If you’re staying in marriage for the sake of children

[Nametakenagain11]

How is it going?
how many years do you have left?
is it bearable?
really struggling with marriage at moment. We’ve just drifted apart. Nothing abusive or bad. I won’t break up the marriage till child is 18.

I actually think if you're married, dc and no abuse it is better to stay till the dc are older.

Step families are an absolute nightmare for everyone but especially the dc involved.

Find something that makes you happy, build a life for yourself with fun and great friends - so when it's time to leave you are set up.

I'm sorry you are going through this but I do hope I'm not the PP you are referring to when you say "she lifted herself out of her mess by moving a man in" .

I worked my arse off. I'm proud of that and it has taken years. I started back at square one financially and have built myself up to where I've moved jobs and earned promotions and now my fridge is full. On day one I was earning £13000 pa and I now earn 4 times that. It's taken me 15 years. I'm proud of that. I did that. It does you no credit to assume a man did that for me, it couldn't be further from the truth.

Do people actually think like that? If so, what a pity!

"Do people actually think like that? If so, what a pity!"

Of course they do. It's a matter of weighing up the pros and cons. If I break up the marriage now DW as primary parent would live in the family home with them, I would need to leave. In this part of the world I couldn't afford two households so would need to live in a shared house, I would automatically be an EOW parent, if that would even be manageable in a shared house. I can see why so many non-primary parents fall into the stereotypical Disney-Parent role. Unless you have the space to house kids in two homes there's no way you can do 50-50 parenting (although I suppose "nesting" is an option, but you really nee to be amicable to make that work).

This isn't necessarily "staying for the kids", it's staying for me because if I don't I won't be able to see my kids. FWIW our relationship is not abusive, we respect each other, parent well together and have similar outlooks on life, we're just not compatible as DH/DW anymore. Leaving may give me personally more happiness, but it would also give me much more sadness given the detriment that would occur as a result of my no longer being an effective parent. It's a trade off, like everything, hence the pros/cons...

@smizing pity for the dc!

I'm the least MN martyr but on this I do believe it's so much better for dc to live with both their parents and not have to be 'coparented' or shipped off to dads eow when there isn't abuse. Their childhoods are such a small amount of time.

It's not a judgement, more hindsite - I'm divorced and get on well enough with dcs dad. They would have had a much better life being in a two income household (and I don't earn poorly by myself) and not having various half and step siblings over the years.

My parents split up with I was 21 and at university, my sister was 19. It was horrific. They should’ve split at least ten years earlier and we all knew it. My sister actually told them how she wished they’d split up when we were still children and wouldn’t have had to ‘pick’ a parent to live with. The decisions would have been made for us. It was a truly devastating point in my life and I do my best to block those years out in all honesty. Yes they thought they were doing the right thing, but it really really wasn’t.

how exactly does it benefit the children to stay?

Only asking because there's different reasons to stay for the children, it can mean different things.

I bet you know lots of couples staying together for the kids. I am, so are two friends of mine. Our partners are lovely, and great dads. I don't want to live in a crap area or see my DS half the time so we bumble along quite happily as affectionate housemates. Maybe we'll separate later on, who knows.

I'm sorry but I can't fathom any benefits of staying in a loveless marriage. Kids or not. To each their own.

I've met loads of men on tinder , I'm going to say 80% of them who are partnered and are staying for the kids 🙄 quickly deleted I may add.

And as I always say on these threads, pose the same question but mention a guy at work you've started getting close to and the answers will be the exact opposite! Apparently splitting up your family because your husband is boring is for the best, but splitting up your family because you fancy someone else is the most selfish thing you can do and will result in your children never forgiving you and the nice mums giving you evils in Starbucks. You'll end up washing his pants and then he'll dump you anyway which is what you deserve.

Another saying don't do it. My parents make eachother miserable and it brings out the worst in them. I have a memory of being around 6 and asking my mum why they were still together when they don't like eachother. I was told it was for us. It never got better. When I left home at 18 my mum broke down sobbing asking how I could leave her with him when it was for me that she stayed (I'm the oldest child). I told her I had never asked her to and affirmed she could make the choice to leave. She never did, even long after we all left home.

All they do when we see them is argue, you call and all they do is tell you what the other has done to upset them. We all know the honest answer is each is scared of being alone and they don't want to adjust the lifestyle they've become accustomed to.

It affected my relationships massively, I was put of marriage and kids for a long time as a result as that was not what I wanted. It took a long time to heal.

Maybe the uncomfortable truth is that most of the time, a child having divorced parents is shit and so is having unhappily together parents. Maybe the only thing that actually gives kids a happy and secure childhood in the majority of cases is happily together parents. And that’s a really hard truth to consider because it’s out of our absolute control. Although I do think there’s a lot more that most people could do to nurture and rescue a marriage - but that’s needs commitment from both sides which is often missing. You can’t force someone to love you or try to make your marriage work. Or to stop abusing or cheating on you.

I agree with PPs that it’s easy for people to say they wished their parents had just split up earlier, when you haven’t experienced the resulting financial hit, reduced quality of life or even poverty, step families and all that can entail, or the emotional trauma of not living with both parents as a small child or being shipped between two homes and never feeling secure. It’s easy to believe how much better your life would have been if it’s all in your imagination. The reality is that the alternative to what you had might just had easily have been as bad or worse.

You genuinely cant fathom that having enough money versus living in poverty can be a benefit for a child? Really?

I'm sorry for the people who grew up in argumentative houses but I thought 'staying for the kids' meant staying when things are OK and the kids are happy, not staying where there is sadness or abuse.

Don’t just stay for the kids, ever. No one wins in that situation.

NO. I genuinely cannot! And who says every woman that leaves will be living in poverty?

I left when my youngest was 7. It made sense for us. Then covid hit after a year and we moved back in with different bedrooms to make sure the children could still see us both.

We are now actually good friends and live 300m away.

I am now remarrying, 4 year separation , and the children are happy. My eldest talks about how she never saw my ex and me kiss or show affection...

We don't argue or have rows...I just detest him and he irritates the shit out of me just being in my space (he knows all this) BUT we have a beautiful house and both do stuff independently of each other and we seem to just rub along as we have done last 20 years...we will go out together with friends but we'd never go out just 2 of us.
We've just accepted this is how we live. It works for us.

This is one of the most depressing things I’ve read on here. How soul sapping to be around someone you detest - and all to have a beautiful house. People make such odd choices for this one life.

FWIW I am divorced. My child is the happiest thing you’d ever come across and has a great relationship with both of us. She even said she ‘felt sorry for people with only one house!’ Divorce can be a positive thing if it’s the right thing to do and you both work hard at being good parents and humans.

Of course not every woman will be. But some, a lot in fact, will. And you said you can’t fathom why leaving ever has a benefit compared to staying in a loveless marriage. So I was pointing out just one of the numerous very obvious reasons why SOME women choose to stay because of the relative benefits to their kids over divorcing.

I think once you have kids you have to put your happiness second to theirs "happy mum happy kids" isn't necessarily true I think parents kids themselves up this is true so they can leave having to be a mediator between two parents, the mental load of trying to be fair to both parents not saying what you think in case it upsets Mum or Dad,
having to go between two homes isnt fun; spending half the holidays away from your friends isn't great, even if your parents co-parent well it's still upheaval and hassle I think kids do think why did they put their happiness and relationships ahead of me wanting to stay in same school near my friends
if 2 people can split get two decent homes in the same area so kids can pop in any evening and go backwards and forwards without animosity about stuff being in wrong house and there is adequate money to run two households yes it might be better to split
but when two households mean a grotty 2 bed flat and a studio flat and no money for even a takeaway well that's rubbish,
I think once you have kids you have a duty to do your very best to make relationship work; not at all costs certainly not with abuse or after an affair or violent threatening arguments but "just not as in love" as before I think that's a rubbish reason to severely disrupt your kids lives but if you can co-parent and be like flat mates with few arguments I think you have to put new dates and /or sex life on hold

My child is the happiest thing you’d ever come across and has a great relationship with both of us. She even said she ‘felt sorry for people with only one house!’ Divorce can be a positive thing if it’s the right thing to do and you both work hard at being good parents and humans.

I hope for your child’s sake this is the truth but you should take what she says to you with a massive dose of caution. Small children often say things to their parents that they intrinsically know they’re ‘supposed to’ or that will make their parent happy. Very, very few children with separated parents (unless abusive or something) are happy they aren’t together and actively pity those without two homes. It’s highly unlikely your child doesn’t have significantly more complex feelings than this. I’m not saying that to try and make you feel bad at all but I think it’s important to be realistic about what your child is experiencing and the fact that them being simply ecstatically happy about their parents being separated is exceptionally unlikely. You need to make sure your child feels comfortable expressing other emotions to you too. You may all be fine and that’s great, but it’s naive at best to assume your child isn’t processing a lot of complex emotions.

Again, it all boils down to fear. Fear of being poor? Fear of starting over?

SO you rely on a man financially and that's a reason to stay in a loveless marriage? I like the poster that narrated her experience about starting over earlier in the thread, think it was @LuckyDonna

I'd rather start from scratch than be in bondage. It's soul destroying. I can feel the pain through OP's post. She's struggling. Who wants to live like that? Not me.

for some it is not fear of being poor, they are already poor and leaving would mean it got even worse, for others they are going to stay poor whatever they will always be in NMW job