[[alternative]]A Qualitative Study on Divorce Process of Eight Divorced Women- From Dependent Marriage to Independent Living

[[abstract]]The purpose of this study was to explore the process of women's divorced experience. Eight divorced women who had divorced more than four years, they participatied two in-depth interviews individually which were adopted to data collection. Data was analyzed by open-coding method. The main findings were as follows: the transition process was generally represented by the following stages: (1) former period of dependent marriages: participant's truly experienced happiness in marriage and family was their dreams. (2) later period of dependent marriage: when marriage crisis occurred, participant's life was deeply affected by their husband and they cannot master their lives. (3) walking out from marriage period: since the critical incident happened, participants began to think for themselves and began to take actions for themselves. (4) learning or adatption period: after divorce, participants started their new lives. They became to know themselves more by further studies. (5) independent living period: participants can earn their living independently Moreover, they became more self-assertive, self-dependent and self-respect. They can take care and became the master of their lives. In these transitions, we can notice five important changes from the prticipants: (1) from stereotyped personality to a more flexible personality and have a kind of circumstantial behavior. (2) from looking for external values to internal values. (3) the focus of livings are turning from family to their jobs. (4) from self-blaming to nuturing oneself. (5) from dependent on others to self-dependent. Based upon the above results, disscussions and suggestions were presented.