Parents who "stay together for the kids" are just cowards. Most of the time, it has nothing to do with duty to your children -- one or both parents are just afraid of being broke. Which is pathetic.

You choose to live miserably and model marriage to your children as a joyless endurance test just to preserve your material comfort.

My mother had guts. She left an abusive, alcoholic husband when my sister and I were 5 and 6. We lived in virtual poverty for several years -- which my sister and I actually remember as the best years of our early childhood.

All you martyrs who think you're doing your kids a favor by "staying" are kidding yourselves. It's all about your bank balance.

There was a fear that they'd get divorced because we knew they were unhappy. So it was always in the air. "Will they get divorced? Will my life change? How will it work? What will I do?" Created great anxiety for me.

I do. there was a lot of fighting and I didn't see a healthy relationship. I struggle now with relationships and I do think not seeing a good one as a child is partly to blame.

My parents were good parents who tried their best (IMO) but they are fundamentally incompatible with each other. They had a semi-arranged marriage- introduced by their parents and pressured to marry quickly. I remember alot of arguing followed by compromises (that didn't really work for anyone) and passive-aggressiveness. Growing up, I wished they had gotten divorced but unfortunately, they came from a generation and culture where divorce was unacceptable.

I learned from watching my parents what I didn't want in a relationship. I also had commitment issues for a long time because I was terrified of ending up like my parents. My parents are now in their 70s and retired. They no longer have childcare, eldercare, or work to provide distractions from their relationship. Both are unhappy and resentful. Since they don't like each other, they can't/won't be each other's primary companion in their old age. Instead, they rely on me and my brother for that. If we say that we are busy with our own lives, they will guilt trip us. They routinely remind us of the sacrifices they made for us and in particular, how they stayed married for us.

This is a sacrifice I could've done without.

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.

I think my life would have been much worse in many ways if they divorced. But, it was terrible on so many occasions, and my mom stayed for us kids, she says. The problem is that she blames me, somehow not my sister, for staying and for everything that happened. Yes, even their physical fights in which I defended her, are now my fault.

Just so you know OP, there's significant selection bias in your question. Only the kids who KNOW their parents stayed together for their sake will answer. I'm sure there are people who would tell you their parents were happily married who fall into the category here.

It’s a fair question. But you could ask the alternatiive - did you resent your parents for divorcing and inflicting the associated outcomes - financial hit and mixed families etc etc

OP here, thanks everyone for the feedback!

Anonymous wrote:I'll chime in different. No, I didn't resent my parents decision to stay married or get divorced when I was in college. Because of their choices, they had more resources, I had a closer relationship with my father (who would have likely not have had much custody) and my childhood wasn't full of tension. If anything, I'd say it was drama free.

Same here. As much as it was a shock when my parents divorced once I was in college, and I doubtless have some issues related to thinking I lived in a happy home and then feeling like it all fell apart, that would have been much harder to deal with when I was a child. And as I went through the difficulty of them having new partners, resenting each other, etc I thought how terrible that would have been to deal with when I was a child and actually living at home, having it impact my day to day life. I eventually became aware that my father had wanted to leave my mother for many years, he planned to leave my freshman year of college but then waited another year when he learned that could be destabilizing so he waited another year. It is key to note though that I never saw my parents fight or sensed much tension. I am sad that my father left my mother, but it was much better for me and our relationship that he waited. I am 35, married with kids myself, and appreciate this now.

Anonymous wrote:My lifelong best friend grew up in this scenario. Her parents had a sort of partially arranged marriage. They were set up, liked each other enough, and were pressured into marrying quickly by their families. She was an only child and literally never experienced a happy nuclear household where the parents love each other. They established when she was fairly young that they didn't love each other and didn't want to be together, but they stayed together in the same house until she left for college. Especially for her younger self, it was a confusing situation. They would go out to dinner as a platonic family, go grocery shopping together, etc. but then at the same time sleep in separate rooms, date other people, work long hours to avoid each other, and fight terribly - the police came to her house often. She was forced to grow up quickly in ways that I never had to as a child with parents in a thankfully happy marriage. She was constantly made to mediate their fights as the only child and knew from a young age that they prioritized themselves and their issues over her.

She told me many times that she wished they would just divorce and live separately. She's not close with either of them because of what they put her through, and when she first entered the dating scene as an adult she needed a lot of help from her friends to truly understand and live out a healthy, thriving relationship.

This is an extreme scenario, of course, but your kids are affected by what you do, be in staying in a marriage OR divorcing.

I should add, they stayed together and in the same house for financial reasons.

My parents "stayed together for my sake" until I was 13. Then someone from my mom's past turned up, and she jumped ship from my dad to my now step-dad.

My step-dad is a GREAT guy. Love him. And it seriously, seriously tarnished my view of my mom that she couldn't be independent and leave my dad, she had to wait for another man to come along.

Their divorce has caused me a lot of heartache and relationship damage with my parents, even though my dad was kind of a jerk and they probably should have divorced earlier. I'm mid-30s and it's finally getting easier where I have my boundaries and family routines (holidays, etc) down, but divorce actually gets harder in the first decade of being an adult child and now responsible for being the one to work out when you see each of them, money, expectations, navigating inlaws, etc.

My personal opinion - if you want out, get out on as good of terms as possible so you put as little of it as possible on your kids to deal with. But if you're going to stay together - stay together. Don't jump ship once something better comes along, it's just a really weak move and your kids see it. Get out and be independent, or be committed. But don't wait around for a better option.

My lifelong best friend grew up in this scenario. Her parents had a sort of partially arranged marriage. They were set up, liked each other enough, and were pressured into marrying quickly by their families. She was an only child and literally never experienced a happy nuclear household where the parents love each other. They established when she was fairly young that they didn't love each other and didn't want to be together, but they stayed together in the same house until she left for college. Especially for her younger self, it was a confusing situation. They would go out to dinner as a platonic family, go grocery shopping together, etc. but then at the same time sleep in separate rooms, date other people, work long hours to avoid each other, and fight terribly - the police came to her house often. She was forced to grow up quickly in ways that I never had to as a child with parents in a thankfully happy marriage. She was constantly made to mediate their fights as the only child and knew from a young age that they prioritized themselves and their issues over her.

She told me many times that she wished they would just divorce and live separately. She's not close with either of them because of what they put her through, and when she first entered the dating scene as an adult she needed a lot of help from her friends to truly understand and live out a healthy, thriving relationship.

This is an extreme scenario, of course, but your kids are affected by what you do, be in staying in a marriage OR divorcing.

Anonymous wrote:No resentment on my side but they pretty much despised each other by the end and my mother blames us kids for how her life turned out.

This was my situation as well. Every chance she got, my mother would tell us that we were the reason she stayed. We knew she was unhappy and we grew up with the guilt of thinking that WE were the impediment to her happiness and her dreams. Meanwhile, we learned that our father was willing to give her a divorce if she really wanted it but he was willing to allow us to be her scapegoat and allow her to play the martyr with us. So...yea we had issues because of that also. Truth is that she was too afraid to leave but was quick to use us as the reason. To this day, it is still a bad dynamic. My parents eventually divorced and I am the only sibling who talks regularly with my mom - she lives in our hometown. We all see and talk to our dad as he lives not too far away and he really is trying to make amends.

Ugh, my brother and I BEGGED our dad to divorce our mom. He didn't. It has severely affected our ability to have a relationship with him.