Definitions

The terms Rebuilders International uses when describing divorce recovery, how people move through it, and how adjustment is measured. These definitions are used consistently across our training, our assessments and the Divorce Recovery Index.

Free to quote with attribution. Suggested citation at the foot of the page.

The RIFT framework

RIFT

RIFT is a four-phase framework describing what a person moves through when a significant relationship ends: Relationships, Identity, Feelings and Thinking.

RIFT was developed by Rebuilders International as a simplification of Dr. Bruce Fisher's Rebuilding methodology, refined over more than forty years. Fisher's original system runs to roughly nineteen steps; RIFT organises the same territory into four phases a person can hold in mind and use to locate themselves.

The name carries a second meaning. A rift is what opens when a relationship comes apart, and the letters run in the order that deterioration happens: the relationship tears, identity is called into question, feelings surge, and thoughts become consuming. Recovery runs the other way. Work begins with Thinking and ends with Relationships.

RIFT is a teaching and organising framework rather than an independently validated clinical model. See the evidence for what is and is not established.

The four phases, in recovery order

Everyone moves through all four. They are phases of a single process, not categories that sort people into types.

1Thinking

The phase of disentangling mentally from the former partner and the relationship.

Thinking is where recovery starts, because the mind is usually still occupied by the relationship long after it has ended. People loop on questions that have no answer — why this happened, what they could have done differently, what their role was. Naming those questions as unanswerable moves a person from spinning to awareness. Rebuilders' shorthand for the limit of this phase is that your head can't heal your heart: thinking clearly is necessary, but it does not by itself resolve the grief underneath.

2Feelings

The phase of processing the grief and anger that the ending produced.

Grief and anger are treated as a single phase because they are two expressions of the same loss. Feeling an emotion and processing it are different things — crying regularly or talking about the loss is not the same as working through it. Anger may turn outward as blame and conflict, or inward as self-blame and isolation; both are ordinary features of grief rather than character flaws. The goal is release, not suppression.

3Identity

The phase of rebuilding a sense of self that is not defined by the relationship.

People often describe wanting to get back to who they were before. That self was shaped by the relationship and is not available to return to. Identity work is the deliberate design of the next version of a person rather than the recovery of a previous one. This phase takes longer than the others, because it involves patterns formed over a lifetime.

4Relationships

The phase of rebuilding trust and connection — with family, friends, colleagues, children, and eventually a partner.

Relationships is frequently mistaken for dating. It is broader: divorce damages a person's capacity for trust across every relationship, and repairing that capacity comes before, and matters more than, finding a new partner. Wanting to date is not the same as being ready to. The question that separates them is whether a person is seeking a partner or avoiding being alone.

Where a person is

Divorce stage

The point a person has reached in the legal and practical process of divorce. Rebuilders recognises three stages.

Stage	Definition
Considering divorce	The relationship may end, but no divorce process has begun.
In the divorce process	Separation or proceedings are underway; the divorce is not final.
Divorced	The divorce is complete.

Stage describes legal progress, not emotional progress. The two move independently, and a person who is legally divorced may be at any point in the RIFT phases.

Initiator

The person who ended the relationship.

Also described as the leaver. Initiators typically begin their emotional processing before the separation becomes public, which means they often appear further along at the point the divorce starts — and may have further to go than they seem.

Resister

The person who did not end the relationship.

Also described as the left. Resisters usually begin processing at the moment they are told, which places them at an earlier point in the same process at the same calendar date. Among people seeking divorce recovery support, resisters are the larger group.

Mutual

A separation both people describe as a shared decision.

The smallest of the three groups. Self-reported, and subject to the ordinary tendency of accounts of a marriage's ending to differ between the two people in it.

How adjustment is measured

Divorce adjustment

The extent to which a person has recovered from the ending of a love relationship, measured across several distinct dimensions rather than as a single feeling.

Adjustment is not the absence of sadness, and it is not the passage of time. Two people the same number of months past a separation can be at very different points, which is why it is measured rather than assumed.

Fisher Divorce Adjustment Scale (FDAS)

A 100-item self-report assessment of divorce adjustment, developed by Dr. Bruce Fisher in 1976 and revised in 1978.

The FDAS reports six subscales and an overall score out of 500. It has been validated independently in several countries. It is the fuller of the two instruments Rebuilders administers, and the one used for reference norms. See the assessments.

Divorce Recovery Scorecard (DRS)

A 30-item short-form assessment reporting scores on the four RIFT phases.

The DRS is designed for people meeting divorce recovery for the first time. It is faster to complete than the FDAS and lower in resolution, reporting at the phase level rather than the subscale level.

FDAS subscales and how they map to RIFT

FDAS subscale	What it measures	RIFT phase
Disentanglement from the love relationship	Mental preoccupation with the former partner	Thinking
Symptoms of grief	Grief and its physical and emotional effects	Feelings
Feelings of anger	Anger toward the former partner and the situation	Feelings
Feelings of self-worth	Sense of worth when alone	Identity
Social self-worth	Sense of worth in the presence of others	Identity
Rebuilding social trust	Capacity to trust others again	Relationships

Disentanglement

The degree to which a person's attention is no longer occupied by the former partner, scored 0 to 100, where a higher score indicates less entanglement.

A score below 20 indicates significant ongoing preoccupation. Disentanglement is the primary measure of the Thinking phase.

The self-worth gap

The difference between a person's self-worth when alone and their self-worth in the presence of others.

Scores within roughly ten points of each other suggest a consistent sense of self. A social self-worth notably lower than self-worth points toward shame or fear of judgement. A self-worth notably lower than social self-worth points toward loneliness or fear of being alone. Both scores low and close together indicates a person genuinely uncertain of who they are, alone and with others alike.

Divorce Recovery Index

A monthly measure of divorce adjustment among people seeking divorce recovery support, published by Rebuilders International and reported across the four RIFT phases on a 0–100 scale where higher indicates better adjustment.

The Index draws on both the FDAS and the DRS. See the current reading and the methodology.

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About Rebuilders International

Rebuilders International trains mental health professionals and divorce coaches in the Rebuilding method, developed by Dr. Bruce Fisher over more than forty years. Individuals going through divorce can find programs, classes and a free self-assessment at rebuilders.net.