My ex husband and I split when our dd was 2, so it was pretty straightforward at the time. She has asked questions about it as she's got older and I've tried to keep it simple and just tell her that we were making each other sad. This has largely been accepted up until now. She's now 7 and asking why we made each other sad, how we made each other sad. Who decided? Why can't you still be together? Why didn't you try to make it work? Etc etc.
I'm struggling to know what to say. The last few years of our marriage were absolutely miserable, correlating with the point I became pregnant. He became cruel, unkind, hurtful, uncaring and verbally abusive. I cried most days. The arguments became awful. He could be physically quite threatening and on a couple of occasions did you physical force.
I grew up in an environment where my parents were both verbally and physically violent towards each other. There was alcohol abuse, I saw my Mum hitting my Dad on several occasions and saw him knock her out or split her lip on too many occasions to count. I tried to come between them and became the villain on too many occasions. It became clear to me that that this could be a scenario my daughter could face if I didn't do anything.
But of course I cannot tell her any of that. I have always been respectful of her Dad. We've hashed out a pretty good situation out of the mess that our marriage became. What do I say? Because I'm worried she will just see I made the decision to leave and not understand that I didn't do it for no reason, and therefore blame me. I have no idea what her Dad says in answer to these questions, or even if she asks him. She's a very emotionally intelligent and quite a mature 7 year old. She's certainly not going to take simple responses and not question them any more.