Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

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

Flip

1 2

Original poster

Question for people whose parents divorced or separated

45 replies

DiscoDinosaur · 30/06/2015 19:45

Regular poster with a name change (naice ham, naked panpipes). A conversation with a friend has got me thinking about this and ruminating a bit. Sorry if this is a bit sensitive but I wondered: if your parents split up, did they sit down and break the news together like it was a joint decision, or did one parent suddenly leave/walk out?

My dad walked out one evening after a row.

OP posts:

oneowlgirl · 30/06/2015 20:37

Mycat, that's exactly how it is for my friend - she has tried to do the right thing by the kids all throughout but her ex is being completely vile & keeps letting the kids down & saying inappropriate things in front of the kids that she's fighting a losing battle & the poor kids are getting so messed up!

DefinitelyMaybeBaby · 30/06/2015 20:37

My dad told me, he'd had the affair so I suspect mum did the "it's your mess you can sort it" thing. However he's not the greatest with words so what he said was "you know how the house is up for sale' well when we move were getting two houses instead of one. You'll stay at one during the week and one at the weekend". I was 5. I heard "we are rich now, we will have two houses. you me and mum will all live in one during the week and then we will all live in the other at the weekend". He really wasn't explicit enough. We probably trotted off thinking "she took that well!", I realised on moving day what was actually going on!

oneowlgirl · 30/06/2015 20:38

Sorry, didn't mean to say kids so many times!

PeppermintPasty · 30/06/2015 20:39

My god you lot
Wow, what shocking experiences. I am so sorry.

I am definitely rubbernecking as I had to tell my dc that daddy wasn't going to be living with us any more as he refused to participate in the telling.(my decision to break up). I am forever (overly) searching for signs of damage in them, so forgive me for butting in.

MyCatHasStaff · 30/06/2015 20:47

oneowlgirl DS is 18 now and can see the crap for himself, but my view was that whatever his dad was, he had to know for himself, not me telling stories, good or bad. I wanted him to see his dad as a real person, not some fantasy absent parent, or a weekend disney dad. But I couldn't force his dad to see him, or to not lie about me when he did. There's no easy answer, but I was as honest as I could be with DS so that the truth was in the mix somewhere.
If it's any consolation for your friend, DS is lovely, and while I know he struggles with understanding why his dad behaves so badly, he handles it pretty well.

RolyPolierThanThou · 30/06/2015 20:49

I was sent to live with my grandparents (aged 16) in another country, my older sister had already moved out and was living with her (abusive) boyfriend and my younger sister was nine.
During the Easter holidays I visited home and mum told me the marriage had broken down. Infidelity, she said. Hers.

Dad must have been told just before because he had a total breakdown. During that Easter hols and the weeks after he tried to kill mum by setting light to the sofa as she slept. Threatened to rape her (in front of dsis, aged 9) repeatedly hit himself over the head with a mallet, put a bread knife to his belly, have the handle to my sister (9, remember) and told her to push.

The fucking useless therapist he was referred to couldn't understand why mum was not willing to take him back and did other unethical things that id like to throttle her for (she saw dad as her only priority and the rest of us had no feelings worth considering. I don't think she even saw us as people. Just objects that affected her client).

Dad eventually went into a hospital because he was such a danger. I never for over that episode and my sister certainly never has. Dad is never violent now but Ican't bear to look at him. He makes me cringe and I remember the panic. I think it's telling that the two daughters (dsis and I) who witnessed all that do not have a relationship with him and the older sister who didn't is the only one who does.

Strange outcome considering it was dm who had the affair.

RolyPolierThanThou · 30/06/2015 20:51

And all that was 20 years ago.

RolyPolierThanThou · 30/06/2015 20:55

Oh and after a lot of therapy dad says he is very in touch with his emotions (and this is why he hounds my sister and me about contact) but it strikes me hes not very uh touch with anyone else's.

My sister never had any therapy for what she went through. (Nor did I but I was older) and I've told him many many times he might like to help her pay for some.

Deaf ears.

Sweetsecret · 30/06/2015 20:57

My mum and dad sat me down when I was six and said that dad was going to move out for a while, and he just didnt come back.

Granville72 · 30/06/2015 20:59

I remember being put on my tricycle and us cycling many miles to my grans house where my mother promptly dumped us and said she wished she'd never had us and didn't want us.

I was three, and that has stuck very clearly in my head 39 years on. No united front, father never bothered with us, but then neither did my mother. Gran pretty much brought me up. My 'mother' never attended one single parents evening or sports day.

I split with my sons father a few months back (he finished it not me). My son will be three in August. I've explained what has happened and giving him a lot of support. His father doesn't 'like to discuss it' with him. Purely because he doesn't want to hear the answers and what my son has to say. He thinks it will just go away and be forgot about.

Jen1610 · 30/06/2015 21:01

My mum basically upped and left with me, my brothers and the dogs when my dad was working away. He was in total shock when he got home.

She had been having an affair. .

SabrinnaOfDystopia · 30/06/2015 21:07

I think one of the hardest things for a child to come to terms with whilst growing up, is that adults don't always make the best decisions/ often deal with things badly.

My parents dealt with the whole divorce/custody/contact thing well - but the actual "telling us" - not so well. I can still vividly remember the shock. Dad told me and db while we sitting in the car, waiting to go out, I can remember him leaning into the back of the car and telling us that he wouldn't be living with us anymore - as casually as if he was telling us what was for dinner. Then he went away, and mum took us out for the day. I feel so guilty at times, because I can remember saying things like "I just want to die if Dad doesn't live with us anymore" - my poor mother! He'd left her for another woman, and she was heartbroken, but hid it so well from us.

Dad then proceeded to spend the rest of our childhood making it up to us - doing loads with us, swimming, outings, buying presents, holidays and so on. He was a good dad - and I have many lovely siblings that I wouldn't have had otherwise - as both parents went on to have dc with new partners.

for the sad stories on here.

throwingpebbles · 30/06/2015 21:08

I tried doing it all grown up and calmly for small children, despite me leaving dh for his emotional abuse. But then he showed up at house and said awful stuff and wouldn't leave and In the end I had to call police to help me leave with the kids. It wasn't how I wanted it to be, but sometimes one person wanting things to be civilised isn't enough

EeyoresTail · 30/06/2015 21:10

I was around 9. I have a vague memory of my mum saying "say goodbye to your dad..." I can't remember the rest but it must have been something like he won't be here in the morning or he's leaving.
I will make sure I do it better with my DD when her father leaves.

MrsSkywalker205 · 30/06/2015 21:22

No idea, I was 5.

However, when my mum and stepdad (who raised me) divorced my mum told me, I think. I was 17/18, I've blocked a lot of it out, I was traumatised. I'd left home, only a few weeks before, then mum moved out of the family home to rented until the house sold. Step dad stayed, I went to see him and it's my most resounding memory of him, he was heart broken and it was devastating. Shortly after he cut me off and hasn't contacted or replied to me since. I miss him terribly and I'm irreparably damaged by it all.

bertsdinner · 30/06/2015 21:24

I was 13. In my bedroom one night I heard my mum and dad having a massive row, I listenned from the top of the stairs. It was about my dad's multiple affairs and his new mistress, who wanted him to leave us and shack up with her.
I was shocked to the core, and kept it to myself as I couldn't exactly blab to my younger siblings.
After a week of rows/sniping, it came out. My mum just blurted it out.

It was a mess really. My dad then seemed to think it gave him carte blanche to live between us and his girlfriend. My mum veered between crying in the street, being furious and doing the pick me dance.
In the end, she told him to leave and that she was divorcing him. Our house wasn't exactly a warzone, but all this was said in front of us kids.

My dad moved in with the girlfriend, mainly because she "fought for him". He always made out it was my mum's fault they divorced because she didn't fight hard enough.
They were fairly civilised after that, he saw us a lot, was never denied access, and they rarely slagged each other off. He did try and dodge out of paying maintenance though.

In other words, a textbook how not to split up in front of your kids.

FoodieMum3 · 30/06/2015 21:26

Mine handled it appallingly

Fought non stop in front of us, viciously. Fought while they were telling us, viciously. We were young teens, at least we weren't very young children.

Eugh, shudder, shudder now that I think of it all. Horrific time.

MorrisZapp · 30/06/2015 21:34

Mine were all seventies hippy about it. No blame, just moving on/ moving out.

It was fine.

annatha · 30/06/2015 21:40

I was 20 and at uni but it was handled terribly and I don't have a relationship with my mum anymore but am incredibly close to dad as a result. I was home for summer and stayed at a friends one night and my dad was on a nightshift. He came home in the wee hours to find a note , clothes and money gone. She fielded our calls for a week until she ran out of money, told him she was bored and wanted a divorce and took the piss with everything she ended up with in the settlement. IMO its paramount that no matter what the grounds are, both adults make the effort to explain to the child what is happening. If its a young child then it might be more appropriate to explain properly when they're older but they're owned an explanation.

velocityofbeans · 30/06/2015 21:41

We were sent to live with our grandparents for a while, must have been a month or two, when we came home, Mum wasn't there. I don't think we were ever really told why, not at the time anyway, and Mum had been in and out of hospital all our lives so her not being around was almost normal for us I suppose.

We still had contact with her, at her parents house, then I decided to live with her when I was about 11. There was no animosity between them, ever,and I think they only split up to protect us from the effects her bipolar had on the rest of us.

Flip

1 2