Is it unreasonable of me to still not be over my parents' divorce?

[liquiditytrap]

Which was well over 20 years ago, when I was eight. Not to put too fine a point on it, it ruined by childhood. It wasn't particularly acrimonious and I saw both parents. I didn't get on with my father's new wife for about the first 8 years of their relationship (she is alright really, it was just the situation). I can just remember being angry for about 10 years straight. I was incredibly jealous of people with parents still together. My sister feels/felt the same.

I have had counselling for various issues - depression, anxiety, eating disorders - with a few counsellors, who trace most of it back to my parents' divorce.

It still upsets me that we can't all be together sometimes and that it is all fragmented. They have never seen their grandchild at the same time, only separately. I can't look at any photos of when we were still all together without getting upset.

I could never tell them how much it upset me, and still does. My mother once said that she spent all of one night crying when she heard something on Radio 4 about how divorce damages children, so I could never tell her that it did for me as she would be devastated.

I feel like it shouldn't matter now as it was so long ago and I am grown up. But actually, it just makes me more and more cross. Talking about it doesn't help.

I completely understand - and my parents divorced when I was 22 - and that was 20 years ago

Although I was a 'grown up' when it happened, it was an incredibly acrimonious divorce and very damaging to me and my brother. My brother has never spoken to my Dad again (who was having an affair and is now married to the woman he left my Mum for) and neither has my Mum - I'm the only one who speaks to all of them...

I still get upset when I think about how my Dad, who lives 200 miles away, can't be a proper Grandad to our ds's - all our other parents live just down the road and see ds's all the time. They love seeing my Dad but it's only ever the occasional visit. I get so cross that it could have been brilliant for ds's, as despite what he did he's a lovely, daft, silly grandad and he could have seen them tons more had all this not happened. He's also gone on to have more children so I've got much younger half siblings, which is OK but just not what I imagined our family would end up being!

I also couldn't invite my Dad to our civil ceremony, which still hurts 5 years after the event .

No answer really, just wanted to post to say I don't think it matters how long ago (or what age you were at the time), these things hurt and can have a lasting impact.

It's interesting to see these posts when the current thinking seems to be children are better off with separate parents than ones that are together but unhappy.

Mine divorced when I was three and my mum brought us up single-handedly. I don't remember them being together (and he was violent, so I am glad she left him).

I do remember being envious of friends who had a mum and a dad living together,though.

I wonder how I would feel if he had not been a tosser and they had separated when I was older and I still had contact with him.

I understand a bit too. My parents divorced when I was an adult (20) and I had already left home, and yet it still makes me sad, angry, bitter, jealous - all the things you describe really. It must have been incredibly hard for you going through that at 8 :(

I was 16 when Dad left (OW)

I am still angry with him, now because I know what he did to a woman only a couple of years younger than I am now, with 2 teenage girls. He allowed the OW to call the shots and we were not allowed to see him openly. She STILL somehow is in the way.

Karma though, looks like her daughters are pretty contemptuous of her, and I wonder if now THEY see that they were wrong to sit there and watch their mum co-wreck another family, like had happened to them. maybe this, maybe not, but relations are frosty apparently.

Interesting thought about how parents stay together and as DC wouldn't we have preferred to have been part of a family that didn't 'break'

would it have been better if they had stayed together for our sake?

In my case, no. My dad would have blocked the relationship with my mum that developed after he left.

My dad is (still) hyper critical, judgemental and tbh weak and plain ODD with somethings. he would have damaged what I had left of the self esteem after his jibes and comments from my child hood.

I now find myself in a relationship that is akin to being with someone just like my Dad, but on Acid/Crack.

I now wonder if 'H' leaving (next week) is the best thing for DS. For me?

To be rid of a controlling and abusive man, who parents by remote control, i.e shouting from the kitchen, but FA else? Unwilling to enjoy life, unwilling to travel outside his own pre-determined approved locations, I could go on forever... surely that WILL be better than being stuck with that for a long period of time, surely the damage inflicted will be less.

Do I want my son growing up with the sick misogynistic views of his dad? no, to grow up to hit and hurt women, hell no, to have no respect for women, especially his mother? No FFing way.

I have no direct experience of this but I have friends who do. she - her parents divorced shortly after her 21st birthday and she was devastated - her Mum left her Dad and she was furious with her Mum for years (although they do now have a relationship, it's not as good as it was before). She was moody and difficult to live with for years until she got some counselling. Her then BF, now DH, saw her through it all and then it happened to him when he was around 30. His parents had been married for 33years and his father went off with the neighbour's wife. His mum was devastated too - never got over it really - and his sister still doesn't have anything to do with her father. It's been over 15 years now, their mum has sadly died and their father hasn't seen his grandchildren grow up or spoken to his DD in all that time.

You are not alone - nor even odd - but I would consider getting some counselling to see if you can come to terms with the damage that has been done to you.

LMHF - you are, of course, doing the right thing to extract yourself and your DS from a toxic situation. I'm guessing in the OP's situation that there wasn't any such daily nastiness - just their Dad decided to skip off with another woman.

Counselling never works.

Dad didn't leave, they just divorced. Mum was the stronger personality so it was from her direction, really.

It has basically made me decide that, as long as DH remains a good dad, I will never divorce him no matter what he does - unless the DC have left home.

uh, liquidity - counselling may never work for you - that is not to say it never works.

Whatever. Counsellors just tell you what they think you want to hear. It's not about truth, it's about stopping you being upset and helping you feel 'fixed'.

That is tripe. If it's your experience, then you have been unlucky in you counsellor. But it doesn't sound as though you are talking from experience at all.

Counselling was fantastic for helping my DD realise that my divorce was what it was.

Prior to the counselling she bottled anger and hate and was in denial about the reasons for divorce choosing to believe I was a wicked woman skipping off to be happy whilst destroying her Dad's life

(This is far from the truth)

Counselling enabled her to still love her dad but accept I had to leave him if I was to be happy. She loves me and wants me to be happy.

My impression of counsellors is that they tell you what they think you need to hear. And in my experience, they're generally right. You're right in saying that it's not necessarily about "truth", because feelings often aren't about objective truth but how we subjectively interpret things that happen. But that's by the by.

My parents divorced when I was six and it was fairly acrimonious. It did affect me of course. But I think what affected me more was my father's obvious disinterest in his children and the way he was happy to drift out of our lives over the next few years. I did hold onto a fair degree of resentment towards him until I was in my early 20s when I realised that the only person that resentment was affecting was myself. It didn't matter if I resented the guy or not, he'd still be a selfish waster so I had a choice whether to continue letting him colour my life or to just let it go and move on.

Do you often hold back saying what you feel to your mother for fear of her reaction?

I think it is quite normal. My parents divorced when i was 14 (13 years ago) and it is still one of the most defining things that has happened to me.

I was very angry for a long time and still struggle on occasions. My mother also feels a lot of guilt and i could never tell how bad it was and sometimes still is.

Both my brother and i suffered a lot. I think a lot of it comes down to the way that parents split - i cannot emphasise enough the importance of an amicable divorce! I realise that it is not always possible but the effect of an acrimonious split on children can be devastating and the effect can last well into adult hood and of course have a huge impact on future relationships.

I am talking from experience, thumdabawitch. I've had about 4 counsellors. I find it incredibly frustrating that they are basically trained not to give their opinion. Maybe they are useful for other problems, but in my case I wouldn't have been happy until the situation was reversed

Counselling is about helping someone to learn ways of dealing with thoughts and feelings they have that they find difficult to cope with. It's not about passing judgement over whether someone else's choices were right or wrong.

It is true that a lot of people's problems have their roots in childhood but that doesn't necessarily mean that the parents are to blame. Often it's because a child's view of events is distorted and muddled because a child doesn't have the emotional development needed to see the big picture of what was going on and why. Instead, a child will often hold themselves to blame. Or a child may see one particular event as pivotal whereas it may have just been a trivial one that was the straw that broke the camel's back or even was just entirely coincidental.

So when a counsellor suggests that a person's present-day issues have their roots in childhood it's not casting blame. It's more a starting point to realising that you as an adult need to re-evaluate those childhood impressions and to stop letting them rule your present-day life.

Holding onto resentment for so long is like taking poison and hoping someone else drops down dead. It's not healthy.

I don't actually resent my parents. I have good relationships with both of them and am glad they are happy. I resent the situation.

One of the most important things I got (paradoxically from counselling) is that what you feel, can never be wrong. You don't make a conscious decision to feel anything. What you do about your feelings, well that's another matter.

So I may feel envious of my beautiful friend with a lovely husband, a gorgeous house and Boden-catalogue children. That's OK, as long as I acknowledge it, it doesn't make me a terrible person, it makes me a flawed human, like everyone else.

However, if I pretended that I'm not jealous because I'm her friend, I might find myself criticising her behind her back, making snide comments to her kids or being really pleased if her DH has an affair etc. That, in my opinion, would make me a bit of a shitty person.

Sorry if I'm being a bit long-winded - what I want to say is, it's not unreasonable to feel the way you do. It's who you are and how you reacted to events in your life. Try not to worry about whether or not it's 'reasonable' or 'normal'; it just is. The question is what do you do about it, as it can't be changed, and you've got the rest of your life to be getting on with.

If counselling hasn't worked for you, it could be that you've tried the wrong sort of counselling, or just been unlucky. It could be that counselling just isn't for you. Have you tried anything else? Like anti-depressants? People who suffer post-traumatic stress (and I know your parents divorce isn't the same as watching people being killed) can sometimes develop different neural pathways in the brain. They literally CANNOT think differently and get trapped reliving the experience. Maybe a more medical approach might help.

My parents weren't happy and I feel terrible that they may have stayed together for me and my sibling.

I'd far rather have had happy parents than the tension around us all the time; it was awful and I didn't have a particuarly happy childhood because of it.

My parents' divorce is probably why I am a wreck, unable to work, on meds and in counselling. But I'd be even more messed-up if they'd stayed together. If we'd been a perfect family that would obviously have been better but that was never an option. :/

You sound very bitter but you also sound as though you have automatically blamed all your problems on your parents' divorce.

If you found a counsellor who engaged in discussion and told you what they thought, they might actually say that you have used what happened when you were 8 as a deflector. Instead of facing your issues you automatically say it's the fault of your parents' divorce.

You are a grown woman and you need to decide whether you are going to let it go or let the bitterness eat away at you.

2yrs ago, I was at this crossroads and I had to decide which way to go. Not because my parents were divorced but because a drunken bastard had mown my mother down as she walked along the pavement. I couldn't let go of the anger until I realised that it was eating away at me and probably killing me and that if I didn't let go, my 3 kids would also be without a mother.

You need to decide which way to go.

When I read this it makes me sad. Anger and hurt, it kicks around for a long time. When a parent dies, you have these emotions, especially feeling lost and alone, you want to blame someone. But there is no one to blame. The anger dies, the hurt remains, but feeling hurt is not as distructive and negative as anger can be, which appears to remain from what I can read here from some of these posts. My father died when I was 12. I would rather have two parents than one or even none, but you simply can't remain angry, I guess that is a big difference. Our family had no counseling, no guidance, a time before Macmillan nurses, 30 plus years on, the loss of my happy childhood and father, still can make feel like I'm 12 all over again and the sadness rushes back and then passes. But no anger. Anger, let it go, its no good.

You've said yourself that you could never have a conversation with your Mum about the divorce and the impact it had on you, but you don't mention your Dad.

You sound terribly jaundiced and fatalistic about life and perhaps for you, the reason counselling hasn't worked is because no counsellor can tell you how it really was. They can only help you to process your emotions and stop a traumatic event blighting your life. If you'd be prepared to put up with virtually anything in a marriage rather than get divorced, this will certainly blight your life and quite possibly the lives of any children you have. You won't make the same mistakes perhaps, but you will make different, potentially even worse ones.

Why not try something you've never done, to halt this script? Talk to your parents and give them some honesty. Alongside this, talk to other adults who were around at the time (uncles, aunts, friends etc.) because what nearly always shocks adults who have been through this is that their childish perception of events was flawed. The script you were given at 8 years old in all probability wasn't the whole truth and your parents themselves will also have made realisations long after the divorce.

The stories might be conflicting, because as Snorbs said, truth can be hugely subjective. Hence, the viewpoint of a more objective adult who was around throughout your parents' marriage, divorce and the aftermath might be the one that comes closest to the truth.

It doesn't have to be a hurtful conversation, but it does have to be an honest one. Most people who divorce can look back, acknowledge that they should have done things differently (either in the marriage or during the divorce) but forgive themselves with the benefit of hindsight.

I write as the child of parents who divorced very acrimoniously when I was 11. It was absolutely the right decision but I know I didn't think that immediately, because I knew literally no-one whose parents had divorced and therefore felt "different" at an age when I wanted to belong. However, as an adult I have had several long conversations with my parents, siblings, aunts and uncles and have much more tolerance and understanding for their actions.

Becoming a parent helped even more with this, because I know that both my H and I have made mistakes and will no doubt continue to do so, but we're human and our DCs will make mistakes when they are parents too.

Talk to them.

There isn't any point in talking to either of them. My mother would just be very upset and my father will not take criticism from anyone on anything, ever.

I have since spoken to other adults who were around at the time, especially my aunt. They still stick to the script that I was 'so resilient' and 'dealt really well with it' (like I had a choice).

I have had problems, but I also have a great job, a great relationship, am a good mother etc. I think I try harder at my marriage as a result. I let the petty things go, make a big effort to keep romance/love/sex alive and it pays off.

Hmmm... I don't know if it's unreasonable or not but I do think that the only 2 people who know exactly what happens in a marriage are the two people who are actually married. Unless your mother or father are very, very open with you then you won't have any real idea of how good or bad their relationship was.

I had no idea my father was physically abusive to my mother though I did know he was emotionally abusive. It's only looking back now that I realise just how bad it was for my mother.

You can try as hard as you like in a relationship, give wake up blow jobs every morning and have sex twice a night, have date nights, a perfect home, be a stepford wife, go out to work and earn enough money to let your DH follow his dreams or whatever. If love, respect and friendship etc aren't there then you can compromise as much as you want but you won't have a healthy relationship and your children won't have a healthy model. You'll just be teaching your kids that X is normal and acceptable.

FWIW I do think that it is worse for children to grow up in a loveless home. I do think it's worse for them to believe that it is normal for a couple to not love each other or to accept poor treatment or contempt or being second best. I have a wonderful DH but I have still made some of the same mistakes my parents made and copied their behavior (not on the DV side of things). If my mother had left my father when she first suspected he was cheating on her then perhaps I would have learned better lessons. Perhaps also I would have learned worse once. Who knows?

Also therapy is brilliant with the right therapist and the right patient.

Having read your last post, I think you are being no more honest with us, than you are with your parents. I'm especially disappointed that after all your threads under other names, you're still clinging on to this belief that if you try your hardest to meet a mythical H's needs, everything will be just fine - but if it's not, you will put up with it.

If you won't confront this situation with the people you resent and instead continue to blame them for your adult choices, you will go on making very bad decisions in life.