My parents divorced when I was about 3
so I have absolutely memory of it and I have never know any different to growing up with a single parent.
The divorce was extremely amicable, my dad was always very hands on, had us every other weekend and took me and my sister on holiday each year etc, and even now, almost 40 years after the divorce and me and sister well grown up, they are still in each others lives and do things to help each other out. Like today for example, my dad is taking my mum to the airport, and my mum will always invite my dad over for Christmas dinner, they still buy each other birthday presents and lend each other money if needed etc
So yes, although they are divorced it was never traumatic and unpleasant and the fact they still get on really well is obviously a positive.
They were only about 28 when they separated and neither of them have ever re-married. In fact neither of them have lived with another man/woman either.
Even the marriages I did grow up around were never positive examples.
My mum’s sister was married but he was physically abusive to her, my grandparent’s were married (maternal side) and their marriage was a bit of a wreck too. So marriage was never something I saw as special….it felt like it was more of a duty to be filled, or it was seen as a societal expectation that people be married, but that doesn’t actually mean the people within the marriage are happy to be married to each other.
Some of my friend’s parents were married but I was always of the mindset that marriage was just something people did in order to have children and not “live in sin” etc and that aside from that, marriage didn’t actually have any deeper meaning and it didn’t signify at all that the men are women are necessarily happy together or choosing to be together.
I do wonder if having those feelings as I grew up played a part in me being an OW and on reflection I guess it may have. I’m ashamed to say it now, at the age I am now, (and married with children) but at the time I didn’t care at all that the MM was married and I didn’t give any thought at all to his wife because in my head the concept of them being married didn’t mean anything to me, it just didn’t matter. I didn’t know his wife’s name, her age, what she did as a job, what she looked like…. Just nothing. I didn't even know where they lived.
It’s really strange reflecting back on it (and of course I would never do it again) but it’s strange to think about how little I cared.
And then I think about the time my LTR broke down many years ago because I found out my partner was cheating on me, it surprised me how little anger I felt towards the OW. I met up with her and she explained to me how the affair had come to be and how long it had been going on for etc and I didn’t feel any kind of hatred towards her. If I passed her in the street afterwards we would stop and say hello, we were Facebook friends too and I would go and talk to her if we bumped into each other on nights out etc and people couldn’t understand why I wasn’t furious or hating on her. At the time though I just assumed she hadn’t cared about me in the same way I hadn’t cared about the MM’s wife……and that there was nothing wrong with that. She’d liked my partner, he’d liked her back and so why should she care about me? I was nothing to her, she’d never met me, she didn’t owe me anything etc, and I was fine with that.
When I didn’t care about the MM’s wife I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that approach, and so I didn’t think badly of the woman who’d been having an affair with my partner because she’d done nothing different to what I had done. She’d ignored the fact I had existed in the same way I had ignored MM’s wife has existed.
It all just felt so normal.
As a married woman I would feel devastated if my husband cheated on me and although the OW would be an easy target to channel my anger at, if she was a complete stranger to me I’m not sure I’d put any blame on her. But that’s just hypothetical and hopefully I will never have to find out.