To be grateful my parents divorced?

1 reply

Thundertoast · 05/08/2026 14:13

Might sound strange but...

I learnt in my teens, from both my own parents and from friends etc:

Breakups happen and are a normal part of life
You will be sad, and thats okay, but you will be happy again
Life carries on afterwards - you might not be able to imagine what it looks like right now, but you will figure out a new normal
It is better to be happy apart rather than miserable together
making sure you can survive financially if your relationship breaks down is very important
Having two parents who are together is not the gold standard
Staying together at all costs shouldn't be your focus when a relationship starts to fail, you need to assess if the other person actually brings what they are supposed to to your life.
When relationships end, its not a failure, because the objective of a relationship is to be happy, not just 'to not be single'
Some relationships have a shelf life, and thats NORMAL. The idea that you marry the first person you date and stay together forever and anything less than that is a HUGE PROBLEM is not correct.

This doesnt mean I havnt made mistakes, or struggled, or tried for longer than I should have.
But it means I can see that I would in fact be okay if the relationship ended. Its not a HUGE SHOCK to me if bad things happen or if I go through a breakup. Its sad, and occasionally surprising. But its not a shock. Because its part of life. I feel quite sorry for people who've had no exposure to divorce or breakups as they always have a load of extra shock on top of all the other stuff you have to deal with as they have no experience that the world does keep turning, it must be bloody awful.
I should also be clear that by no means did my parents have a perfect breakup or a perfect co parenting life! But they were terribly suited and im glad they got out of it.
But im actually incredibly grateful for it, im a way.

Anyone else?
Anyone else learn anything from their parents in this way?

OP posts:

misstwaoyu · 05/08/2026 22:28

My experience with parental divorce was that I was grateful at the start, they weren’t happy.

Watching their marriage over the years certainly taught me about the kind of marriage I didn’t want, but I found myself really resenting it when I had children. I’ve found my parents really challenging to manage as they get older on their own, managing grandchildren relationships, multiple visits, split homes. I find myself very jealous of friends who have parents who are together, their parents seem much less demanding of their children’s time (mine aren’t even old! Early 60s). I worry how much more dependent they will be on me as they get older.

I selfishly at this point wish they’d just tolerated each other and stayed together, I suspect they sometimes feel like that too with the way things turned out. But there we go, my only hope is DH and I are happy so hopefully we will maintain the stability for our children I always wish I had.

Flip