I guess I am just looking for everyones point of view. No right or wrong answer...just curious.

I divorced my husband after trying for a long time to make our marriage work. But he was unfaithful (more than once)and there were the constant lies and deceit. I was trying 110% all the time and he was never trying because he was unhappy in the marriage and was with me only because he felt he "had" to be. It all became too much for me. I believe marriage is hard (constant compromise and understanding, etc.), but it shouldn't be "that" hard. I was pregnant with our 3rd child when I divorced him and I've felt much guilt over the years feeling I've deprived my DS of ever knowing his parents married and in love, but I feel I'm a better parent now due to the reduced stress of trying to make a failed marriage work. So, in short...I don't feel a couple should stay married just because of the children. I feel that you can be a good parent even if you are divorced. It's called effort and the natural instinct to want to do the best by your children. It's the same as when you are married. Your feelings and dreams for your children do not change just because you are divorced. I am still a good parent despite the fact I divorced my childrens father. My parent's marriage was awful and I always wished they would divorce because it was so obvious they were unhappy. They are still married, but my mother has confided in me that they made it work for us kids and now I have guilt that my mother has spent so many years unhappy. Yes, their marriage is ok now, but they've gotten into a comfortable routine, but I can't help but feel sad that maybe both my parents would have been happier with someone else. I know someone who is going through a divorce right now, but who says that if their (soon to be) ex wanted to work things out that they would HAVE to try due to the kids, even though the trust and honesty issues are HUGE and infidelity is also an issue. I can't see how the marriage could ever work when the ONLY reason to stay together would be for the kids.

So....what's your opinion? Should couples stay together for the kids? When you can't trust the person you are with...you can't believe anything they say...they've been with other people sexually...they've deceived you financially. Do you think most kids would just be happy to have their parents together despite their problems or are kids smarter than people give them credit for and they see through the "game faces"?

I'm just curious as to people's feelings on this subject.

By Angellew on Thursday, January 9, 2003 - 09:13 am:

As a child of divorce, I can tell you, IMHO, you are right! I have memories of a not-so-nice household when my father still lived there! But, most of my memories are of very happy times, in two happy households!

And now, as a woman who married a man who is divorced and has a son, it is the same way. His son, at 14, still enjoys spending weekends with us (we thought, at his age, we would have lost him to his friends by now!). He is a straight A student, active in sports. He has his " 14 year old" moments, but, he is a normal, HAPPY boy, who is as happy with us, as he is with his mother! The same was I was at his age with my father and his wife.

So, yes, I totally agree with you. Two happy homes are better than one unhappy one!

By Karen55 on Thursday, January 9, 2003 - 09:30 am:

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR I AM MAD HERE! I just spent 20 minutes typing a very long response to you and my computer lost it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By Melanie on Thursday, January 9, 2003 - 10:09 am:

I don't think parents should stay together for the kids, but I certainly feel they should try harder to make it work because of the kids. I think a lot of people these days take the easy way out instead of putting in some extra effort when things get tough.

That said, Alanal, situations like yours do not fall under what I just described. You did what you had to do. I don't see that you had any other reasonable choice.

By Truestori on Thursday, January 9, 2003 - 11:16 am:

Alanal,

You made the right decisions for your situation! I would never stay in a situation that made me miserable. The kids pick up on that behavior(as many of us did with our parnets) and its just not good.

I also agree with Melanie that some people just don't even try to stick it out! I have been with my husband 12 years and we have had some rocky situations but we managed to work it out! I think that is a natural occurance in any marriage!

One more thing: I work with teenagers addicted to drugs and I have to say more than the majority come from disfunctional homes! It seems it is worse when the two parents live together unhappily and the kid realize he can play the two against one another! So Sad!!

By Karen55 on Thursday, January 9, 2003 - 12:55 pm:

This is going to be long, so bear with me. Trish, I have BTDT in more ways than one. My parents *finally* divorced when I was 12 after years of *trying to keep the family together for the sake of the children*. As young as I was, I have memories of the constant tension in our house, the anger, loud fights, drinking, manipulations, deceptions, the confusion - wondering who this woman was who was always around my dad, of feeling like I was in the middle of it all. When my parents split, my mom left and took us from N. Georgia to New Orleans where her own family was. It was hard at first, and very emotionally upsetting and confusing.

My X and I split up after many years of *trying to work out our problems*. He was seeing other women, 2 of whom were supposed to be *friends* of mine. He pretty much dumped his 2 kids from his 1st marriage (who lived with us) on me to raise plus the 2 we had together. He didn't want me to have my 2nd child because, as he put it *how would you feel if you found out you were going to be a parent for the 4th time at age 36?* Well, DUH! I didn't get pregnant all by myself! I felt like I owed it to all 4 of these kids to try and make this marriage work. Everytime we would talk about *the problems in our marriage*, the end result was that he *was too old to change his ways*, which basically meant that I was expected to be the one to compromise, to change, to figure out ways to make HIM happy and make our marriage work. His attitude was *it's my way or the highway*. Marriage is a commitment and is a lot of constant work, and if both people are not committed to the relationship and the family, there's no way it will work. What finally brought our breakup to a head was that he took a better paying job an hour away from where we lived. The plan was for us to move there, where I would have been totally isolated from any family and the few friends I had left, since he was so rude to my friends, most of them slowly drifted away. The decision to break up was made in a 5 minute conversation which was more like a business arrangement. Sad, but true.

Once he moved out it felt like a blanket of tension was lifted from our house. Kids feel the tension in a bad marriage, and it puts a lot of pressure on them, and they don't understand it at all. Sure, it was very upsetting and painful and confusing for my kids (the older 2 were out of the house by then), but we settled into our own routine. We laughed together, we cried together, we discovered that staying up too late on a school night when we were spending quality time together as a family was not the end of the world. We also found out that eating a meal that wasn't necessarily the healthiest once in a while wouldn't kill us. The kids could have their friends over on the spur of the moment, and have sleepovers, and make noise and keep me up till all hours, and we lived through it. I stopped worrying about having dinner on the table at precisely the same time every night, and having the house in order ALL of the time, and spent more time doing things with my kids.

I also started something that I think helped all of us; we had a weekly *family meeting*, where each of us had a turn to talk and no one was allowed to interrupt. We could talk about what made us happy that week, what are worries were, what made us sad or angry, what we wanted to do, and after we all had our say we worked on solutions for the things we needed to improve.

It wasn't easy, financially and emotionally, but we did it. Now that I am happily remarried, I feel that my kids have had an opportunity to see what a *normal* family life is like. They have seen mutual respect between me and my DH, they have seen affection, they have learned that you can disagree and even fight over things, but make up and move forward, they have seen communication, and they have seen commitment.

I think kids pretty much always would rather see both their parents together; Jules and Jason felt that way when their dad and I were married, even though I was close to them. I understood that. Jeff and Jen went through those feelings too. Kids just want love, and a secure home with a mommy and a daddy. It's normal for them to feel that way. I also went through the guilt thing, that's normal too. But you can't let it consume you.

I still feel that when you are in a marriage with kids, you should make every effort to work things out, BUT clearly there are some marriages that cannot be saved. I think it's emotionally healthier for kids to be raised in a home with honesty and trust and happiness and acceptance, by a single parent, than it is to be raised in a home with 2 parents that's a constant battleground. To continue in a bad marriage *for the sake of the children*, IMO does more emotional harm than good to the kids.

You are so right when you say your feelings and dreams for your children do not change just because you are divorced. Be the best parent you can be, and teach your kids about honesty, trust, fidelity, respect, acceptance. They will be much better people for it.

From what I know, you did everything you could do. IMO, you did the right thing, for yourself and your kids, as a family.

By Ginnyk on Thursday, January 9, 2003 - 07:21 pm:

My daughter-in-laws parents divorced shortly after she married my son - which had been their intention for years. They stayed together "for the sake of the kids".
My family is very verbal, and we love to discuss and debate, especially the son married to this wonderful dil (he's a lawyer, and my child - need I say more). We have to be very careful when we get into discussions or debates around my dil, because she gets very upset, almost to the point of tears. She remembers her parents fighting frequently, and how it frightened her, and she cannot deal even with friendly, loving, intellectual debate. So though my son and I truly love to debate, and there is not a bit of animosity or unfriendliness in it, we don't - out of respect for her feelings.

I think the most important thing you can do for your children is to provide as many opportunities as possible for them to be with their father (within reason), and to never, never, never, never say anything negative about their father to them, at least until they are adults. And if dad lets them down, doesn't show, etc., and they ask you to intervene, you'll have to tell them that it's between them and their father (assuming they are old enough - mine were 7, 8 and 13 when we split, so that's what I did). And that includes not telling them why you decided to get divorced - all they need to know is that it was a grownup decision and does not mean that you and their father will stop loving them.

The feedback I get from my sons is that they really appreciate that neither their father nor I ever put them in the middle, tried to get them to take sides, or badmouthed each other to them. So I get all kinds of brownie points. They were puzzled when we split because they had never heard us argue or fight, which was very different from the experiences they heard from friends whose parents had split up, but they also appreciate that.

The one fear your children may not voice to you is that if you could stop loving daddy, would you stop loving them. That, from what I have read, is the greatest fear children of divorced parents have - the second greatest fear being the feeling that it was their fault. And you will have to work on that. One thing you can say is that the love adults feel for each other is very different from the love parents feel for their children, and while the one can sometimes stop, the other does not.

By Mechelle on Thursday, January 9, 2003 - 10:22 pm:

IMO, Parents should NEVER NEVER try to make the marriage work for *The kids sake* when there is no trust, no nothing.
I remember my Mom and Dad, it tears me up to this day, the fist fights, my Dad beating my Mothers's head on the counter, (trying to kill her), My Mom slinging a pot of hot coffee at my Dad. My Dad throwing glass things through the house. It was all over ( I don't trust you) YOu are sleeping around on me. My Mother was a very faithful woman, until she took 14 years of being accused of cheating, so she did it.
My Dad worked on the RR, and every chance he got, he was sleeping with some other woman.
My Father walked out on me and my Sister.
He lured his way back into the house, and him and Mom tried to work things out *For the kids sake.* They got divorced. 3 months after the divorce, they remarried again. This time, it was only worse I'll put it this way, I got *beatings* I wrote a poem about him, it's in the poem, and short story link on the board.
It was brutal. I am very similarto Ginny's DIL, if people begin to fight, just hollerin at each other, or stand up, (like the are going to fight) I make a run for it!! Wherever I can find *safety*,,my heart gets to racing, I get shaky, and start to cry. My Father has been such a bad influence on me over seeing this for years, it has mentally (in that way) got to me.
Me and Dh were having some pretty severe marriage problems about 2 years ago.
It reflected on my kids really bad.
We didn't realize it until it was almost too late.
My son came up to me and said "Mom, why do you and Dad always fight? And dad says he's gonna leave us?"
Right at that very second. I told Dh to straighten up his act, and move on. This is really coming down on the kids, and we didn't realize it.
I told Dh I went through 3 years of consuling over my Dad, and then my Step dad, and I'll be darned if my kids go through it.
I noticed it in thier behavior, thier sleeping habits, whinney, all the time, grades at school ( for Ds) started to drop. And Ds thought our problems, were his fault, he thought he caused them.
Dh came out of it, and I did too. We went through pure HELL for 3 months, 24-7, not letting up.

The kids seen the change in us both.
We are now a very happy, and loving family. We conqured all that came before us, and our kids have changed too. It took the kids not long at all to come back around.
It's mentally tough on kids to have to go through a rocky marriage with Parents.
I will not ever again, put my kids through something as this.
And I tell everyone that I know, how much that reflects on kids, going through something as that.
Kids are always the ones to get caught in the middle of it no matter what it seems.
I sure and Dh did too, let the kids know, that what ever is going on between Mom and Dad, is not thier fault. We love them jsut as much as we did yesterday, if not more.
Just because we can't get along, dosen't mean that we don't love them. Our love for them 2 can not ever be broken.

By Tunnia on Friday, January 10, 2003 - 03:31 pm:

I do not think that it is in the best interest a child to be exposed to a loveless and/or anger filled marriage so I would say that I do not think that parents should stay together for the sake of their children. IMO a happy single parent is much more healthy for a child to live with than an intact, but unhappy family.

By Alanal on Sunday, January 12, 2003 - 10:10 pm:

Thanks for the input ladies!