So, living in a townhouse with only one parent and no opportunity to choose between going here with Dad, or going here with Mum is better? Now we can’t afford the dance lessons. Now we can’t afford the movie and pizza night. Now we can’t afford the ski trip, or soccer, or your birthday party.
That’s better, is it?
I came so close to making the mistake of staying in a bad relationship for the wrong reason. Our daughter. Things were going badly when I got pregnant but I toughed it out because I thought it was the ‘right’ thing to do. We made plans to get married and the entire time I was sick to my stomach with dread. We fought all the time, I hated being around him and I was going into depression thinking about what my future held. I had my doubts that raising a child in a ‘married but fighting’ household was better than “single and happy” one. But he was convinced married was better and constantly berated me about doubting what was ‘best’ for our baby. Everyone in my family seemed so happy that we were getting married that I just finally shut up about it. I think a big part of it too was that I was scared of raising a child alone since he had made it clear he’d be out of the picture completely if we didn’t get married.
But about four months before the wedding, I just completely broke down in front of my mom. Telling her about how much I didn’t love him and how I was dreading the future but that this was what I had to do because of the baby. Thank god my mom actually listened and gave me some sound advice. My main concern was to be happy in my life. If I was miserable, not only was it bad for me, but children pick up on that and it would affect them in the long run. So I finally got myself together and broke it off with him completely. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But now I’m so much happier. I can’t believe I ever thought that a shitty, unhappy marriage would be the ‘best’ for my daughter. And I can only imagine how trapped I’d feel if I DID marry him.
It sounds as though your eventual breakup will be amicable, but I’ve worked with a number of college students whose grades took a hit because their parents were getting divorced. I’ve wondered if some of them had parents that were just waiting until they were out of the house to do what they would have done years ago.
It’s interesting that you believe the children will be better off in a financially and logistically stable household where a bad, dead-end relationship is modeled day-in and day-out. Hey, you know your kids and I don’t. I’m just saying, there are two sides to every coin.
Presumably, because it models a relationship without warmth or love.
But i want to make it clear that I’m not on one “side” or the other here. How Leaffan lives his life is none of my business. I’m just presenting an alternative interpretation for his (and your, I suppose) consideration.
On the other hand, I feel I have to reveal my bias. My parents should have divorced by the time I was 13, but they never did, and it caused me a lot of serious, serious emotional problems. Leaffan, it sounds like you care a lot about your kids, so I think you owe it to them to consider this from more than just a fiscal perspective.
I’ve said my piece and I don’t think I can emotionally handle the line of questioning you’ve started with nikonikosoru and co., for a number of reasons, so please don’t direct that at me. Just do yourself a favor and take these thoughts into consideration.
Pst, Hazle, some of us are single.
And some people are married to a spouse who can’t. Does that mean they should divorce to get a new model whose batteries still work, with no broken parts? (The non-working model can be of either gender)
Instead of having the kids bounce back and forth between the parents’ residences, some folks have the kids stay full time in the matrimonial home, with the parents taking turns being there. That way there is more stability for the kids, and the costs are kept down, for it is a lot less expensive to carry a house and one or two bachelor flats than it is to carry two houses.
Please note that I am not recommending this to you. I simply put it out for discussion by people who would like to separate, but financially can not afford it.
My ex-wife was/is(?) a drama queen; her entire life seemed to be a soap opera to her. She was constantly involved in gossip sessions with her girlfriends and most of those sessions revolved around putting down somebody; it didn’t seem to matter who. She passed on gossip as if it were the honest truth; she told me things about some people I knew that would be considered libel if she had published them. All those things turned out to be outright, malicious lies. If our situation at home should be quiet and peaceful for any reason, she would stand it for an hour at the most and then pick a fight with me over whatever occurred to her. Some of those fights were vicious; more than once when I turned to walk away from fighting, she hit me in the back of my head with whatever came to hand. In fact, she once knocked me down a flight of stairs by hitting me in the back of my head with a thermos jug. I suppose I should have retaliated in kind but I was raised with the idea that a man should never hit a woman, so I never did and never have—besides which, I sometimes think that was exactly what she wanted me to do.
As to why I stayed with her as long as I did, which was nineteen years, I did commit to her and intended to keep my commitment. And, when you find yourself caught up in a really bad storm, you tend to hang on so as not to be blown completely away. I could go on for hours about the problems in that marriage but the basic truth is that we shouldn’t have married in the first place. I wish we had realized that before we married, but we didn’t.
This thread reminds me why I’m opposed to marriage in general. It’s a sham. They get you when you’re all chrged up on hormones and optimism and get to make impossible promises–til death do you part, forever, forsaking all others, no matter what, in sickness and in health, eternally, that some people are able to rationalize immediately as so much meaningless chin-music and that others, who may be married to the first type, take as seriously as death–all the while, the society makes divorce widely available. These mixed signals, which we’re free to interpret individually, send a message that marriage is both a lifelong legal committment and also no big deal to break your way out of whenever you choose.
We’re all mixed up.
My SIL and BIL fight like rabid cats – everywhere and all the time. The first few times I met them I was thoroughly shocked by their absolute shamelessness in conducting really, really nasty fights in front of other people. They never, ever stop. Never. Ever. The obligatory X-mas dinner with family and b-day stuff were events I dreaded for weeks, knowing I’d end up sitting there with a fixed-smile on my face while they tore into one another for hours.
Yet, when my SO* remarked to her Sis one day that it was too bad she hates her spouse so much, the Sis flew into a rage and insisted that they love one another deeply and “how could you even say that to me?!!!” Caused a huge family rift.
*Ex-SO now (moving out this week). Further to the topic of this thread, I finally got sick of the rages and financial infidelities.
My partner and I don’t want to get married for a variety of reasons and although I don’t agree that marriages are a sham in general or that people get hoodwinked into them while horny, this comment has always stuck out to me also. I don’t understand how someone can say ‘until death do us part’ with a straight face for the third or 4th time if they bailed out of their first 2 marriages.
I was one of these college students about 5 years ago. My father was also just waiting until my siblings and I were old enough to get out. I think the problem with this approach to dealing with a bad marriage is that it shocks the (adult) kids. As far as I knew, my parents relationship was fine, normal, happy, etc. Had I, and everyone else actually known what was going on in my father’s mind for the years leading up to his eventually leaving I think we would have been much better off.
Five years later, my father has relationships with his children that range from bad to non-existent. I really believe if he had been honest earlier on with everyone else in the family there would not be so much resentment towards him now. I could never trust him with anything serious at this point in my life.
I’m in a horrible marriage but I don’t whinge about it here or in my other life. Only one of my friends knows anything about how horrible it is and only she knows because she’s divorced and understands a bit about horrible marriages. If my other, happily married friends have noticed that I no longer wear my wedding ring, they haven’t commented.
My husband is the one who wanted to end the marriage and talked for two years or more about leaving. He changed his mind and decided to stay. Unfortunately for him (and me), he’s disabled and I have no alternative but to fall into line with his plans. I can’t leave because he has no one else to attend to his care. I’m not happy about it but I’m stuck with it.
This is one of the most depressing threads I’ve read.
Honest - they’re not all bad. As pointed out elsewhere, the horror stories are more interesting than the ones about the couple that was married for 64 years and still loved each other to their very last day (husband’s grandparents) or the couple whose family said it won’t last five years and refused to attend the wedding that celebrated their 32nd anniversary this year (my parents) or the ones that are going strong and solid at 9.5 years of marriage (that would be mine).
Nobody gets married thinking they’re going to be in one of the horrible relationships. Maybe that’s why they’re so loath to admit it when they are.
This might be a good book for some people to read.
It seems to me worse than abusive relationships are ones that turn ambivalent. You don’t dislike the other person. You just are bored or tired of them except you’ve been together so long the relationship has a sort of comfortiable inertia.
I unfortunately echo this sentiment. I’m not knocking Leaffan’s choices but I know for a fact that my parents’ loveless and unhappy marriage coloured the way my five siblings and I looked at relationships. We now all in our 30s-50s with not one marriage, and I’m one of two who’s had long term relationships. (Hold your applause; those relationships were with emotionally abusive, unrepentant jag-offs that I endured by retreating into myself and mentally checking out. I’m thankful that, after years of therapy, I am no longer my mother’s daughter.) I’d rather have lived off second-hand clothes and PB&J sandwiches with a happy single Mom than come home from dance lessons to two miserable parents.
Don’t get me started on how guilty and angry I feel at the thought that my Mom chose to stay with a man who treated her like shit for me and my siblings. That’s not a choice I made, yet I feel like I robbed my mother of a chance to be happier alone or to find love with someone else, just by existing. It sucks.
There’s nothing in Leaffan’s posts to indicate that either he or his wife is abusive or treating the other one like crap. They just don’t really love each other all that much anymore. If they treat each other like civilized people and refrain from meanness or too much anger in front of the kids, why would it be that awful to live with? I’d guess that many sets of parents don’t exactly model “we’re so in love” behavior for the children, but everybody gets along and goes along and it works.
You’re absolutely right, thirdwarning, and harmonious parents who just don’t really love each other all that much anymore can’t be compared to parents who made each other and their children miserable. The point I failed to make (because I made my post more about me than the thread – sorry) is that, like Hostile Dialect, I can say from experience that knowing that your parents just don’t love each other (and in our cases, should have separated when we were in our early teens) can have a negative affect on a child.
Let me make it clear that I applaud Leaffan for trying to do the best for his children; I’m not judging or criticizing. I can’t imagine how hard it is to keep up the charade, day after day. Hard choices like these are part of the reason why I’m posting on a message board between video games instead of raising children.
Ha! That’s the book that the marriage counselor gave me and the ex to read. It was pretty good and broken up into independent sections so that you cans skip the ones that don’t apply to you. For example we didn’t bother with the infidelity or drug abuse sections among others. It’s worth checking out.
First relationship was horrible + stayed in it for 3.5 years.
Short answer: there are 2 reasons.
I came from a fundie, literalist upbringing where sex was considered the consummation of a marriage (deriving from the fact that men are ordered to marry those that they rape in the Old Testament). and where becoming aroused consisted of intent for sex and where intent for sex meant the same thing as sex (derived from the whole “commit adultery in your heart…” thing). follow the logic, and I truly believed I had no choice except to stay with him, despite that we didn’t do anything but kiss…
you really do believe everything bad in the relationship and all the ensuing unhappiness your fault. My parents felt that personal responsibility was a lacking thing in society, and, well, they carried that pendulum to an extreme in their upbringing.
and, yes, I was very, very warped.