Can I ask for stories where you actually did stay "until the children are grown up" and then divorced/separated - how did it go? Are your kids ok?

[herewegoroundthebastardbush]

On here you often see women in bad relationships (not abusive, or not seriously so, but not happy) say they will stay until the children are older/adults. So as to avoid disrupting their childhood, and then separate later. IME, IRL, such women usually end up staying - either because they reached an accommodation with their partner in the meantime they could live with, fear of being alone in old age, financial reasons, or discovered their children didn't magically become immune to family breakdown in their teens/twenties so still felt the obligation to maintain the facade.

So what I want to know is, did anyone actually do it - wait until the kids were older and then leave? How did it work out for you, and for the kids?

The stupidest possible thing to do. Ruined my childhood and young adult life.

My mum planned to do this. She was so unhappy and it was apparent to us. When my sister was 18 my dad became v unexpectedly dependent and then she didn't feel able to leave because it would have looked like that was the reason.
I wish so desperately she had done it earlier and had the life she wanted for herself without him.

I was the child in a family like this. Both parents misguidedly stayed together “for the kids” - it made for a very unhappy home. There weren’t screaming rows all the time, but there was no warmth or affection between my parents and us children knew they weren’t happy together. I carried a lot of guilt that my parents stayed together and miserable because of us. I also had a very unhealthy idea of what love it a healthy relationship looked like. My siblings and I have really struggled in later life (in relationships) and came out of it with a truckload of damage.

I know most of the stories on here are not what @herewegoroundthebastardbush asked for, but to be honest I wouldn't trust the veracity of any account given by a parent in this situation. What parent is going to stand up and say 'actually, staying with my spouse was a terrible idea and wrecked my children's childhood'? Most are going to fool themselves, like my mother does, that it was a 'good thing'...because of course forcing your children to live a lie is always a 'good thing'.

Theres a large middle ground between very wealthy and abject poverty. Nobody is under any illusions that it’s harder for a single parent financially. But a scruffy flat in a bad part of town with a loving and happy parent, as opposed to a home full of tension is still better for a child than seeing two parents trying and usually failing to live a lie. My partner grew up in a house in quite a deprived area, money was tight - his overarching memory of his childhood was knowing that his mum worked hard to provide for them, he has a profound appreciation for the time she invested in him and frequently talks about the fact that she had all the love and time for him in the world. Those things were the building blocks for him being a high achiever as an adult, not the size of their house or the reputation of his school.

On the other hand, I was raised in a nice area in a lovely house etc as a child. My siblings and I were desperately unhappy knowing our parents didn’t live each other, we never saw spontaneous physical affection, the usual hugs and warmth between them, we couldn’t trust them because they were so clearly lying to us. Our whole lives were essentially a sham and I was bloody relieved when they finally separated because the guilt was eating me up that they stayed together for us.

I know I’d far rather have had my partners childhood, with a mum who put us first, even if it meant a change in standards of living. At least it would have felt authentic and I wouldn’t have had all those years of a dreadful relationship being the model for my own adult relationships.

This is really useful, thank you.

I guess my view is muddied as I have so many 'experiences' to draw on personally. My father was psychologically abusive to my mother (and he was a drunk) and she was going to leave him when she fell pregnant with me, so she stayed another 2 years before eventually having an affair and leaving with her affair partner (meaning she left us, me and my older sister, with my dad). She told us about this as kids (zero filter for what was appropriate for us to know at what age), meaning I carried a lot of guilt that she suffered those extra two years just because of me. So the guilt thing I get. Can't for the actual life of me think why, if you did stay together 'for the children', you'd ever tell them that unless you wanted to fuck them up. No way I'd ever frame it that way to them (or indeed anyone else).

However, the fact they did eventually separate means I got to experience the 'joys' of a broken home, moving between homes, missing my mum and/or missing my dad, dealing with their continued animosity and poor co-parenting, and then step-parents and ultimately a blended family as my dad moved in my stepmum and stepsister, and went on to have my half-brother.

Now we are adults we all get on well, and credit to my stepmum she did put a stop to my dad's drinking which made him a much better parent and person.

But it was not at all plain sailing, I found the broken home aspect really difficult, the torn loyalties and a lack of feeling of belonging and (I realise belatedly) an underlying sense that nothing was safe or reliable, everything was contingent, people could just leave - which has followed me through life and given me maladaptive attachment behaviour.

I found my dad's difficult relationship with my StepSis frightening (and I'm sure it was very damaging to her, although as I say all good relationships now, he walked her down the aisle at her wedding); I found my half-brother being treated so differently in the home to me and my sister difficult (still do in some ways).

Basically, my experience of relationship breakdown and what comes after is not as it is straightforwardly painted 'it's better for the children than being exposed to their parents' unhappiness'. Happiness, for the parents or the children, is no more guaranteed after a separation than before it IME. It all depends on how you go about things (and cruel, or otherwise, fate to some extent). However, I also have the other side (knowing my mum 'stayed for you kids' gave me the guilt, and watching my dad and stepmum's difficult relationship (and my mothers' series of subsequent abusive relationships) was hard so I appreciate that 'staying for the kids' won't result in happy kids if you can't at least approximate a functional healthy working relationship for them.

The one that bugs me is 'you're not modelling a healthy relationship' though - if I broke up with my DP, I would NO WAY be having a relationship with a man ever again (both because I suspect a majority of them are quite selfish, because I wouldn't expose my kids to the risks of a blended family, and because I recognise that I myself have a lot of maladaptive attachment behaviours which make it difficult or impossible for me to form a healthy romantic attachment). So even if we separated, there is no guarantee of them getting a healthy relationship modelled to them - they might, conceivably, get to see a single woman being happier, but that would be it. So the idea that by staying I am depriving them of a healthy model they could otherwise have is stupid really.

This is why i was interested in the stories of the people who've actually done 'staying for the kids', from the parents' perspective rather than the kids' (though I of course appreciate the stories of those affected as children, but i have heard them before on many of the same threads where women are contemplating this path). I have a variety of experiences from the kids-eye-view that complicate rather than inform my thinking - I was hoping for a perspective of different versions of future me, and while you get a lot of the 'I left my partner, kids are fine, I'm living my best life now' type posters, you rarely hear from those who stayed 'for the kids' and subsequently broke up when the kids were adults, either positively or negatively.

All kids would love parents to be together in a Rosey world unfortunately if the parents are not happy reality doesn't meet their expectations and all you teach them is their parents are not happy together and that a relationship is not supposed to be happy.

My half bro is actually a really good example I guess of what my thinking is - my dad and stepmum's relationship was and still is quite contentious (improved a lot after he gave up drinking, when my brother was a toddler, so he has no memories of that time). There was a lot of arguing, shouting, tension, both between them and interfamilially - Dad on StepSis, SM on my DSis. But. He is by far the most psychologically well-adjusted of all of us kids, has had the most parental support both practically and financially, has done really well for himself because of this, has very high self-esteem and puts himself first in a way I'd like to see my own kids do. How much of that is just innate personality, and how much is from having a stable (if imperfect) family unit and a home to call his own and fall back on during the 'what now?' moments in life, that extra financial cushion, whatever. I don't know. But it does raise a question that it is ALWAYS better for the kids for parents to separate if they don't model a 'healthy relationship'.

My brother is still single at approaching 30 and to my knowledge has never had a serious long-term relationship, which some might see as maladaptive but which I think is actually really good for him, giving him the freedom to prioritise himself (and what I would want for my girls, especially if they turn out to be straight, because as I say from what I have observed very few men are good, supportive partners to their female partners, with the majority prone to prioritise their own needs instinctively).

Argh, I'm rambling. I guess my point is I'd appreciate the 'grown up' perspective on this from someone who has done it and lived long enough to assess the effect on their children long term.

@herewegoroundthebastardbush As I've previously posted, if you want the 'truth', don't ask the parent - ask the adult child. I think you'll find it a good 90% of cases that contrary to what the parent thinks, the child was well aware their parents were not happy, that their marriage was a sham and their 'happy childhood' was an act.

As I've said to my mother 'Do you honestly think myself and my brothers went around not hearing/seeing anything when we were children? Sorry to tell you, but neither you or my father were that good as actors. Also, the fact that Dad spent barely any of the last 10 years actually in the same country as his supposedly 'happy' family was a bit of a clue...'

To answer OP’s specific question though, I think the mothers who have done this will likely fool themselves into thinking it was the right thing for their children. Most likely they’ll think it would cause less disruption but those things are actually driven by their own fear of their social standing changing, being in a less desirable position financially or a fear of how their own lives would change. I think you’d be hard pushed to find an adult child in the same situation who felt it was the right thing for them.

But equally, the child's POV is not unbiased - I know from my own experiences it's tempting to blame everything bad in one's life on one's parents' decisions, but with no knowledge of what the road not travelled would have led to, you can't know that the decision they did make was the right one.

I mean obviously one can blame ones parent(s) for procreating with someone who turned out they didn't or couldn't get on well with. And I'll hold my hands up to that, I chose poorly, as did my mum, dad, and arguably my step-mum. But given that decision was already made and couldn't be altered, how can you know that if your parents had separated things would have been better? You'd have lost some problems but in all possibility gained others (stepparents, half-siblings, having to split your time between two homes - possibly even two countries in your case - less financial resource in one or both homes).

This is why I'd be interested in the perspective of the parent who did it rather than the child, as one hears that all the time (for one thing) and I've lived it, both sides of it, on the other. And you often also hear the perspective of the mother who chose to leave and is confident that was the right choice. I'd be interested to know about the mothers who chose to stay, and what their perspective on that is now. Not because it will be gospel, any more than the POV of the affected child is; but because it's a piece of the puzzle.

Hi OP. I am currently doing this but in a slightly different way. We are not pretending we're happily married, we are separated but living in the family home. We have separate rooms and there has never been anything romantic between us for over 5 years now. Our children are aware their parents are not together anymore.

I won't lie, it was a rough couple of years until we figured out what to do and how to move forward. We get on well now, and for all intents and purposes are a happy family. We still squabble and work things out but the awfulness of being unhappily married is well gone. Our children are doing well, have everything they need and do not have to live in two different homes. They both have additional needs so not sure how we would have ever managed this.

Neither of us have any intention of getting involved with someone else (the thought horrifies me tbh!) for the moment. We share the same values and have respect for each other's boundaries. How our children will turn out I do not know. Yes it's not ideal and I would have loved for us to work out and be madly in love but there is no animosity in our home and our children seem happy enough (as happy as any teenager can be!). I wish you well OP x

At my Silver Wedding weekend away I realised I didn't want to be with XH any more. I'd got married too young as you did in those days (early 80s).
I moved into a house of my own and it was a bit tricky to begin with as he had taken charge of all financial matters (I didn't even know the password to our joint account!) so there were lots of things for me to learn. Some things were easy, others like things going wrong with the house, weren't so.
My kids were very supportive and I have a great relationship with them. XH was a complete knob and has never spoken to me since. But the kids see him for the childish twat he is.
The most galling things was that, when we separated, my mother totally took his side as "I had brought shame on her".

I just wanted to say I'm so so sorry. This sounds horrific. I hope your MH is a lot better now that you have stepped away. I had an oversharing mother (she killed herself almost 5 years ago, after a very unhappy life) and the burden of being made your parent's confidante and responsible for your parent's mental health is utterly crushing. It is my absolute primary goal in life to never put that burden on my daughters.

@herewegoroundthebastardbush Is that you, Mum? Because she also argues that I don't know how I actually feel about my childhood, too.

I can assure you that I KNOW my childhood would have been far far better if my parents had split. If they had split when I was 9, when my father first got posted abroad (diplomat), myself and my two brothers wouldn't have then spent the next 6 fucking years being dragged around various third world shitholes by my mother because she couldn't trust my father to keep his penis in his pants when she wasn't there. She was right about that, in the 3 months gap before we joined him he managed to have an affair with a young local girl... (just one of the lovely lovely titbits I had to hear from my mother when he left..along with the visits he used to make to the local brothels).

Myself and my two brothers wouldn't have ended missing almost 2 years in total of schooling, we would have had friends, family etc. Where we were forced to live we had the BBC World Service radio..that was it. We were living on a compound that we couldn't leave for our own safety. We were the only children there because my parents were selfish fucking narcissists who - even though my father was at the time earning 30 times the average wage - weren't willing to cough up the money to put us in boarding school. My mother has admitted tome since that the money was the only reason...

My mother was Catholic so there wouldn't have been any stepchildren from her...she was 47 when my father left, she's now 81 and has never had another relationship. My father had a vasectomy when he was 30. ..and he'd never actually wanted children in the first fucking place. He was 42 when he left my mother, he married the other woman...they've not had children. Not that I would have cared fucking less if they had.

No one gets to tell me that my childhood wouldn't have been better. FUCKING NOBODY.

OK there's really no need to shout abuse at me. I'm sorry you had such a terrible childhood and your parents didn't put you first in MANY ways (not just by not separating). To be honest it doesn't sound like you would have had a stable loving home even if they had, judging by the way you describe your mother as a 'sefish fucking narcissist' as well as your father. I think it also sounds like your experience was astonishingly atypical (as very few children are the children of diplomats, and even fewer of that minority travel with their diplomat parent to postings). But i'm not denying to you that you would have been happier and better off with a single home in a first-world country with access to education. Quite obviously, I was talking in general and not specific terms that nobody knows what the alternative outcomes would have been like for them if their parents split up/stayed together, if what they experience is the opposite.

Anyway, please don't swear at me any more if you are going to continue to post. I am not attacking you. I am just asking a different question to the one you are trying to answer.

Thanks for this, I've considered whether 'nesting' would be a good way forward for us, as one of the big reasons my DP would not be happy with a split i think would be the house - it's our big investment and he hates 'going backwards', which is how he would see selling and dividing the income into two lower value properties with bigger mortgages. If we could instead stretch to an investment 1-bed/studio flat and alternate in and out to be with the kids I feel that could work well.

I don't think we could do what you're doing, I think the resentment on his part over me ending the relationship would be too high for us to coexist side by side like that - I think at remove we could co-parent quite effectively as we both parent well individually, where we fail is not keeping the tensions between us out of their sight and hearing which is why I am weighing up the pros and cons of leaving/not leaving.

Certainly as things stand I can't see us growing old together, as I imagine me needing to rely on him - infirmity or ill-health scenario - and it is not a pleasant thought. Nor, if I'm honest, is having to take on a caring role for him. Nor is spending the rest of my life being subject to his heavy emotional weather about things like laundry, rain, minor admin, the neighbours doing noisy DIY on a weekend, etc, etc, etc. Or spending my life feeling like an irritant, rather than an interesting, lovable person. I dream of bimbling along living a reasonably peaceful equable life, taking things as they come and not worrying too much about much, and having interesting conversations about life, the universe and everything with people who talk back. I just can't see that ever happening with him.

But as right now, in the thick of the business of kids growing up, fitting work and childcare around each other, paying the mortgage, etc etc, no-one's bimbling anywhere, it's full on and intense and hard work and I just don't know whether setting a bomb off in the middle of all our lives is the better option.

I'm OK with being blamed by the kids, whatever option we go for - I, after all, have made the primary mistake of choosing for them a father I am incompatible with, and their outcomes will be poorer for it than they would have been if I hadn't done so; nothing I can do about that now sadly. I just want to feel I have considered all the options and done everything I can to ensure the genuinely least worst option for them overall.

@herewegoroundthebastardbush Yep the guilt is real and no option is perfect, far from it. Just remember that things won't stay the same, even down to the resentment and anger you may have now. Life ebbs and flows and the seething anger and resentment I had for my ex is all gone now but it took years, and years of therapy, so how you feel now is not how you will feel in years to come. It is an awful place to be in and when I remember back to how I was I just cannot fathom how I survived it all. It was utter hell. Whatever option you decide please be gentle and kind to yourself. Keep yourself focused on your end goal and step by step you'll get there. x

One of the many things I've recognised in my aging years is that 99% of parents try their hardest to do their best by their children. What "best" looks like is different for different people.

And whatever "best" looks like, most parents unwittingly screw up their kids one way or another. It's learning to live with the mistakes and make the best of what life brings you.

One if my best friends has left her husband, he is an unpleasant abusive, misogynistic narc.... it came to a head when he stalked her & put spyware on her computer, & tracked her car.
The result being she has now lost her house, inheritance, & is in a major divorce battle which can take a decade to resolve. She is penniless.
Neither if her dc want to speak to her anymore.they are 21 & 23.
She devoted her entire life to those kids.
Who both got high profile degrees & are excelling in their chosen fields...
She is half broken.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad, they don't mean to - but they do

Ooooh this poem. I lived by this for decades, then got biologically desperate for a child and somehow convinced myself I could break the cycle. Idiot. Still, I wouldn't undo it, just wish I'd done it better.

Ain't that the truth.

My dad drank far too much - probably verging on alcoholism but he hd covered it up well. In later years mg sister and I have realised that living with our toxic narc mother drove him to it. She complained about him endlessly but would never leave or tell anybody about it because "What would people say ....." - small Scottish town in the 70s.
Then he became really ill and got loads of sympathy from everyone. She was very jealous and became a bitter old woman.

Noooo OP, please don't feel you've messed them up completely! My take from that poem is that it's the human condition to bimble along when it comes to raising DC, as you say, making a few messes along the way but some successes too. There are degrees of being fucked up after all. You sound like a thoughtful and considered person, with openness and kindness I'm sure you will find a way.

My parents did this. Not sure there’s ever a ‘good time’ …..it’s tricky for different reasons at different ages I guess. My mum tried to engage me in chats as her confidante which I didn’t find easy, despite being older.