Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

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

29 replies

liquiditytrap · 18/01/2011 18:40

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.

OP posts:
liquiditytrap · 20/01/2011 11:40

He's certainly not mythical...

OP posts:
elliott · 20/01/2011 11:47

I agree that you should try to talk to your parents. And if you can't, why not try writing a letter to each of them (you don't have to send it). I think that underneath the protestations that you are not angry with them, you are. Very. And why shouldn't you be? Their actions in divorcing had a major impact on your childhood and are still causing you great distress. You need to take responsibility for letting go of that, but imo part of that is actually being honest about your feelings to your parents.

teahouse · 21/01/2011 10:33

Liz Murray was on Breakfast Time a few days ago talking about her new book which is about her childhood. She said 'there are times when there is no one to blame, it is just what life brings you'.

liquiditytrap · 23/01/2011 01:23

Yes teahouse, I do feel that.

I don't actually wish my parents were still together - I couldn't imagine it tbh. They are now with such different people.

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page