Reply to 10-yo DS asked me if i regret marrying DW

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

Reply to "10-yo DS asked me if i regret marrying DW"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Kids often know there is a problem before the parents.  They are very intuitive and have no reason to be in denial.  Also, they usually experience real love from each parent and they can observe that each parent treats the other parent with much less affection.  If the gap is fairly large, they put two and two together.  They also notice snippy, sarcastic little comments that a parent might make that parents don't think kids hear or understand.

I presume the reason you are raising this issue is because you are wondering if your efforts to "stay together for the kids" is worth the effort if the kids see right through it?  Or am I just projecting?!  Because that is what happened to me.  My husband was cheating, alcoholic, and drug addicted and I was trying to hold things together for the child.  Then the child started asking me pretty pointed questions about whether I loved DH and whether we were going to get divorced.  I had trouble white-washing the answers ...

We are now separated and in the middle of the divorce process.  We made that move independently of the child ... husbands cheating was too intolerable.  But I think losing the illusion that the child was unaware of our problems probably accelerated the process.[/quote]

+1.  Also now an ex-spouse from a partner who cheated and drank.  My kids are too young to remember that phase of our life.  But, I do remember my daughter asking me why I was so sad one day when I took her to nursery school.  I wasn't crying.  I wasn't saying anything sad.  But, at that moment I knew that my face was reflecting the utter devastation and pain that I was feeling every day.  And, I also knew that if assured her I wasn't sad at that moment (i.e. lied) that I would be teaching her something wrong about humans -- that it's normal for us to lie or hide our feelings or what looked like sadness wasn't actually that.  I knew at that moment that to stay would be to actively teach my kids all the crazy I had been living with in my husband.

I ended my marriage.  I wish my ex-husband was different, but he's not and lying about it doesn't help.  I'm actually glad when my kids recognize how fucked up something is.  My only role is to help them understand that his problems are his and are not a reflection of whether he loves them or not and that other people in life can give them the attention and love and care that he is not capable of.

All I can say to OP, is try to answer honestly but without all the dirty details.  If your differences are leading to real troubles in your marriage, and your child sees that and you lie and say everything is fine, you are not helping your child.   A kid doesn't need to hear that everything is fine when it actually is not.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics