the meanings that put to marriage and the marriage process also affect the divorce process and the postdivorce adjustment processes change depending on the social, economic, religious, cultural, and historical differences due to social change. In the city of Tunceli, which differing with its religious and cultural structure and feature the equality of men and women, the divorce experiences of divorced women and men were tried to be learned, based on the statement that divorced men and women do not have problems. Twentyone participants were included in the study and voice recordings were taken as much as they permitted, through indepth interviews. The descriptively analyzed data were interpreted as specific themes and opened to discussion. In the study, it was determined that marriage processes, divorce processes, and postdivorce adjustment processes differ depending on gender. It has been observed that divorced women try to set up their own lives again by trying to cope with situations such as trying to be selfsufficient and be sufficient to their childs, to participate actively in business life and to feel like they have to be strong. Men that is divorced or in divorce progress emphasized the difficulty of setting up a new life and being apart from their children. Unlike female participants, some male participants stated that as the time passed after divorce made them feel loneliness or emptiness. Eventually, in the study, positive aspects have been confirmed such as kinship relations provided by the Tunceli culture and the family's ownership of their children, the high level of education, turned the divorcing in the city into an advantage due to increase, which was a disadvantage normally. As a result, as well as the positive aspects of living in Tunceli city, some participants faced negativities arising due to Tunceli being a small city. The study has gained importance in terms of the fact that the participants do not position themselves the same compared to people who have never married, especially in the social sphere, and start to make restrictions in their lives due to the feeling of divorce, and corroborates the idea that divorce phenomenon is problematized. Keywords: Marriage, divorce, divorce experiences