Children of divorced parents - what was it really like?

[Cvn]

DH and I have been married for 13 years. We married in our mid-20s but didn't have children for a while so we now have a 3yo and a 7mo.
The marriage has been up and down basically since the start, and now we're at the point where we're living as housemates.
Our days are as follows:
I get up early with the kids, get them sorted for the day, and start the day. DH wakes up around 9am. We might exchange 2 or 3 sentences. He chats to the kids a little or plays with them for a bit, then WFH until dinner time. We eat dinner together. Occasionally it's pleasant but often he's stressed, depressed, tired, and finds the kids overstimulating, so he gets snappy with them. I find aggressive speech really intimidating so I'm on edge throughout dinner. He and I maybe exchange a few more sentences about our days or about something in the news, but we mainly talk to the kids. After dinner we tag team playing with the kids / cleaning up, then are both involved in putting the kids to bed. Both are usually asleep by 8pm. Then he goes back to work until 1 or 2am and I doom scroll in bed until I fall asleep. We used to hang out in the evenings - watch TV or sit it in the garden with a glass of wine - but he doesn't want to any more.
Sometimes we try to talk about the relationship but our resentments are so long-standing and tangled up that we can't figure out how to untangle them. Our communication and conflict styles are very different and that makes any kind of productive conversation difficult. When we married, we practiced the same faith but he has lost his along the way, and it means we now have very different values and worldviews. His faith had also provided the basis for his moral framework so our views on e.g. porn are really out of sync now. It’s all such a mess and I can't see any way out. I'm desperately lonely.
He says he's previously tried to work at the marriage and it was a waste of energy, so now he's going to prioritise his career. He's content to live as housemates and co-parent, but I'm not.
He's great with the kids, and shares the housework and life admin. He just doesn't like me very much or want to spend time with me. Mostly because he's very angry and blames me for his career not going where he wanted it to - there have been times in the past when both of us have prioritised our marriage to the detriment of our careers, but he feels very resentful of that.
If not for the kids, I'd probably call it a day. But I'm torn. They adore him. But I don't want them growing up thinking this is what a healthy relationship looks like. But equally I don't want them to bear the scars of divorce. They're not exposed to arguing or violence because DH and I hardly talk. I think they have a pretty happy life and feel loved by both of us.
As my friend said, if DH was a real dick, or we were fighting all the time, it would be an easy decision. But he's a generally decent guy, just the marriage has been hard and I think we're not well suited, and that's taken it's toll on both of us.
If you've managed to read this far, and if you're parents divorced when you were a child:
a) how old were you?
b) how did it affect you?
c) what did they do / could they have done to make the divorce less disruptive or upsetting for you?
Thanks in advance! 🙏🏻

I was 14 when my parents split. It was a nasty divorce. I was turned against my Dad. Only to discover a few years later that my Mom was actually the bad guy in it all. It was a pretty dire time all in all, and contributed to me leaving education early with no qualifications, and drifting through life for a while. That said, younger children are more resilient so an amicable split at that age could perhaps work.

I was 9, and it damaged my relationships with both parents. Though as a PP has said, that might have been more to do with the subsequent new partners and expectations of happily blended families.

I do want to say, though, that it would be worth giving it some time as your children are so tiny and this stage takes over everything. We were having real trouble when our youngest was small, similar to what you described, but we were also undergoing a large and complex house move so agreed to wait a year before putting anything in motion (with both of us fully expecting to split at the end of that year). That year passed and the baby was a toddler, we had more time and more sleep and things were better. 5 more years on, things are still good. If you're not sure, maybe it's a good idea to table any large changes until you're not quite so deep in the baby stage.

Way to invalidate the feelings of two people are explaining to OP how their parents divorce affected them. What they experienced as young children/teenagers.

At no point did either of us say it was malicious. It wasn’t. It was thoughtless. Which was my point, I was an afterthought. My dad had his new family and would remember me when I was there. No, you don’t need to go around proclaiming that you’ve been married before. However, even with acquittances it does come that people have children, how many children, what their children are up to. You ask how someone is doing and they say “oh it’s a bit stressful at the minute, my daughter is doing her GCSEs so she’s studying when she’s at ours but the younger ones don’t understand she needs quiet”, “my daughter has just done her GCSEs she felt they went well but she also found the English paper hard” or “we had a nice weekend, daughter was with us this weekend and so we took all the kids to the park”. There might be a point when someone says “oh I thought you only had green and blue” and at that point you can say “yes purple is orange’s daughter from a previous marriage”. From my point of view, this was people he saw somewhat regularly parents from school, neighbours that they would justify who I was. Surely making idol chit chat with these people still alludes to the fact that my dad might have other children? He didn’t need to mention he’s been married before. But he did need to mention me as part of his day to day life and not just remember me when I was there, then justify who I was because I’ve never featured in his conversations.

My parents separated for similar reasons to the OP then decided to make another go of things.

In hindsight they should have stayed separated. Everyone would've been much happier.

Growing up in a house when can tell your parents are unhappy is not great. I would have sleepovers at friend's houses and saw how happy parents behaved and it was not like my parents.

Deeply traumatic in the 80s when in mid teens, still have the scars now. Accepting new partners was awful but 40 years I dearly love them both and they have outlived parents.

Honestly, it was great. The tension in our house was awful and my dad was mean and volatile. I was so relieved the day my mum told me they were divorcing. I remember being excited to choose the carpet and paint for my new room. I would have probably been about 8-9. It really was no big deal for me (but living with them married and miserable was terrible).

I lived full-time with my mum though, with only visitation (no overnights) with my dad on rare occasions. So my life stayed pretty much the same, just it was only the two of us, and we lived in a different house. He wasn't an involved parent anyway. As a teen, I saw him maybe once a month for a day at most (he died when I was 18 anyway). But I have absolutely no negative feelings at all about my parents splitting. It was one of the few good decisions my mum made. My childhood was chaotic in other respects because both of my parents had quite a few issues, but this was a really positive thing and probably saved me from a lifetime of damaging relationships of my own (I have a very happy, healthy marriage and family life that is nothing like what I grew up with).

a) I was 3, my sister was 5

b) badly. My sister become ferociously independent and trusts no-one, emotionally very cut-off. I became a terrible people-pleaser, suffer with depression and attachment difficulties.

c) They could have maintained a good relationship with each other, agreed some basic parameters for consistent parenting, and kept their relationship difficulties (with each other and subsequent partners) out of our sight and knowledge. It was a totally schizophrenic upbringing in two totally different households with different rules, and we grew up way too fast due to having far to much information/exposure to dysfunctional adult relationships. My mother in particular told me things about what my dad was like as a husband which made it very hard for me to relate to him as my father.

Most importantly, they could have avoided bringing new partners/their children into our homes and lives. It is horrible to only see each of your parents some of the time as it is, but to then have half siblings who are part of the 'real' family in your home, who get to be with both their parents all the time, and who are actually loved by the stepparent rather than tolerated for the sake of their partner... It's a headfuck and completely alienating.

Basically, if you can't reconcile yourself to a cordial but romantically void marriage until your kids are grown and flown, and your/his dissatisfaction with that is going to make life hard for your kids, then go ahead and divorce. But protect them as much as you can, prioritise them as much as you can, and accept the fact that once you are divorced, you have no control how he parents them or what or who he chooses to expose them to/bring into their home.

@PurpleBananaSmoothie I'm not trying to invalidate you and I recognise this might not be the space to challenge you, I just thought a bit of adult perspective might be useful on this.

I can honestly say as somebody with a step child that it just does not automatically come up in idol chit chat with acquaintances. Sometimes it might, other times it doesn't. There's nothing behind that, but if people don't happen to ask something like "what did you do this weekend", and it didn't happen to be something specifically related to DSS like his school play, it just wouldn't come up. If we'd gone to the park we wouldn't say "DP's son from his previous marriage was here so we all went to the park", we'd just say we went to the park. Similarly to how if an acquaintance knew one of my DC but had never seen the other, I wouldn't be saying "me, DC1 and my other DC went to the park", I'd just say "we went to the park", and if they didn't know I had another DC then they just wouldn't know that detail. Unless the question is "how many children do you have", or the anecdote was specifically related to the one child they hadn't met, the flow of conversation will likely never spell out exactly how many children are in the family. And that's ok, it is not a snub.

I don't often encounter people asking how many kids you've got, most just assume you've got the amount they see in front of them. If one of the children is never there when said acquaintance sees you, there is a stronger chance they won't be aware of them, but that doesn't mean they've been deliberately kept secret or not thought of.

I was 12 and the first in my year at school. I really struggled. The blessing was I was at boarding school so that normalcy and being with all of my friends continued. I think most of it will depend on how open the parents are and how they deal with it.

That said, younger children are more resilient so an amicable split at that age could perhaps work.

Younger children are not 'more resilient'; it's just you're only half formed so the trauma is part of who you grow into rather than breaking who you already are, so it's less obvious.

I was 2, so it's all I've known. I think as divorced parents go, it was a good age as I don't remember them ever together or any of the anger at the time. They're so different I can't imagine how they ever made it work!

I don't think it affected me in a bad way, but it was a complicated situation as my dad was very intertwined with my mum's family (work, friendships) and the person he chose to be in a relationship with afterwards wasn't a stranger (not affair) so everyone had an opinion and they weren't shy about making comments about it to me as I grew up. My dad was hated by everyone and my mum was quite petty/bitter so I felt very caught in the middle, especially around special occasions. I was terrified of disappointing someone as someone would always be upset at less time with me.

I grew up very much putting each side of the family into a "box" in my head - the other side was not to be discussed around the opposite side! It makes me sad to think of now. I'm glad they split up, but I wish they would've told family members/friends to shut up and kept their feelings a bit more hidden and not put me in the middle so much, even if unintentionally.

I hope everything works out for you OP

However, even with acquittances it does come that people have children, how many children, what their children are up to.
Maybe you two are imagining slightly different scenarios/types of acquaintance?
I also had the "What? I didn't know you had a daughter!" when I was in my 30s, from a man who'd known my dad 30 years ... but they were really just acquaintances. My dad would not have talked about his private life to this bloke; the guy would only have known about my half-brother from actually seeing him in the flesh in my dad's house. I wasn't there so he never saw me. If it had been my dad's mate or a closer acquaintance I would have thought it was weird he hadn't mentioned me. As it was, I just thought it was funny as it's so typical of my dad not to chat about that sort of thing.

a) how old were you?
14

b) how did it affect you?
Really badly even to this day.
Dad got sole custody because my mum had nowhere to live and was staying with friends. Except my dad spent most the of his time working and had no time (or interest if I am being harsh) in looking after me. So I was pretty much left to fend for myself.
Whenever I saw my mum she used to cry and feel guilty that she wasn't there to look after me properly or feed me healthily which broke my heart. She also tried to help me financially (for clothes and going out etc) when I knew she had so very little to survive on herself.

My dad didn't want me to see my mum at all so it was secretly at first. But I got found out and then he turned my older siblings against me saying do not discuss anything in front of 1day because it will go straight back to your mum. There was then a situation that whenever I walked into a room the conversations would stop that me me feel even more isolated.

I felt better when I was around my friends but I was just embarrassed about it all, avoided anyone coming to my house and didn't want to be seen as the weird troubled kid.

It was also said on a number of occasions by friends of my dad or others that "well in a couple of years you'll be 16 and can get a job and move out" which scared the shit out of me.

I realised at the time that I could easily go off the rails here. So it just made me more determined to show them they were wrong by getting good grades and going to University.

By the time I was 18 my siblings also realised our dad was being unreasonable and started seeing my mum too who was more settled and had her own place. This made things easier for all of us and we all started to get closer. We were still cordial with my dad but he spent most of his time working.

c) what did they do / could they have done to make the divorce less disruptive or upsetting for you?
My dad not being so selfish and thinking it was all about him. My dad turning my siblings against me that "I was the spy in the camp"
I became so so much closer to my mum knowing that all she wanted to do was (and still does) is take care of me.
I lost a lot of respect for my dad.

10, Barely seeing my dad was fine as he didn't spend much time with us anyway (hence the divorce) so actually had more time with him, but he would always diss my mum when we did see him. As I got older their refusal to be in the same room caused issues.
It was awful after mum got a new partner who had much younger kids and a very short temper. A lot of that is probably to do with my step dad rather than step dads in particular though.

Late teens/early twenties. Much nicer calmer household afterwards, can't imagine if it hadn't happened.

I was 10. Never saw my parents being affectionate or even really get on at all. They split but remained good friends/support for each other and even now still see each other every week. I truly can’t remember ever feeling awful about it - it was much the same for me except I had two homes. I never remember a time which we would be a family together.

My partner on the other hand, was 13. Had a great amount of trauma from the messy divorce - they never spoke to each other again unless it was about partner’s younger sibling. Couldn’t be in the same room as each other. They couldn’t BOTH be at our wedding. Partner to some degree still gets separation anxiety which we both believe stems from this divorce. Blended family came about 1 year later which meant one parent became very distant from partner and siblings - they now don’t have a relationship at all.

Divorce can be better than staying in an unhappy marriage, but consider how your actions and choices will affect your children. PLEASE stay civil for the children’s sake.

for
me in the 80's the effect of a divorce that sticks in my head was the name changes. my
mum had me, divorced, had my sister in a brief fling then met my stepdad (never married) of 40 odd years. growing up
we had 4 different names on the front door. my sister and i had different surnames from our different dads, then my
mums maiden name and my stepdads.
this alone made us different to others at school, friends to the house would always ask why 4 names hence me having to explain family dynamics all over again. but it was others who made us feel different, i didn't care until other people made it into something.

i always always say better a divorced multinamed family who were happy than some of the shit families my
pals grew up in who were married and should have been divorced. my old pals now say they were so jealous cos i gave the impression i didn't give a shit who lived in our home we were happy carefree , where their homes were quite miserable. but i was embarrassed about it.
plus my mum and her sister fell out one time when i was little and i heard my aunt (who is still
in a 50 year miserable marriage) saying about my mum well not my fault she's divorced. brought a feeling of shame to me even tho i didn't i didn't undertand why.

11

Dad moved away and we lived with DM and ended up on benefits.

DM remarried when I was 15. I became a stepdaughter and stepsister.
Honestly, I can't bellyache about this. Yes it was hard. Yes I would have preferred my parents to be together. Yes my DM had a breakdown. Yes we couldn't afford stuff. Yes I'd rather have seen my father more than a scattering of times during the holidays but it was what it was. It is life. Shit happens. People introspect far too much and expect perfection and constant happiness. Life isn't like that. Not all children of divorced parents require counselling or spend their lives moaning about it. They just get on with life and accept it for what it was. Obvioiusly some may have had a tougher time than me, or struggled to accept the inevitable so I understand the upset.

For what it is worth - my DStepdad is one of my favourite people. I was probably an annoying kid and did all the stepkid stuff but I love him very much.

I am a stepmother and have good relationships with my now adult stepchildren.

I was six and it was fine. I remember being upset when told my dad was moving out, but apart from that never an issue at all. People used to say "Oh I'm sorry!" And I always wondered why.

I think it would have been better if my dad had stayed in touch more proactively, but there's nothing my mum could have done about that.

As an adult I do wish my mum had had a proper plan to support herself rather than just assuming she'd get married again. It's a bit stressful now she's approaching retirement age with basically no pension entitlement and no savings.

I guess they handled it well by being civil to each other and not using us as pawns.

I'm sorry OP, this sounds like a very sad situation for you both. I would say, however, that I very much doubt that he is 'working' until 1am but looking at 'stuff' online or possibly chatting to other women. Maybe not, but it does follow a script. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

I imagine the general pull your socks up vibe you're giving off would prevent your adult stepchildren ever "bellyaching" about any upset they might have experienced as stepchildren and children of divorce. Paper thin disclaimer aside, you seem to have decided because you didn't suffer (or choose to ignore any suffering you did experience), anyone who did is just a wimp basically.

I hated it. One parent always trying to be the best parent. No fixed home, constantly between the two. Little jibes also from grandparents about the other parent

Then along comes the step family , constant feeling of not being fully in that family

Sorry you asked for honesty. However , my parents would have been horrific together for much longer

I think I was about 6 or 7, my sister was 3. My top tip would be to be on as good terms as you can possibly be with your ex - it’s just miserable when one parent or set of parents is running down the other or you aren’t ‘allowed’ to mention their new partners to your other parent. And it goes on into adulthood - you have weddings, celebrations and your parents/stepparents aren’t speaking/you are walking on eggshells and hoping there won’t be a row.

Parents of my DC’s friend have recently split up and, at least from the outside (obvs), seem to be making such an amazing job of it. They still live close by so kids can walk between them, are still working together to sort out their kids’ friendships, play dates etc. Their kids seem remarkably chilled about it all. It’s great, and so different to my experience. Really helps, I think, that there doesn’t seem to have been anyone else involved - just the pandemic effect of lockdown and realising you’re not right for each other, which I would think is fairly common right now.

Not all children of divorced parents require counselling or spend their lives moaning about it. They just get on with life and accept it for what it was.
This sounds a little like counselling and moaning are related, and the opposite of "getting on with life" - which I doubt you meant to suggest, @LuciferRising - but it's a common misunderstanding, so I'd like to point out for anyone who is hesitant that visiting a counsellor does not mean that you're not getting on with life, or are especially negative. Just like you might go to your GP for a "minor" or a "serious" physical problem, you can get help from professionals dealing with mental health issues of all kinds. That leaves you more positive, not negative, and you can get on with your life more easily.

With children, you don't always know what's going on in their heads. If they just feel a bit sad, counselling or other support will help with that, and they'll learn some coping tools that are bound to come in handy at some point. If they are really struggling then it will be even more useful.
(I should add that I live in a country where various kinds of support are easily available. Our children were simply able to talk to school social workers, for instance. Perhaps it's harder to get hold of in the UK and thus seen as a last resort?)

No. More that people seem to assume children of divorced parents are damaged goods when in fact many are not. You just never hear about them.

I have a great relationship with my DSSs thanks. Again there is the assumption that stepchildren will have terrible relationships with their blended families when in fact many do not.