to ask about other peoples experiences of being a child of divorce?

[BritFish]

hi! so, my parents split up when i was 14, and tough though it was, i dont feel that ive been affected in the long term.
i just feel alone in this, as everyone else talks about how they were terribly affected by their parents divorce, and i cant help feeling i must seem a heartless cow!
i had a mild stage of rebellion just after they split, but have been okay since i was 16, and even at the time i understood that they would be happier apart, and i knew they could only be that apart.

has anyone else had a, dare i say it, positive experience of divorce? my parents are much happier apart, which even at 14 i understood was better than the fighting...

I think it depends entirely on how the parents handle the situation. I was very affected by my parents divorce, but that was because I rarely saw my father and felt completely abandoned and unwanted. I have a couple of male friends who have divorced and they see their dc's a lot possibly more than they did before the split. The dc's are fine and even the ex wives agree that they've been great Dad's.

That's a positive experience of divorce though because they were happier divorced than fighting - doesn't mean that it is better than being happily married.

Even at 7 I could see that my parents were better off divorced than how they were - it still affected me though. But that was down to them, not the divorce.

My mother was in a very abusive relationship with my father, they divorced when I was 10.My life improved immeasureably after that since I no longer had to see him ever again.

I am actually not sure about this.

My parents had a lengthy and nasty divorce and custody battle. Myself and my brothers went through hell and back tbh and I ended up getting my own legal rep at age 11/12.

I don't feel it has affected me that much. I was happy with the eventual outcome and wouldn't change anything about that, but I do wonder if I'd be a different person had I had parents who had a good relationship and stayed together, and I also wonder if I would have made more of a sucess of my own life/relationships.

split when i was 8.

it is no joke when i say they divided the property and built a 6ft wall between each other.

it was hellish.

constant fighting/arguing still, except now they shouted over wall instead of doing it in same room.

split when I was about 2 - no contact at all with my father since then. Can't remember if it worried me at the time, but not at all affected by it now. Though it did take me a while to work out what DPs role with the kids was!

I was very affected by my parents divorce but mainly because my mum abandoned us. She ran off with my dads best friend and so I was left to bring my brother up (I was 14, he was 10) as my dad was working all the hours god sent just to support us financially.

I've never forgiven my mum for this and dont think I ever will. We do speak for the sake of my DD but it really gets to me when she makes light of what she did and is so blase about it.

My lovely dad died a few years ago and I still now think it was because of a broken heart

My parents split out of the blue when I was in my late teens - my father remarried quickly (the OW) and is happier. My mother was/has been miserable for years.

The divorce was hell for me and my siblings and had long-term ramifications for all of us (because it was so acrimonious) and deeply affected our relationships with our parents. However we all have long-term, very stable marriages ourselves. We are all in relatively close contact with both parents but, for me at least, my relationship and trust in them has never recovered and never will.

I like to think that I would never put my own children through a similar experience.

Mine split when I was 13, we children stayed with my dad.

I would say it has affected me, but not necessarily in a hugely negative way. I think the years immediately after were quite traumatic. I was not close to my mum in the years just after, we are much closer now but I don't feel we have the relationship we would have had and I am sorry about that - I know my mum is immensely sorry about it too but there is a lot of unresolvable baggage.

On the other hand I am massively closer to my dad than I would have been...

Who knows - I just kind of look at it as part of life's rich tapestry now! It helped to make me what I am, I'm doing okay. So no, I don't feel the need to give it all too much headspace. Frankly life has just moved on now...

thanks for the replies.
my friends parents split when she was 3, and they were very amicable for a long time after that, but she says it has affected her beyond repair, just because her parents should be together and they are not.
she thinks im wierd for not being affected!

I agree that it's not 'the divorce' so much as how it's handled by the parents. I suffered terribly in the early years stuck at home with my alcoholic, anorexic, abusive mother, being shunted back and forwards between her and my alcoholic, violent father and used as the scapegoat by everyone. It was horrible. I remember at the time when we were told they were divorcing though that it was a great idea as it was like living in a war zone. It still is the best thing they did - they just didn't deal with it very well and took it out on the kids.

Mine split when I was 12 - dad had an affair and left. It was a shitty time for us all, but I don't think it traumatised me long term.

The effects have rippled down the years and sometimes impacted on inter-family relationships however, but we're all basically okay.

Taught me to compartmentalise certain relationships eg mine with my father is strictly separate to my mother's with her ex-husband etc.

I've also learned not to take sides when it comes to other people's relationship break-ups (unless actual abuse has taken place) - a real sanity saver over the years.

I guess we'd all have liked to have had an idyllic childhood, but divorce or not who does?

I don't think you're heartless Britfish, you have just moved on, got on with your life. I do appreciate it is an entirely different scenario when the family situation either before or after divorce involves violence or is particularly complicated in some other way and I can absolutely accept that for some people it is too hard to just move on, and I in no way want to belittle that.

That apart I feel it's a shame that the children of relatively untraumatic divorces do/are forced to, keep it as such a major issue in their psyche. I guess the loss of security that divorce brings has a more profound effect on some than others.

My experience was mild compared to some, but I absolutely would not want my children to go through it...obviously still in my psyche somewhere!

My childhood was idyllic - it just didn't include my father.

My parents divorced when I was ten and yes, it's affected me, but more so, I think, as time goes by.

My mother still goes on about what a crap father my dad was, how cruel he was, his affairs (which he has always denied to me), that he tried to abort me by 'forcing' her to drink a bottle of vodka when she was pregnant with me. And this is more than 30 years later.

She made it difficult for him to see us after the divorce and one Xmas 'shot' him with an air rifle loaded with talcum powder- with all of us lined up to watch.

My father, on the other hand, has always behave with dignity and kindness, taking the back seat wrt Xmas days, school events, weddings, christenings etc etc.

So I came to realise that Mum's version of events was not necessarily the 'true' version and that there might, after all, be two sides to the whole sad story.

Since meeting DH, and seeing how wonderful it is when two parents love each other, support each other and stay together I have felt more sadness taht I was denied that opportunity. MAybe if my mother hadn't been so awful about the whole thing, thinking of her childrens' feelings rather than her own, I might feel differently.

Unfortunately I now worry about ds1, whose father I divorced ten years ago, having married him because I had such low self esteem I believed that no-one else would ever ask. His father has virtually abandoned him, promising visits, presents etc then backing out.

All I hope is, that having chosen rather better second time around, and tried everything I know to avoid bad-mouthing his father, that ds1 won't feel too badly that he too has missed out.

Well, my parents divorce resulted in my mother going in to a tailspin of depression and alcoholism, and I lived on my own with her from the age of 11 to 18 (my older brother had just about left home by this time) so I cannot put a positive spin on it at all. My father remarried when I was 16 and had three more children; I feel connected to him and my half brothers and sister only by the slightest thread.

I am not close to either of my parents. I'm afraid they did pretty much mentally abandon me to deal with their own issues.

With hindsight, I think I was affected more by my parents' marriage than their divorce, when I was 11. I can never remember them being happy at all and life was punctuated by long silences, domestic violence, drunken fighting and never enough money. There were faults on both sides.

Fortunately, my Mum had the courage to call time on it - and within the year they had both met lovely new partners, who became lovely step-parents to me and my siblings.

At the time of their divorce I thought it was awful - and I was the only one at my Catholic school to come from this background, but I'm very glad they did divorce - and it taught me never to stay in a relationship "for the children" and to model a better marriage for myself.

With hindsight, I think I was affected more by my parents' marriage than their divorce, when I was 11. I can never remember them being happy at all and life was punctuated by long silences, domestic violence, drunken fighting and never enough money. There were faults on both sides.

Fortunately, my Mum had the courage to call time on it - and within the year they had both met lovely new partners, who became lovely step-parents to me and my siblings.

At the time of their divorce I thought it was awful - and I was the only one in my year group at my new school to come from this background, but I'm very glad they did divorce - and it taught me never to stay in a relationship "for the children" and to model a better marriage for myself.

My dad left when I was 4/5. I always assumed it had affected me hugely as I always felt unwanted by both parents after that, and a "problem" to my Mum who then had to find a job and complained constantly that she was only working to be able to look after me. To be honest I felt guilty from the day he left as I was always blamed and left to carry the family "shame". I was bullied at school as I was the only one whose parents were divorced and I couldn't tell my Mum or she'd have cried and said I was making her feel guilty about him leaving. It made my childhood pretty dark and lonely at times as there was so much pain and bitterness about. He stopped his access visits pretty quickly because mum made it so hard for him to see us I think.

But now I've recovered memories of abuse before he left and have started to wonder if that's why I've always been blamed for him leaving...so in answer to your question, yes, it's affected me in every aspect of my life.

My experiences too were not good. My mother left my father (manic depressive alcoholic) which should have been good but all her anger which had been directed at him was directed at us children. My father did not really maintain contact, badmouthed my mother but in subtle and deeply manipulative ways.

I cannot see how they could have stayed together but felt abandoned to my mother's moods by my father who did nothing to protect us. My mother, in turn, did little to protect us from our father who drank excessively while looking after us.

Me and my sibblings are not particularly close and rarely meet up, I suspect we all like to think we have escaped our childhood. However, we clearly haven't.

For my part, I stayed in a relationship for years trying to 'fix' it simply because I did not want to put my children through the pain I went through. Ex is continuing to take no responsibility for his behaviour, being unpredictable and unreliable, leaving me to take full responsibility for the DCs physical, social and emotional wellbeing, which I will do because I simply will not allow history to repeat itself. But recognising that there is nothing I can do about the relationship he chooses to have with his children is difficult.

My DCs teachers all tell me I am doing an excellent job of supporting my children but I simply can't hear it. It feels like I've let them down in the worst possible way even though it is completely out of my hands. I'd love to hear positive stories as I know my own history is impacting my ability to deal with the situation I am now in.

That said, my DCs do constantly amaze me. In spite of feeling completely grief-stricken, they all feel that I have been better since the split (which was a surprise to me, I really thought I'd been a horror). The older two have also been able to find things that have been positive for them personally.

I had a similar experience of divorce after my dad had an affair and left my mum after 20 years of marriage. Initially of course it was hard and I rejected my dad for a while, whilst my brother, 3 yrs younger than me was v accepting of the whole situation.

As time went by, I realised that I only have one dad and therefore got back in touch whereas by brother went the other way and they no longer talk.

Over the years, I have learnt that my dad was at times suicidal and that the 'other' woman probably saved his life in a wierd way. I recently found some letters that my dad had written to me around the time of the divorce which I had really only skim-read at the time. Reading the letters again gave me a deeper understanding of the situation, helpful too as have since had the experience of a non-straightforward relationship myself. The letters cemented my opinion that people make mistakes and face difficulties in life - it's all part of life.

The only sadness I spose is for my mum. My parents haven't spoken since they last met in the divorce courts. My mum hasn't really met anyone else and rarely asks about my dad - me and my mum are v close - she recently said to me at xmas that she didn't want me to tell her good news about my dad, only bad news. I took this to mean, she is still quite bitter.

I guess divorce is never truely painless and certainly it has affected me ie. I have a very low opinion of marriage and really feel it's not for me. I have also struggled with trust in the past I imagine as a result of what my dad did.

However I don't feel overly affected by what happened and need to remember that if it weren't for what happened, I may not even have a dad around anymore.