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Why Divorce Calls Children's Existence Into Question


debrand

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Months before his wedding, the writer's mother announced that she and his father were going to get a divorce.

My parents' impending divorce made me feel thin, as if now that my parents' marriage was disappearing, the divorce was becoming our shared identity, and I too was disappearing

I understand that the divorce would be painful for even adult children to handle. However, isn't this reaction a bit extreme? My mother divorced several times, lots of people come from divorces. We all survived and most of us realized that the divorce wasn't about us. Yes, it sucks but so do a lot of things in life.

I existed only because my mother and father had become one, creating me out of the abundance of their covenant community. Now, standing amid the debris and shock of the collision that ended their marriage, all this felt up for grabs. If I was through their union, who could I be in their division? If I was because of their coming together, who would I be if they nullified the community that gave me life? Could I be at all

You exist because two people had sex. It could have been a one night stand, in which neither participants ever saw one another again and you would still exist. The marriage act did not create him. His parents having sex started his life. Most people understand that they are seperate people from their parents.

Of course, when abuse and extreme neglect fester, the embrace is broken or becomes so contaminated that it wilts the humanity of everyone in it. Here, divorce may be a tragic necessity. But we should remember that such awful realities remain the minority among divorces in the United States. Reportedly, about two-thirds of divorces end low-conflict (i.e., no abuse or neglect) marriages, like that of my own parents

I've known adults who were well aware that their parents did not divorce because of the kids. Not a single adult child that I know reported happiness over this fact. Some were bitter that their parents didn't just break up instead of making them feel guilty. It isn't that all of them were told that their parents were unhappy, they could just tell that they were. When two people fall out of love, becoming room mates instead of lover, most kids will know.

There is no easy answer, no magic pill to take to secure one's shaken being after the divorce of your parents. Even now, 14 years after my parents' divorce, I have significant moments of feeling raw, of wishing during the holidays that my mom and dad were together, that I didn't have to explain to my children why they aren't

I understand that divorce is painful for everyone but the writer should explain to his kids that their grandparents simply weren't happy together. It happens. Why is that so difficult to understand? Apparently, the couple remained together until the writer reached adulthood. What were they supposed to do? Stay in a union in which they didn't love one another or had grown apart?

Maybe the answer , for the writer, is to realize that his parents exist as seperate individuals then him. Once he reached adulthood, they no longer owed him the pretense of a happy marriage.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/201 ... ml?start=1

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I understand that divorce is painful for everyone but the writer should explain to his kids that their grandparents simply weren't happy together. It happens. Why is that so difficult to understand? Apparently, the couple remained together until the writer reached adulthood. What were they supposed to do? Stay in a union in which they didn't love one another or had grown apart?

It sounds like they already had stayed in a union which wasn't working for them. Trust me, my grandparents stayed together because people simply didn't "get divorced" and they were miserable. They HATED each other. (My grandfather had something of an inability to keep it in his pants, which he blamed on my grandmother's frigidity.) I didn't know when I was a kid, but I know NOW, and I wish they had divorced. It would have made so many lives better.

I don't want to say divorce isn't a big deal, because mine was devastating, and for many people it IS devastating, but in the end, you have to move past it. This guy is just being ridiculous about the subject. Divorced families aren't disappearing from reality, they're just taking new shapes and sometimes that new shape is better than the old one. It can be difficult, but he's a grown man, and he needs to find whatever article of big-boy clothing he has, put it on, and stop complaining that his mother is more concerned about her life than his.

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As a child of divorce and my mum has now remarried I kind of get what he is saying. Even though my dad was an asshole I used to have odd times of wishing we were together still and at my mums wedding there was a moment of "I wish he was my real dad".

But I think it's juvenile to still focus on it, I had those feelings as a teenager. As an adult I'm happy my mum is happy with my stepdad and we are now a family.

His article is not just about how hard the divorce was for him though. He also calls for more support in the church community for children and families going through divorce which I applaud. When my mum separated from my dad our Pastor left a voicemail condemning what she was doing and then condemned the women that helped her escape.

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As a child of divorce and my mum has now remarried I kind of get what he is saying.

I understand what he is saying, and I think he's going through something as an adult that many of us survived as teenagers.

And yes, he does call for more support for young people going through the process of parents divorcing, and dealing with the aftermath, but he keeps going back to how it is crippling him as an adult that his mother is doing what she feels is best for her own life, and for me that detracts from the message.

More support for families going through it IS an improvement - I am sorry that your mother had the experience she had.

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I understand what he is saying, and I think he's going through something as an adult that many of us survived as teenagers.

And yes, he does call for more support for young people going through the process of parents divorcing, and dealing with the aftermath, but he keeps going back to how it is crippling him as an adult that his mother is doing what she feels is best for her own life, and for me that detracts from the message.

More support for families going through it IS an improvement - I am sorry that your mother had the experience she had.

I agree with the bold.

I wonder if his reaction is so severe as well because of the churches stance on Divorce? To be taught that marriage is a covenant and the joining of 2 people, yadayayada for most of your life in a church then to have your parents get divorced would be confronting.

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One of my younger cousins is an only child, married, with children of her own. Her mother had an affair, the parents separated, filed for a divorce, divvied up the property....and are now living together again.

My young cousin is confused, disoriented, and it has nothing to do with her deep faith. She would identify with the notion of her very existence, the ground on which she stands, being called into question.

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I wish my parents would get divorced already.

That being said, I do feel kind of bad for him/her when he/she said that his/her mother said "If I could do it again, I would have never married your father, I would have married someone else." Because that is just cruel, if in fact, the author was conceived after marriage.

I don't understand why he thinks he is being erased though. That normally doesn't happen until a parent remarries. Also, he/she is an adult!

So weird.

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I'm also an adult whose parents divorced after my brother and I were already adults, but there were times when I wished my parents would have divorced sooner. While they didn't really fight, they basically acted like roommates for several years. My mom has remarried, and is happier now than she was, but at least she didn't say that she regretted marrying my dad, as my younger brother and I were conceived after they got married. I do admit that I was surprised when my mom said she was getting married again, but I ended up as her maid of honor at her wedding.

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I exist because of a broken condom. My parents were married but my dad didn't want any more kids. And I'm not having some existential crisis over this. I know my mom loves me and I know that my dad doesn't love anyone so I don't take it personally. If I had never been born, I wouldn't give a fuck because I wouldn't exist to care about it. Just like the trillions of possible children that my parents never had, I simply wouldn't care.

My parents got separated when I was 16 or 17. My internal response was, "What took so long?" They were terrible for each other I just don't see how a divorce would have been worse than staying together in a miserable marriage. My dad exactly nothing for me so there would be nothing to miss out on if he weren't around, except money which he would have had to pay anyway through child support. I know my mom thought she was doing what was best for us, but I knew the whole time that they should be divorced and that they were trying to stick it out for me. Sometimes a marriage is so bad that divorce is the better option. It doesn't benefit a child to have parents that are technically married but hate each other. A marriage certificate is just a piece of paper. It's not magically and doesn't make a family better just for existing.

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I can empathize with this writer to an extent. I think there's an additional type of difficulty for children of very religious parents who divorce. My fundie parents got divorced when I was in my mid-twenties, after seven children and at least fifteen years of insisting that divorce was Never An Option and that Gothard et al. offered the One True Way to have a Godly Marriage .

It was really disorienting for me; I was well on my way out of fundamentalism already, but it still shook up all the foundations of what I had always been told was the fail-safe way of approaching a marriage. In the longer term, it forced me to re-evaluate all the fundie marriage advice that I didn't really believe in anyway and confirmed to me that it really wasn't a healthy approach, but it was definitely difficult at the time.

(Plus my parents basically got married because they were expecting me and my mother was determined that her child would have a father present, which she hadn't had, so I went through a long period of feeling like the whole mess was my fault. Sort of the opposite of this writer and his Covenant Embrace business, I guess.)

Pardon the excessive capitalization.

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I think that guy is stuck at the emotional age he was when his parents divorced, and he needs therapy. His mother's choices are no reflection on him. I think he is mad at her for the divorce.

My parents have been divorced for 30 years. Still can't be in the same room together (well, my mom is the instigator). I think my mom is emotionally stuck in the same place.

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I don't think it's extreme - those feelings seem normal based on my experience and those I know who have divorced parents. If you are planned in a loving relationship and then it crumbles, it's kind of like you are just...a failed plan. It's different from if your parents are never together, I think. Anyway, it's fine to have the feelings but not to dwell on it.

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I don't think it's extreme - those feelings seem normal based on my experience and those I know who have divorced parents. If you are planned in a loving relationship and then it crumbles, it's kind of like you are just...a failed plan. It's different from if your parents are never together, I think. Anyway, it's fine to have the feelings but not to dwell on it.

I think it falls within the normative. But there seems to be a bit of over analyzing, self absorption here.

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I think it falls within the normative. But there seems to be a bit of over analyzing, self absorption here.

Yeah. Most opinion pieces are like that though. He probably doesn't think about it much...I hope.

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I would guess that really anti-divorce people who get divorced, do it more acrimoniously than a similar couple who were more neutral on the question. or that they stay married LONG after they've used up their reserves of "be nice to this person you don't love anymore" is all gone.

There's a lot of research on what kinds of divorce affect children least badly, and it's basically that conflict, dishonesty, and badmouthing of the other parent cause kids a lot of stress and grief. (Duh? But it took study to get past Divorce Is Bad to Doing Bad Things While Divorcing Is Bad). And if you have the whole purity/marriage thing as a central part of your identity, that's got to be a shock, too.

My parents, btw, were very civil in front of us but my dad spewed venom all over where we ended up hearing it, and some stuff we couldn't help but see (like he'd promise to visit and no-show, and he didn't contribute any money starting the day he moved out, so checks bounced and there was no money for sports uniforms.) The last night before he moved out Mom & Dad made sure to tell me that just because they were getting divorced didn't mean I shouldn't value the sanctity of marriage, they still wanted me to wait for The One and get married forever and not fail like them. Which, that's some bullshit to lay on a teenager right there. But the relief of not living with my dad anymore made up for a lot of it.

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