If you were a child of parents who stayed together for your sake...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband and I both had this. In my case, YES I RESENT IT because they fought like cats and dogs, treated each other horribly, threatened each other and the tension in our household was very thick. In my husband's case, YES HE RESENTS IT because he was completely unaware that they were unhappy, he always felt that they had a perfect marriage and it was completely disillusioning to him that they were faking it all along and he was completely blindsided and devastated by the breakup when he was in his 20's.

I have a good friend who feels much like your husband does about her parents who divorced when we were in our early 20s. I don't think she thought they had the "perfect marriage" but she did think they had a strong marriage & loved each other. Finding out that one of her parents hadn't loved the ohter in quite some time & that the marriage was really an unhappy one made her question her own instincts, created trust issues, & made her feel like her childhood was, in some ways, a lie. She also resented the fact that one of her parents spent much of her childhood/adolescence counting down the days until she & her sibling were grown so the marriage could end.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My parents argue a lot and when I was around 11 or 12 I asked them to please wait until I was out of the house to get divorced. I'm not sure why I asked them that, it may have just been that i didn't want my family to fall apart. They didn't have many large arguments in front of the kids, they just seemed to bicker as their preferred method of communication.

When I was in my 20s, my father complained to me that my mother drove him crazy but that he knew that he could never afford to divorce her. They're both horrible with finances and tend to say "well he/she just wasted money on X, so I'm going to go ahead and spend more on Y". My mother has issues with anxiety and would have a very hard time handling life completely on her own. We just realized that my father is probably ADHD inattentive which explains a lot of his issues with relationships and focus in general.

In an interesting way, they have come up with a fairly decent solution where my father has retired to MD and my mother to FL and while they both spend time together they spend the majority of it apart. They do clearly miss each other when they're apart but they're back to bickering within 12 hours (usually less) of being together again. They are very similar in many ways and constantly complain that the other one won't listen.

I didn't realize that my family was somewhat dysfunctional as I was growing up, but as a young adult it became clearer. I am glad that my parents stayed together because they have helped ease each other's burdens in times of need (mom caring for my dad's father when he needed it, etc) and I honestly don't believe that either of them would have any better relationship with anyone else. I hope that they don't resent me for asking them to stay together, but from things that they have said I don't think that they do. FWIW I also don't think that they stayed together just for the kids' sake.

This sounds like a nice set up. Good for them for still caring about each other...it seems like they've found their ways to thrive together, albeit apart.

[Anonymous]

I have mixed feelings about it.

The positives - I had the attitude that I wanted my parents bad marriage and constant fighting, things I couldn’t control, to have a silver lining where I do better in my own adult life when I can make the decisions. Imagining a different ending for myself and reading a heck of a lot to escape the tension were my coping mechanism. So I had a low BS threshold with guys and had the mindset that I would rather not marry than be in a bad marriage. I also thought I would be willing to do IVF/sperm donor if I never met the right guy because I knew I wanted to be a mother and didn’t want to be with the wrong guy just to have a child. I am happily married now and feel I went into the marriage understanding the importance of communication, shared values, compromise yet still standing up for yourself, and always letting the person know you value and appreciate them and vice versa. My parents individually are good people and good individually as parents. Personally I think they suck at relationships and it was the things they weren’t doing to nurture the marriage, IMO, why it crumbled. They are now divorced, neither in a serious relationship, and my dad at one point wanted to get back with my mom. Financially I do think they were able to maintain a middle class lifestyle that would have been more difficult if they divorced. Also, my dad would have definitely have remarried and we would have needed to deal with a blended family because he isn’t one to want to be alone.

The negatives - for me it turned out okay but I lived a decent portion of my childhood with them having a United front. My much younger siblings had more of the fighting. By the time my youngest sister was in middle school they would contradict each other and she was right in the middle of the frustrations. One would say yes you could go to the party, the other would day no. My mom who was typically very hands on would get so pissed at my dad she would let my sister do whatever because she didn’t want to fight. My dad would get so upset he wouldn’t be in his separate room and would instead go to his secret girlfriends house. My youngest sister had more issues in transitioning to adulthood. I know I struggled with trust and abandonment issues because I felt my dad was putting his social life above us and because he had to be dishonest about his whereabout we wouldn’t even known how to reach him in the case of an emergency (this was pre cell phones and early days). I had a lot of hurt and anger in my relationship with him that eventually we overcame but the first step was he acknowledged being wrong and apologized to me when we discussed it. Forgot to mention in the end my dad filed for divorce, because the other woman in his life was pressuring him and my youngest sibling just finished high school. He had the sheriff’s office serve papers to get my mom out the house ...and he remarried a woman that had lots of issue she of her own. Things were even crazier for awhile.

So honestly the best answer is to work on your marriage. Don’t stay together for the sake of the kids, both be willing to work on your marriage. If only one person is willing to do the work, I would look for ways to co-parents effectively in different households. I believe at least one person is seeking out other relationships to get the sex, appreciation, and companionship that is missing in the “stay for the kids”marriage. That’s tough seeing as a child and dealing with that. Also, at any point the house of cards can fall apart if the spouse falls in love with someone else so whatever financial security you think you have may be only as good as the other person’s options.

[Anonymous]

I never resented them. I respect that they kept the family together when I was young. I saw tons of fighting, but I thought that was normal. They were always good to us. When I was a teenager I vowed to never stay with someone who I fought with constantly. Now, my spouse and I have been together 20 years and have teenagers. With my family staying together when I was young, there were no money issues, we lived in a nice home and I had everything I wanted. My SAHM wouldn't have been able to provide that life for us had she left. Both my brother and I turned out ok and are good parents. We often talk about how we thought our childhood was good at the time, but we were subjected to lots of crap.

[Anonymous]

My dad endured a lot of crazy and still does. But we were a close family and they modeled getting all your feelings out for us. Never felt tension in ny house but a lot of fighting and complaining about the other person.
Honestly I think it prepared me fairly well for marriage.
Fwiw me and all my brothers are partnered with people from divorced homes. Their emotional disfunction is remarkably high. We all can tolerate people and arguments and mistakes and independence really well. Wish my parents would have been more strict in guiding us towards partners from happy homes.

[Anonymous]

Lord. Have. Mercy. Do we ever wish our folks had divorced before they actually did. We all would have been a lot happier for it. Do I resent them? No, not any more. I'm in my 40s and know they did their best by us But MAN they should have split up sooner when we could have benefited from not having everyone in the house be so damn miserable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lord. Have. Mercy. Do we ever wish our folks had divorced before they actually did. We all would have been a lot happier for it. Do I resent them? No, not any more. I'm in my 40s and know they did their best by us But MAN they should have split up sooner when we could have benefited from not having everyone in the house be so damn miserable.

To be clear, "we" is my brother and I.

[Anonymous]

My parents stayed together (and still are) because they can't afford to divorce. Neither could afford their house on their own , even now (2nd mortgage). Both would need to move into a house or a condo, which in their area (not DC) is really uncommon.

I am thankful they stayed together to provide my sister and I a more financially stable childhood. We got to keep our (very modest) house in our school district and we got to take extracurriculars (which they couldn't really afford but would have been out of the question had they divorced.)

[Anonymous]

I am grateful my parents stayed together until I went off to college.

It became clear they weren't happy in my high school years, I assume there were problems before but as a teenager I was too self absorbed to care (weren't we all). My dad moved out my junior year, came back and then they split for good my freshman year in college.

Now that I am married, I can see their sacrifice. I didn't have to go through the shuttle custody schedule, I had one room, one house. I am sure they would have liked to have split earlier. There weren't epic fights (well, a few heated exchanges, but whatever).

They married young, they really weren't right for each other, but they stuck it out for mine and my sister's sake. Applaud them.

FWIW, neither re-married, neither one seems overly happy. They don't get along now, which is a far bigger problem than the divorce itself.

[Anonymous]

A little mercy and compassion would be a good thing. My parents were miserable together. They didn't have the money, confidence or skills to divorce. They were reaching for lower middle class. I don't feel resentful. I do feel sad. Incredibly sad for how things turned out for them. For the fact they didn't feel able to change their lives. I am very aware they tried to do right by me. They wanted the best for me. They should have had better happier lives. They deserved that. We all do. But we are all flawed. Very deeply. We all make mistakes and fall short in very significant ways. It has impacted me of course. But I try to feel compassion for them.

Maybe it makes a difference that I am older and have lost them both. But no feeling of resentment here. Just sadness.