Divorce damages children terribly

[Onmyownwith4kids]

I thought I 'd post here as this is a comment I've just read on another thread written by someone who's been lucky enough to be happily married for decades. I'm in the process of divorcing my 40 year old husband who's on holiday at the moment with his 27 year old girlfriend. He would have stayed with me if I'd shut up and let him get on with his affairs. I admit I'm struggling. It 's exhausting bringing up 4 children alone and working full time. Comments like that bring me down so low. My children don't seem damaged. They're laughing, happy and doing well at school. But will they deep down as the poster claimed be affected forever by this?

[EffectiveCommunication]

OP what I learned is that even giving a brief age appropriate comment along with it is adult stuff not for you to worry about is wrong too.

I have older children and they recently asked me what the adult stuff was, that they never knew about, I started to tell them and they didn't want to know. They said it was annoying to them being protected from what was going on, they watned to know. Now they an know they don't want to.

You can't do anything right is my conclusion. Protect them you are wrong, tell them stuff you are wrong.

[Minime85]

I saw that comment and was annoyed too. I don't know the answer and fundamentally I can't change it as that's the position I've been put in so just going to do best I can to try and make sure my dcs are happy and if they are affected its as little as possible. what else can you do when your life becomes something you never wanted, imagined or thought would happen?

[EffectiveCommunication]

And OP what ever you do, there will be someone there sitting in judgement of you, taking snippets of this and snippets of that along the way to gossip about you and feel better about themselves.

At the end of the day when your children get to an age where they are no longer dependant on you and you chat about things it will only matter what your children think.

I have had a few of those discussions with my children lately. Weirdly the bits where I was critised by others adults as having done "wrong" or bits I felt myself I had done "wrong" were not the bits that were "Wrong" at all according to my children.

My children said they wished they had been told more, they hated adults not talking to them (not me as I was the only one who did talk to them) and making decisions for them.

I suppose our case was a litle different than most though.


My parents split for different reasons, and I was delighted my parents slit as they fought in the house and there was no fighting after. My children were heart broken, as there was no fighting in our house before the split it all happened after.

[ravenmum]

Life damages people, I'd say!

It is not as if you have chosen to divorce like you choose a new hairstyle. You've taken a hard decision in the knowledge that you have no better option. And you are thinking about your children, trying to work out how best to help them and not just sticking your head in the sand and assuming they are OK. Of course they aren't just fine about the situation, but if they have support and the chance to work through their feelings now and in the years to come instead of ignoring them, you are giving them something very valuable. Maybe you don't need to actually torture yourself by whacking yourself on the head with every negative comment you can find, but your urge to think about this subject is good if it helps you find strategies for dealing with it.

[FaFoutis]

Yes it can damage children but in your situation OP you didn't have a choice. Staying together would be worse. Having a crap father who priortises his dick over his children is what has done any potential damage.

You can't always tell how children feel and what they are thinking. As a child of divorced parents (when I was 5) what did most damage were the step parents and my parents' focus on their new partners. I probably looked fine and I tried to seem fine but I was unhappy all the time and hiding it.

So if it ever happens to me the children would have my full attention and there would be no new man until they left home. Definitely a way of limiting the damage. You sound like you are doing fine OP, my parents would not have worried about this for a moment.

[EffectiveCommunication]

Cognito, I think we will have to agree to disagree on this one. I think fiver years in the signs are there, people put their heads in the sand.

[Lweji]

Rather than feel bad reading articles about how children get damaged in one way or another, you can use them to identify the best way to support them and help them.
Keeping in mind that you will get contradictory opinions, but just as long as you are considering the best for them and think it through, nobody can ask for more.

[TondelayoSchwarzkopf]

I haven't read the full thread but I think that bad marriages damage children terribly - divorce cuts short the damage.

[Meglet]

My parents divorce didn't affect me, I was 14. It was a relief to know I wouldn't have to put up with them grumping at each other anymore and I'd get 2 lots of Xmas presents each year.

Dad stayed in the same town and gave us keys to his house so we could stay when we wanted, none of this silly every other weekend nonsense, we came and went as we fancied. Although he did buy a kitten with my stepmum which I think was to tempt us to visit regularly . Mum was able to stay in our family home so me and my sister had little disruption. Both met new partners and were quite civilised after the intial hoo-haa had calmed down.

[EffectiveCommunication]

FaFoutis, like wise, a child of divorce here too, and I never brought a Man into the house either, and the stepmother in my children's life caused a lot of trouble with a Man who was already trouble enough.

[MuttonCadet]

I think divorce CAN damage children, but not as much as being in a hostile environment or watch one parent constantly belittle or abuse the other.

I have step kids, and both parents do their best to ensure that the kids aren't badly affected by having two homes.

What I have noticed is that the kids are much more grown up in some ways (protecting their parents more than I'd expect teens to), and much "younger" in others (more time spent with parents rather than out and about with friends).

[Bonsoir]

I think that some (not all) divorces save DC from terrible damage inflicted by a toxic parent or a warring couple.

[FaFoutis]

At least we learned something from it EffectiveC.

[Llareggub]

I think my DCs would have been damaged far more of I'd stayed with their alcoholic father.

[Doristhecamel]

As someone above said. Lufe affects kid's.
Everyone's kids will have things go on in their lives that will both positively and negatively affect them.
Thats life. Thats how we lwarb to cope and desl and come to terms with things. It s what shapes us as people and makes us grow up into the type of people we are today.

Its not black and white. Divorce will affect all involved. Staying in a negative relationship will also affect all involved. But relationships and family dynamics are so varied. What can be utterly devastating fir some can be a relief for others etc. There is no right or wrong generically. Its about dealing with what life throws at you the best you can and trying the best we can.

[ravenmum]

We had children after five years together. Sixteen years after that we are splitting up. When we had children my husband was a cheerful man working in a fairly easy-going job, coming home and helping out with childcare, cooking, joining in family life, suggesting outings and being loving and attentive, honest and utterly decent. In roughly the last six years he's turned into a workaholic with little interest in family life, a stressful job, coming home late every evening, not being proactive at home at all, no more cooking or cleaning, and now booking into sex hotels with his mistress. If you had suggested that things might turn out that way when we had children I'd have been in paroxysms of laughter.

[EffectiveCommunication]

I think you are right MuttonCadet, it has taken years to get my children to accept that I am not stupid and beneath them. Their Father did it to me and belittled me inffont of me and behind my back with the children.

We were married at the time. One example, I decided to go a month without meat, so the children could expand their diet and get them to eat different foods. I did it all very carefully, reserached it all. He apparently behind my back would give the children meat, told them I was being silly and to keep it secret.

I was also told recently that after we split up he told the children I was "addicted to subway" and ate it all the time Subway is my least visited takeaway if out and about. the children know this, and said how odd it was he used to say strange things like that to them.

I dread to think of the harm it would have caused them living with him, and I am glad we split up now even though it caused all that damage, it would have been worse if he had been living with us all these years.

[EffectiveCommunication]

RavenMum, I am suggesting there were indications that can be ignored foir years yes, the mask does slip from time to time, the signs are there, denial can be a pretty powerful thing.

[NickiFury]

I agree entirely with cogito that relationships can change beyond all recognition when children arrive. It can awake extremely powerful subconscious memories of how things were done in your own childhood and in the case of an abusive person can tip them into replicating attitudes that the observed and absorbed as a child.

I do not agree that the signals are always there, they certainly weren't in my relationship.

[ravenmum]

EffectiveCommunication, five years into our marriage the problems that have killed it simply did not exist. Back then, he had never been forced to spend three years only coming home at weekends because of his work. Back then I was glad he was so helpful in the home. We had other niggles and doubts but those are not the things that split us up 16 years later. Not sure why you think you know what it was like better than me!

[Lweji]

I don't think it's necessarily denial.

Many people don't recognise the signs as abusive until they are too obvious. Even then, we are brought up to give second chances and believe the best in people. We believe they want to do their best as much as we do.
And most are not aware of how much abuse increases after children are born.

[EffectiveCommunication]

My exh started off lovely, he was helpful in the home, he was very tactile and all the things you would want. He put on a very good act. By the end he was cold and not anyone's idea man at all. Even though he displayed all those behaviours at the beginning the tell tale signs were there. The first time he said he loved me I said did you mean it, he pretended not to have said it. Loads of things like that, were all red flags, I am quite shocked that you can't now look back and find red flags of behavoiur when the mask slipped in those first five years.

[EffectiveCommunication]

I think you are right there Lweji, as a young inexperienced woman I didn't recognise the red flags, and then I was in the marriage. I was also undiagnosed with a condition that made me vulnerable to being taken advantage of.

[Lweji]

Even after going through an abusive marriage, it's possible to stay oblivious. And many do end up again in similar relationships.
I don't think it's useful to start blaming other women for not recognising those signs or for not leaving before having children, regardless of age or length of relationship.

[EffectiveCommunication]

Maybe as I didn't follow the pattern of staying oblivious and repeating it, I see things differently. You have a point, there they can't be blamed if they have their heads in the sand still, it must be difficult.