were your parents unhappy?

[Spandangle]

hiya. i am trying to compare too unideal domestic situaations to work out what is best for my kids. i would be really grateful if you would share your experiences...
were your parents in an unhappy marriage when you were a child but they stayed together for the sake of the children?

how did this effect you then and how has it effected your life?

My father was a hateful vile and abusive man and my mother got most of it (she mistakenly thought she was acting as a buffer, when all she did absorb the pain and mirror it). In her defense, she would have left him sooner than she did, but didn't have the financial means to.

"how did this effect you then and how has it effected your life?"

Nothing in this, or the next lifetime will ever convince me to get married, or live with a man. (on the upside, I make for a great girlfriend).

I would rather make a living as one of those people who are used as practise dummies by medical students learning how to perform pelvic, rectal and breast exams (30 sessions in a day for about £20.00) than be financially dependant on a man, run a business with a man, give up my career to be a SAHM, or even have a joint account. If you have a daughter (s), please make sure they understand just how important this is.

Other than that, I worked through the other psychological issues, and now I am fine .

I respectfully disagree with Justthisone; I know of one family where after years of living with a phsycially abusive father, all four children left as soon as they became adults and moved abroad (that is how much distance they wanted to put him and them). Once settled, they arranged for their mother to join them.

A year or two later, what was once an alcoholic and abusive monster, was a now a humble, born again Christian begging for their forgiveness and a second chance. The wife went back, and now she couldn't be happier. He adores and dotes on her.

I am both happy and about this. He gets a get out of jail free card just because he discovered Jesus and panicked at the thought of dying an old lonely man?

@ hopingforhelp. ((Hugs))

My mother was very disappointed in my father, and it leaked out in contemptuous little asides that stopped being asides. She also infantilised him and treated him like a child. But he went along with it, and became that repulsive, lazy child who didn't ever buy his own clothes or have any idea what to do in a kitchen.

Mum and dad stayed together - Catholics again - in a deeply angry bitter marriage. She relied on him and resented him deeply, he hated her mothering but it allowed him to live in his own little world of alcohol. I grew up a ball of anxiety and fear.

Mum died a few months ago and dad is a pathetic old man who rants at the television and has infant tantrums when he can't find things.

What did they gain by staying together? Respectability? My sister and I wish they had split up.

@LadyFannyofBumStreet - the Jesus card. Hmmm. I wonder how this man's adult children reacted?

I have two examples:

My parents were together until I was 8 and I still have memories of them being unhappy, hiding my sister under the duvet so she couldn't hear and I later found out my dad have a few affairs. My mum made the decision to end it and my dad moved out. We had a couple of tough years but came out the other side. My parents both remarried to lovely people, we all get on great and me and my sister have grown up to be (relatively) "normal".

DH's parent have this year been married 40 years. They do not like each other, live in separate rooms and MIL visibly flinches when FIL speaks because she can't bear him. He's not abusive or anything like that. We had a chat a couple of years ago and I said she must have loved him once and she said "no, not really". DH is one of three sons. The eldest (38) suffers from depression and lived at home until he was 34 because he felt he needed to look after his mum. The youngest has a drug problem, low self esteem and is currently in a rehab facility. DH moved out when he was 16 and lived with his aunt and uncle who are happily married and in my opinion this has helped him shape future relationships differently.

This is only my experience, and obviously every family is different, but I am very grateful to my parents for not making me live in an environment that was so unhappy.

Frizzbonce they were extremely cynical about his ?transformation? and still are.

My parents were fundamentally incompatible, but stayed together in appearance until I was 19, at which point my father ceased the pretence of not having a long-term girlfriend with whom he lived all week, moved out permanently. My parents have not even been in the same house together since I was 25.

My experience of them staying together, despite the fact that they were blatantly unhappy with each other was one of stress and taking too much on me. I was the oldest child and ended being somehow "responsible" for my younger siblings and my father's mouthpiece when he was not there. As you can imagine that led to a great relationship with my mother . A royal fuck-up to be frank. All in all a lot better I feel for both parents to be free and clear in their own head than to be living a lie. It is hard though if there are irreconcilable but unacknowledged cracks in a relationship, and hard sometimes to tell the difference between a mendable crack and a non-mendable one.

Also, judging on how my sisters have handled their separations and children, VERY important to put aside any inclination towards point-scoring and childishness and to really be mature about your roles as joint parents to the children, albeit separately.

Hmm, okay- slightly different angle.

I would say that my parents went through phases of being very unhappy in their marriage and probably would have split if they hadn't had children. My mum in particular I think got quite a bad draw as my dad was always working, we had no family close, and I think she probably felt quite lonely and restricted at times.

Weirdly though, once we grew up and became more independent (mid teens) they started getting on much better and now I'd say they get on really rather well (apart from the usual old person bickering) and have quite a few hobbies in common. I imagine they're both quite glad they didn't split up now.

Both my parents and my IL's had very unhappy marriages. I remember realizing this around 7 and wishing that they could divorce.(Mine didn't because of religious reasons, and have been separated, but not divorced since my mid 20's) DH realized this around 9 or 10 he thinks. He remembers telling his friends around then that as soon as he and BIL moved out, that he was sure his parents would separate, and that happened about 2 months after BIL moved out.

I know both of us would have been happier if our parents had split up. Neither one of us had a particularly bad childhood, but we were both aware early on of the problems, and remember a lot of arguing (my family) and not speaking to each other (DH's) I think that our experiences have had quite the positive impact on our marriage, because we both have seen what mistakes they made, and we both work hard to do the exact opposite of what our parents did in their marriage.

Nope. They were absolutely bloody miserable. At least my mum was. My dad was abusive. And I seem to have created my very own carbon-copy of my parents' marriage. When I leave I'll be exactly the same age as mum was when she and dad separated. I hope my dc (very young, so there's some hope) don't remember too much of the pathetic blueprint of a relationship I've shown them so far.

thank you all SO much for sharing your experiences with me. it is really helpful

just this is...i started a thread to ask about peoples experiences of their parents divorcing, but only 1 reply! does that mean peoples parents didnt divorce/ they weren't affected by it??? i'm gonna bump it and see what happens...

Well my parents didn't get divorced until a few years ago. I think 2005/6 maybe? And they seperated back in 1991ish. The reason for this is because my dad is from a very Catholic family (two of my uncles are priests) so he lied to his mum and the rest of the family that my parents were still together. It was only after she died, he felt they were able to go through the divorce without "disgracing" his family or whatever. My mum never pushed for a divorce because she didn't want to find another relationship despite only being in her late 30s so it didn't bother her. And when it happened, my dad didn't even tell my mum. She just got a letter through the door from the courts. She wasn't that bothered, but she showed me it, and I cried. I couldn't understand why I did, I knew their relationship was dead from when I was little. It may have been the way my dad went about it, or because it was final, I still don't know.

I've got a couple of angles on this, I hope it helps.

My parents seemed very happy (from a child's perspective) but then when my older sister died when I was 10 they sort of lost some of the glue that held them together (she was severely disabled)and started doing their own things more. From then on I remember them as two separate people - we had a family holiday once a year but all other stuff was either one or the other of them. I have happy memories from before this time though, when we were a unit, that have shaped the way I want my children to experience their childhood, so there's a positive from being together. But I think they were happy then so obviously that's the key.

Then they just became really different people. For about six years they carried on like that, together but separate in the same house, for my sake (my other sister had moved out by then and was older so probably has a much more accurate depiction of it. The outcome was that they were so wrapped up in themselves (and their grief probably - which may have had more of an impact on me than them staying together or not, if you get me) that I developed major attention seeking tendencies which I still have and which still seriously affect my marriage and behaviour. I am a great partner and mother in that I am good company, I do not nag, I am loving and affectionate and I fully support my husband in everything that he does, but I am very very demanding, erratic, do have depressive episodes and fall apart if he is not affectionate enough in my view, go off seeking attention elsewhere in a rage, regret it, etc etc. And I honestly believe that that is where it has come from.

Had they broken up earlier, it would have been awful, but much much clearer and there would have been less of this horrible dark time when nobody spoke to each other. My adolescent/teenage years were horribly lonely and I fell pregnant at 17 which was when they finally decided to split up, but that was the first time they properly spoke to each other in ages - to talk about me being pregnant.

Here's the point: the actual break up has affected me and my other sister quite badly. We can't see our parents together as adults, we are not quite sure what happened, and my mother clearly has massive issues that she hasn't dealt with.

BUT

They have both got partners now who they have much better relationships with and have challenged my view of what a partner/wife/husband should be and are ultimately happier people.

In my view, a happy single/remarried parent is miles better than two parents that are miserable. Children will adapt as long as the new situation is happier than the old and they will respect you for your choice. (My dd1 at age 11 made me cry the other day when she said she was so impressed with everything I did when I was 18 and a single mum - I had booted her biological father out when she was 4 months old because he basically just didn't give a toss about either of us). I am now married to the man she considers her dad and she has high hopes for her future relationships

If you stay in a relationship with a person who treats you like shit or barely speaks to you, or trashes your confidence, or whatever, all you are doing 'for your children' is showing them that it is OK to put up with this, that this is what they should expect from their future partners.

We work work work at our marriage, despite our (my) faults, because I want my daughters to grow up and FULLY EXPECT to have a man/woman who respects them, treats them well, is affectionate, supports them, etc. I will not allow it to become some sort of facade, or allow myself to become submissive. I speak openly about our arguments (within reason) to my children and I let them see us resolve things because I NEVER saw that as a child. I saw destructive feelings that were not dealt with. However, I would leave if our relationship went to shit, because I want them to know that whilst working at it is important, you do not have to stay with someone who makes you miserable.

Sorry what an essay.

My parents were very unhappy but stayed together until I was 12 and the atmosphere in the home was completely intolerable for everyone. It would have been so much better for the whole family had they seperated a lot sooner.

findanewnamequick I really feel for you. This may sound patronising and I truly don't mean it to, but please don't be so hard on yourself. Our parents relationships are our blueprints even if they are shitty, fucked up ones, and subconsciously we seek these blueprints out in our adult relationships.

I spent years in relationships with weak, bullying older men - who were just like my dad. Durrr!

When you leave you can create new blueprints for you and your children.

My parents were happy some of the time but also argued like buggery. They have been together for 58 years and overall, having asked my Mum, they have had a happy marriage.

The only thing their marriage taught me was that there was nil point in me and DH arguing for nowt like Mum and Dad did. Luckily he had a similar upbringing and so as a consequence we rarely argue

Thanks Frizzbonce, that's a very kind thing to say and just what I need to hear. I had a little cry (in a nice way).

My parents were unhappy and it taught me to have low expectations of marriage and of men in general. My own marriage reflected many of the bad points of my parents' marriage and I was unhappy for many years before splitting up. I often wished my parents would separate.

My older sisters grew up when the marriage was better and have much happier memories and better marriages.