In general AIBU to think children do better long term with separated parents than living all together in an unhappy marriage?

[Invasionofthegutsnatchers]

DH and I disagree on this. He thinks it's always better to stay together as a family unit.

AIBU to say that actually, after the initial shock and upset (which can be mitigated to some extent), it is better for the marriage to end and for the parents to move on with separate lives, making sure the children are loved and cared for in separate homes? Keeping communication going etc.

DH doesn't want to split. I do. This is absolute hell so please be nice to me if possible

Oh and saying 'you're stating for the kids because they can't deal with the upset of separation ' (generic you, not OP specific)
Really really is hurting the children more, the pain and upset at the time if the split isn't good but is better than 10 -20 years of constant unhappy family life

100% agree! ⬆️ I also lived this as a child & HATED every second of it! I was SO much happier when they finally called it quits.

I think it’s worse for a child to stay in a household with 2 adults that don’t live each other…. Last year my husband told me he no longer loved me, then the next day said to ‘forget he’d said anything’… we’ve tried to carry on as normal for a whole year but living in a house where there is no live is really hard… and quite frankly life is way too precious and short not to be happy!
in June this year I almost asked him to just go, because quite frankly it felt like we were working against each other than as a team… The next day he announced that he had decided he couldn’t stay for the sake of our child and was indeed going to move out… We applied for a divorce the very next day, and although I feel sad that our marriage failed after almost 2 decades, now he’s gone I can honestly say the house is more relaxed, my daughter is actually happier, spends less time in her room, if we want to just shoot somewhere for a few hours we don’t have to ask permission or ask him along, generally he’d then sit there miserable / bored until we felt bad and just went home to please him….. I felt constantly like I was trying to either keep both him and our daughter happy, or I had to choose which one to keep happy at the expense of the other… it was draining and worse than having 2 kids sometimes!
My daughter has now revealed how much happier she is with him gone, and some of the things she’s said has made me feel really sad and question why I’ve waited for him to leave… I wish I’d asked him to leave years ago when the relationship became platonic… she now finds any PDA weird because she never saw it around the house… it terrifies me that she thinks our relationship was normal, and I hope she doesn’t base her future relationships on ours!
if the love has gone, end it. It isn’t healthy for children to be round two unhappy adults … it’s better to be round those adults individually and build happy memories with both parents separately! Don’t let them grow up wishing their parents had just separated and spared them the arguments/tension etc.

My parents split twice - once when I was ten and the other when I was 17. It was far easier to bear at 10 than at 17.

I agree that children, when they are young children, don’t care about their parents being happy; they just care about their own security. At 10, I was worried about what was going to happen to ME. At 17, I was so worried about my mother.

I think it’s better to stay together if this is possible.

I think the point is, that we chose our life partners, get married and decide to have a child or children… but overtime we all change, my husband and I recently separated and neither of us are the people we were 18 years ago when we met.. Neither of us are bad people, but we simply don’t love each other anymore and the relationship was making us both unhappy!
while our relationship was not in anyway abusive, it also wasn’t loving or happy anymore…. We are now separated and applied for a divorce. Things are extremely civil and we are ‘friends’, but while I probably would’ve plodded along as friends till one of us died…. That would’ve been a terrible waste of my life, and a terrible example for our daughter…. I’ve recently been away with my daughter and she has said she’s happier with Dad not being around, she hated how unhappy he was, and his unhappiness made me unhappy and in turn her… No one should stay with a partner they no longer love, life’s too short to be unhappy…. My daughter deserves a happy mother, and hopefully her father will also be happier once he’s settled into his new life…
And while step families can be horrendous, not everyone who divorces has intent to meet someone else…. I for sure intend to stay single for a VERY long time, and intend to be happily single too!!

YANBU I grew up in a household where my parents loathed each other for 40 years but stayed together partly down to lack of funds and partly because divorce wasn't 'respectable'.

I learned absolute contempt for men watching my df in that situation, and have never been able to bring myself to live with a partner. Just the thought of it makes me feel panicky and trapped.

If you cannot show your children a happy home environment and a loving relationship, definitely split for everyone's sake.

Your DH is thinking only of himself - the cost, the need to move house, the inconvenience, the need to find someone else to cook and clean for him.

I grew up in a home with unhappy parents that should have divorced when we were young. Constant arguing, gaslighting, no affection, no respect, and just sadness. My siblings and I all struggled in our own relationships and have trouble showing normal love and affection.
Looking back, every time they fought we were terrified they would divorce but I’m almost certain we would have been happier in the long run. There were times when one would go away for work or other reasons for longish periods of time and I remember feeling much more settled when there was just one parent.

This.

All the stats appear to say kids do better in a nuclear family ( not talking about abusive relationships)

The thing is lots of men just opt out completely when a marriage breaks down. Whilst healthy co parenting is ideal in reality for many kids it never happens and they lose contact with their dad.

It shouldn't be the case but it is.

It’s very different that’s why.
The only way this situation can be compared is if you’re saying the woman leaves and leaves the husband with the children… in which case she would be painted as far more selfish than men that leave are!

This reminds me of a lady I worked with… she was married with 2 sons and was very unhappy, however stayed for the sake of the boys… when she deemed the boys old enough (adults) she left. Both boys still lived with their dad but we’re grown ups… both boys no longer talk to my friend hating her for leaving, she’s missed their weddings, grandchildren etc…..
She is heartbroken and wishes she had left while the boys were small and taken them with her, that way they’d have grown up accepting their parents weren’t together.

Kids don't always lose contact with their dads. My ds sees his dad more now we are apart because my ex has to make an effort, and set aside a day specifically for ds.

When we were together, he just assumed I would do everything and he would be out from Dawn until dusk and ignore ds.
He never did nappies but once ds was potty trained, ex could be prevailed on to actually spend some time with his son. Leaving him was the only way to force the issue. I tried everything else.

I think it’s complicated.

I agree with the PP that children are self-centred and don’t want massive disruption to their lives.

My mother separated from my dad when I was 10. She moved my stepdad in shortly afterwards. She was ecstatically happy and in love. My siblings and I were miserable and we are all very low contact with her now. My stepdad was comparatively wealthy and when we moved our clothes, house was nicer - but we were devastated that our dad moved out.

I don’t think people should stay in miserable, abusive marriages but stepparents, step siblings, being ferried around between houses is pretty shit. Or it was for us.

I think there are so many variations of what works and doesn't, there is no perfect answer so we should do what works best for our individual families.

Who cares what he wants .
Divorce him op

I agree with you but it depends on how you handle it. I do not think that having stepfamilies is usually beneficial to children so if you split up are you prepared to stay single, or at least keep your love life separate from your DC. That's what I've had to do for 14 years.

I suppose not everyone will agree but I personally was very unhappy being in a split family. Both my parents remarried and things were very unequal between myself and the next set of children. Not only that but 4 of my siblings had none broken homes whilst I was shipped about constantly between 4 sets of grandparents and 2 parent homes. Didn't get to just enjoy being home with all that.

I'd think very carefully if you can salvage this. Counselling, time together, maybe time apart to work in the relationship as a "not living together for a bit" couple. Are your children very young? As the toddler abd baby years are so hard on a relationship ime

I was u happy for about 3 years before we both jointly decided to split.
Yes it was difficult at first but to be honest, the kids now have much better parents. We're both happier being separated and therefore much nicer people and the kids are also happier.
I stayed for ages thinking it was the right thing to do but it really wasn't.

Happiness takes many different forms. Being in love is not necessarily a prerequisite to happiness. It's just as possible to be happy and yet not be in love as it is possible to be in love and yet be desperately unhappy.

I don’t believe in idyllic family life and really do think that it’s not that easy to maintain feelings for so long. I however firmly believe that children are happier with both parents together, unless (and it’s a big one) one of the parents is abusive or aggressive.

I agree with @Screwcorona and @80sMum. Of course I have no idea what life would have been like if my parents had stayed together, but I grew up relatively poor with a worried mum, my dad's visits grew further and further apart, I had no male role models so I was afraid of men. I was an only child, too, and we had no family network. I think if you can make it work, then try.

Just wanted to add that my parents are divorced, but it happened when I was 20+. It was and is still painful on a deeper level. I know it’s not right thing for them to go back together but I am secretly dreaming of it. It’s so painful knowing that I’m coming from the two people who now have nothing to do with each other. I do think that both of them were at fault and they could do something about it but preferred to destroy everything.

I wouldn’t say the stats are in DH’s favour… those statistics apply only to a happy, well functioning marriage.
Yes, outcomes are often better for people who have come from a two parent family/household, but only if that relationship was healthy. They don’t fare better when one or both parents are u happy in the relationship

I don’t think the fact of the separation itself is the critical variable. What’s critical is the way the parents conduct themselves during and after the split.

If a separation is cordial or at least civil, the parents continue to prioritise the children and the children don’t experience a vast deterioration in their standard of living a split can be a neutral or positive experience, particularly if the parents are visibly unhappy.

Too often though the parents wants get in the way. Revenge, bitterness, inability to suppress painful emotions, introducing new partners and potentially additional children at a pace which the children are not comfortable with.

My daughter has thrived since I separated from her father (she was four at the time). It hasn’t always been easy and he was extremely unpleasant to me for several years after we separated but our lives improved in almost every way. I no longer live in fear and frustration and can organise my life in a way that suits her and I. I do now have another partner but he doesn’t live with us (and possibly never will).

I don’t delude myself that ithe separation hasn’t impacted her but I am certain that the outcome for her is better than if we had stayed together. And that’s largely because I have bent over backwards to make sure her relationship with him hasn’t suffered even though he doesn’t deserve it.

It is case by case and it should never be done lightly. And above all it’s really important to maintain as civil a relationship as you can (unless there has been abuse). But staying together through gritted teeth out of a sense of duty is certainly not creating a positive outcome for children.

I wish I had split up with my ex, long before we did- it’s easier to say in hindsight obviously.
I have 3 sons (all grown up now) and the youngest (22) says he wishes his Dad would’ve left the day he was born, both my eldest and youngest have said our home is far happier and that things are better now.

I wish it for selfish reasons really, my ex was cruel, to me and the children and we were very poor and quite a chaotic family,several times I turned to Mumsnet and the advice was always to break free - but I was afraid.

I think if a marriage isn’t working you can try to fix it but making do, is no good for anyone.
it could be you seperate and then reunite but I don’t think anyone should be unhappy in their home to a point they don’t want to be with their partner and I think once you feel like that you are at a point of no return.