for those of you whose parents divorced when you were a child...

[juicychops]

do you think it has affected your adult relationships in any way?

I know that counsellors/therapists can stem any adult issue and problem back to a parent's divorce, and some part of this i do agree with/believe in, although not always.

ive had some pretty bad experiences in life since my teens which has shaped the person i am today. the last few days i have been thinking about all of this and trying to make sense of it all, and work out why i am the way i am, and ive started to believe it all stems from my parents getting divorced and the after effects of this.

i have always known that emotionally i am a bit messed up, but have always tried not to think too much about the bad experiences ive had. but now that i have been doing this over the last few days, it seems pretty 'easy' to find the blame for these in my parents. is this a fair judgement do you think? does divorce always cause deep routed problems for the children that they may or may not be aware of, but ultimately shapes their future possibly for the worse?

i can't help but think now that if they had stayed together none of what happened to me would of happened, and i wouldn't be messed up now the way i am. i would i still be, but perhaps in a different way?

im just sharing my thoughts here. im not looking to start counselling or anything, just trying to find answers myself

My parents divorced when i was 12. It was not amicable, and it completely fucked me up. I have made perpetually bad choices and am only starting to realise at 24 how to recognise the bad choices. I think if the split had been amicable i wouldnt be this bad.

My DP and i have just split up, and im hoping that if it remains amicable, it wont effect DD too much.

It buggered me and my brother up and it wasn't even that bad a divorce, my mum did it because she was merely unfulfilled and wasn't committed enough. Guess what, a couple of decades on she is still unhappy. It's the classic Larkin poem though, her parents where hewn from stone.

It's only when I see my own children in relationships that I realise the wisdom I have. It would have been pretty useful to have been more secure in my 20s. I have no idea how i'm not dead really, I over partied to the extreme.

my mum and dad split up when i was 12- got kicked out of family home with mum and brother, lived in a hostel for abused women, fought my dad through court and eventually got our house and possessions back.
however, i honestly think its made me a stronger person. i dont stand for shit from anyone now and have huge admiration for what my mum did for us..
i think it all depends on the type of person you were before it all kicked off, and what the family was like before hand?
i always describe it to people as 'i grew up in a single parent household.. my dad popped in from time to time' because thats how it always felt!

Parents also divorced when I was about 12. Also fucked me up - left me insecure, lacking in confidence, very very angry, depressed, borderline alcohol problem.

This was mainly because of the way it was handled. Well it wasn't handled. No-one supported or helped us, both parents more interested in their new relationships and any unhappiness from dbro and myself was 'dramatics' 'acting up' etc. It was all about pretending everything was fine. Lots of other complicated stuff that I won't go into but all born out of the divorce. Everything was bottled up inside me.

Re relationships - went out with some dubious characters for many years (though none abusive) but been with dh for 18 years in a generally happy and solid relationship because I knew what I needed.

That's why I'm so anti advising anyone to leave a marriage where kids are involved - unless there is abuse or deep long term unhappiness.

I was 12 - bit of a theme here! But no, it didn't bugger me up. The issues I have are mine and I don't attribute them to my parents divorce. But I had a better experience than most. Mum and I moved out and went to live with my Gran for a while. My mum got involved with an old family friend who was single and after about a year of living with my Gran we moved in with him. Then they got married. I had a very nice, well balanced, family life from then on. Much better than the first 12 years of my life.
My mum had to have a lot of courage to do what she did. Back then, nobody else in my school had divorced parents. They even used to put divorce cases in the local paper. It was awful. But worth it in the long run.

Proundnscary, we had similar experiences. My parents became very tied up in their own lives and we fended for ourselves or were crutches to them.

My parents divorced when I was ten. It was as amicable as divorce can be. After initially living in the same village as my dad for about a year, we moved 1000km away so that my mum could live with my (future) stepdad. That was when I noticed the divorce for real. Until then it hadn't seemed real. After having us moan for 6 months about how much we missed my dad, my mum moved back in with my dad to give it another shot. It failed and a year later we moved back 1000km away and my mum married my stepdad.

What I learnt from the experience is diplomacy and learning to see things from everyone's point of view. I learnt to adjust to new situations and while I was sad (and nearly failed the year of school in which all the moving happened) I think we were on track to turn out ok.

That said, two years later my father's house burned down and my brother (only 6) was killed. We'd been staying with my dad on holiday. My mother fairly obviously found it VERY hard to forgive my dad. The amicable nature of their divorce ceased.

My sisters and I as adults all battle with self esteem, mild depression and feel we're not quite good enough. My younger sister in particular has a massive need to be loved and has never not had a man in her life (boyfriend, fiance, husband) since she was 11! I don't know whether that would have happened had the house not burned down. I can't tell what caused us to have these issues - the divorce or the death of my brother and my mother's subsequent meltdown, but I think it's the latter two. I think had the fire not happened, we'd have fewer issues and that the divorce alone would have had little impact.

I feel ill at the thought of the damage I've done to my children. How could/can the effects be minimised? If they can.

nkf - I think what children need are loving parents. Parents who love them unconditionally. The parents mustn't bad mouth each other, no matter how tempting it is. Talk to them, let them talk to you. But just constantly reassure them that they are loved.

My parents divorced when I was about 6ish

It was the best thing my mother has done for me and my sisters.

Joshandjamie - couldn't have worded it better.

I think it has affected me a bit, both for better and for worse.

Worse:

• am quite introverted and don't trust easily because my parents both broke lots of promises during that time. However I am probably a natural introvert anyway
• don't have a great relationship with my mother, but could just be personality clash (I chose to live with dad)
• find it hard to get on with some types of woman, the type that remind me of my stepmother, because she made it feel like a competition between us for my dad's affection/attention. Although my best and closest friends are women, for superficial social interaction I prefer men.
• am cynical (but don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, see below)

Better:

• am very independent and used to sorting out any problems myself, especially practical ones, whereas a lot of my friends still rely on their parents a lot and can be a bit drippy about sorting stuff out for themselves
• hard to intimidate at work and socially
• usually pretty good at reading people
• am more realistic about relationships, i.e. don't really believe that most people are suited to one relationship for their whole lives, but don't see this as negative either. My parents had a pretty good relationship until it stopped working, through no one's fault. They are now happily married to other people. So basically I think 'the one' is bollocks and there are lots of people you can be happy with if you meet them
• I quite like most of my stepsiblings

I think the main drawback of divorce is the chances of getting step-parents who aren't really that bothered about them and who have influence over the parent. My stepmother isn't really bothered about me, but my father doesn't have that much respect for her opinion. My mother only got married again when I was an adult so my relationship with my stepfather is pretty much just social. But I can imagine if you get a really vindictive step-parent it could fuck your life up. Luckily most parents are pretty savvy and will kick out any twat who tries to mess up their kids

Parents divorced when I was 8. It's not the divorce that buggered me up it was th continual moving between them and the attention my siblings demanded that detracted from my needs being met that buggered me up.

Everyone has something that messes with their head at some point.

joshandjamie - so sorry to hear about your brother :(

My parents divorced when I was 3. But what I wonder is how messed up (or equally messed up) I would be if they had stayed married. My dad would still have been distant and selfish, okay it was worse because he had a second family but on the other hand, better because we didn't have to be around him all the time

I remember my brother saying "I miss mummy" and me saying "I don't" (in order to have something to say, I think). I think he hated the visits a lot more than I did, and certainly hated the travelling - my dad lived in Holland and then the US and we travelled as truly unaccompanied minors. One memorable flight on People Express left us with nothing to eat for 8 hours because my mum had (understandably) not realised it was a budget airline that provided no food unless you had money. We had no money. The stewardesses took pity on us and gave us an ice cream but we didn't even have money for headphones so couldn't watch a film or anything - I think that was what my brother hated most about the journeys, the boredom. I had to take responsibility for him from a very young age, and I suppose that has stayed with me.

My parents both made happy and successful second marriages, I love my step-siblings as if they were my own, we have a wonderful, blended family. Essentially my mum chose the wrong person to have children with. Divorcing him minimised that damage but it couldn't undo it.

My parents divorced when I was about eight, and I have become very anxious of separation as a result. I know in my head that my Mum left because she was unhappy, but as an eight year old you are just being abandoned. It's been a struggle to reconcile our relationship over the years. We still work at it.

Yes. My mum had (i can see now) very low self esteem after my dad left. She had a series of deeply shit and promiscuous relationships and a poor relationship with alcohol to put on a confident front , which became a bit of a blueprint for me for many years. She still won't talk to or about my dad more than 30 yrs later.

My parents didn't get divorced but they should have. They hate each other and spend their whole life arguing, bitching about each other to me and never doing the things they want in life because of the other person.

That has totally fucked me up. Listening to their rows, enduring their ignoring of each other (once for about 2 months, total silence in our house), never seeing them show affection to each other...

I don't think it's divorce specifically that fucks kids up so much as it is bad and disrespectful relations between parents.

My parents divorced when I was 2ish. It was mot a great situation, I stayed with my mother but was neglected and removed by ss and my dad got full custody.

I had a rather unusual upbringing - my mum and her partner dealt drugs, didn't give us much attention but bought us a lot of material things (bikes, computers etc) but the basic care requirements weren't met.

My dad worked very hard, his family helped bring me up and despite some problems in my teens (self harm and anger at myself) I think I have grown up very balanced.

A lot of my parenting decisions are down to how I was treated in the early years, the negative makes me a more attentive parent, and the positive helps reinforce my belief in my actions iyswim?

I think if my parents stayed together there would have been more negative experiences to remember.

My parents separated when I was 2, and divorced when I was about 12, but this was only a formality.

I never knew a different life. There was only my mother and sister and me in an era when women tended not to opt for divorce, but to battle on and try to make the relationship work. Consequently I always felt rather different to other children.

We were very hard up financially compared to those around us and I think that this has had an impact on me; I still find it difficult to spend money, even though I am now pretty comfortable financially.

As others have mentioned, I also detect a certain insecurity, a need for approval. However, we were happy. My mother also did an amazing thing of never speaking ill of my father and, maybe because we had never known life with him, I didn't ask many questions about why he didn't live with us. My mother also gave me a fabulous role model.

On the whole, apart from the minor issues I've referred to above, I would say I'm fairly well-adjusted. I usually support the idea of divorce/separation in preference to a life with stressed and bickering parents. I think I would have been more harmed if they had stayed together.

My parents divorced when I was 12. They had always been unhappy having only married because my mother was pg and that's what happened in 1959. My mother was a party girl, my father was an intellectual and very quiet. They were a very imperfect match but there was nothing inherently wrong such as abuse or poverty. My mother had a few affairs and drove my father to one and the ensuing divorce was vitriolic because she took him to the cleaners.

By the time I was 16 they were both divorced again! It was traumatic, depressing and very unsettling. I also stopped working at school but kept everything mostly covered up. Fortunately at 17 I was sent to finishing school and that helped me separate myself from it and start to pick myself up again. What I remember as utterly horrendous was being from a well known provincial family and the sheer shame of it in the 1970s.

It took me a long time to learn to love myself afterwards and I was very wary of settling down in spite of feeling the need greatly to be loved but I knew I wanted children and that I would never ever mess them around to the extent I was messed around.

I think it is very sad that relationships are entered into so lightly and seem so disposable nowadays, especially when contraception is so readily available and there is no need to settle down for the sake of it.

My mother left when i was 6 leaving myself and my 2 younger brothers with my dad
My dad is the best but not very emotional (no hugs or i love u etc) this has left me very closed and i find it hard to let people in, its a big effort to remember to hug my dc's. Dh said i have a heart of stone

My mother did not visit for 3yrs after she left so a big hole in my life

My parents divorced when I was 12 too. It messed me up for a few years but it was mainly the sniping comments and there was no need for all the lies and the bitching that went on. My mum left a few weeks before christmas so that didnt help.

I think if it had been amicable we would have been fine but the fighting and arguing about eschother through us did a lot of damage.

Mine divorced when I was 7. I think I might have been ok if my mother hadn't got into relationship with a highly EA man, whom I hated and who clearly disliked me, although my DM denies that to this day.

I ended up being bullied at school, having low self esteem and in a series of crap relationships wot similarly EA men until my late 20's. I still feel anger at both parents that They failed to protect me from this one negative person being so involved in my upbringing. It lead to me staying in one EA relationship for years longer than I should have as I had no money and couldn't face going 'home'.My Dad had nowhere for me to stay either.

I was 10 when my parents first split up, but my dad came back and left again a few times before they finally split up for good. The final time he didn't even tell us, just left us a letter each. I do believe this has affected me, but probably not as much as the way my mum acted after they split. Piling unfair responsibility on me as the only daughter (I have 3 brothers), and using me as a surrogate best friend, rather than looking out for my needs and being supportive for me. I am still full of resentment towards her for many things, but I haven't raised these issues with her - there just would be no point.

One good thing that I believe is a result of them splitting, is that I always made absolutely sure I didn't have kids with any man I didn't think would make a good dad. I was always obsessive about contraception, until I found DP, and decided he was the one I wanted to be my babies' dad.

My parents divorced when I was about seven. I am now 31 and still don't have children or partner. Is that due to being a child of divorce? Who knows.

I am sure that it definitely made me more anxious and eager to keep the peace between mum and dad. It was't until I was about 18 that I managed to say to myself that it wasn't my job to keep them from fighting and that I wasn't responsible for their lives and happiness.

I think maybe this has gone a bit too far. When my parents now have illnesses or financial problems etc I just feel myself blocking off, and I am not as supportive a daughter as I should be. I think I feel that I took an adult role from the age of seven to 18, and now I just won't let that happen again.

I also get scared when friends of mine (who are in the married with young kids phase ) bicker or argue.

My grandparents (on both sides) were also divorced, and I think this affected my parents hugely. One of the results were that they were very keen to settle with a partner and have kids when they were young, and they probably didn't stop to think whether they were very well suited to each other.

Like someone mentioned uptreadh, I myself have been very careful to avoid pregnancy by my previous boyfriends, and maybe I am too careful to commit.

Will stop now before this turns into essay, but short answer is that my parents have definitely formed me, but no one can know how it would have been if they had stayed married.