You need to evaluate the alternatives prior to making a decision.
As the oldest child of eight children who had the bitchiest stepmother after my mother died at my age of 14 and who witnessed on many occassions my stepmother physically attacking my father and siblings, never mind all the dysfunctional bullshit that we all grew up with, and brother you don’t know the half of it, I can safely say that we all came out of that experience positively. After the children grew up, my father and mother grew very close and our (the children’s) relationship with our stepmom improved tremendously after the kids left home. My father died last year, and it clearly devastated my stepmom. I say stepmom to be clear here but I use the term mom in real life. Every situation is different of course, but as a former child, worried about his younger siblings, I can tell you that an intact family, as dysfunctional as we were, beats the disintigration of a family.
I"m solidly with Sunrazor on this one. After you’ve gone through 6-12 months of intense marriage therapy and a trial separation - THEN, and only then, should one consider divorce.
Stating that your wife looked at you with “hate in her eyes” is, frankly, pretty nuts on your part. You saw a scowl, the interpretation is all yours. You appear to be assigning emotions (negative) to your wife and then reacting to them. No wonder you’re both unhappy.
Just remember that if you do divorce and have anything less than 100% custody - there will be long stretches of time that your son will be subject to all your ex-wive’s decisions about - how much time he spends with a babysitter, how well he gets to know the “uncles” that come through the house, if he moves cross country to get a better job…You get the picture. That’s a pretty strong incentive to try to make it work, IMHO.
Paul–Have you asked your wife about going to counselling? If not, why not? If so, what was her response?
Even if she refuses to go to counselling, it might make sense for you to go on your own. Individual counselling might help you identify patterns in your own thinking and behavior that help fuel the disintegration of your marriage. You might also learn some new ways to talk to your wife, or to deal with it when/if she says things that make you really angry and hurt.
If you feel that you can’t ask your wife face-to-face about going to a counsellor, it might make sense to write her a letter about it. Writing a letter would let you express yourself without having her interrupt and without you second-guessing yourself or saying anything in the heat of immediate anger. (You can make sure that the letter says exactly what you want before you give it to her.) Writing things out, and then re-reading what you’ve written, may also help give you a sense of distance from the nasty situation you’re in, which might help you see your own emotions, motivations, and options more clearly.
Divorce should be the very last step after serious counseling and other efforts to make your marriage work. Even more than when you maried, when you and your wife had a child together, you committed to being involved in each other’s lives for the long haul, at the very least as co-parents if not spouses.
The kids of divorced parents that I grew up with did best when both parents 1)remained respectful and friendly towards one another and 2) stayed in the same town. Kids need their dads every day, not just for two weeks in the summer. If you do divorce, I’d encourage you to commit to both staying in the same town until your child turns 18.
So alot has happened since I last posted here. In the summer of 2007 my then wife (**spoiler alert: the divorce was just finalized in three months ago) informed me that she was pregnant and that the child was mine. In January our daughter was born. I continued to try to keep the marriage together but she was hell bent on going through with the divorce–largely because her father was footing the bill. After 3 grueling years of litigation, my worse fears have been realized. The ex was awarded sole custody of both kids and I am essentially a weekend father.
Almost every kid I know with divorced parents have a much better relationship with them both because the time they spend with them is one-on-one quality time with no bitter fighting marring the time they spend together. You get the camping trips, the sleeping in and lazy breakfasts on weekends, and the chance to find a happy relationship with another partner. Good luck.
I am not a parent, and my parents are still married, but from knowing other people who have divorced parents I’d like to say that you can still be a really good father as a “weekend father.” I know plenty of people who lived with both parents but never really interacted with them. Plenty of full-time, live-in parents barely talk with their kids during the week. Even as a weekend father, if you talk with them on the phone during the week and make your face time together really count, then you can still come out ahead and have a great relationship with your kids.
Our parents stayed together “for the sake of the kids”. It was no favour they did for us.
She moved to a bedroom community half an hour out of town and worked there; he kept his job and regularly drank himself comatose, to cope.
We kids had strange ideas from our experiences - both daughters slipped into co-dependent marriages, for example. (I’ll save him from himself!). Listen to people like Eve and at the very least, get yourselves into counselling.
Children aren’t fooled. I was pretty young when I realized my parents were housemates
rather than partners. Mom’s harangues about men in general reflected her own experiences but how were we to know?
Staying together for the kids: I would have learned how to be co-dependent doormat as my father continued his alcoholic, wife-beating downward spiral.
Divorce: I still learned how to be a co-dependent doormat as my mother continued modeling her same unhealthy dysfunctional relationship patterns, just with other men who were not my dad.
My point is, my mother had no business having kids. But she did and both of us are really screwed up when it comes to relationship skills. Staying together for the kids, IME, usually just teaches kids unhealthy relationship skills.
Yup. My parents SHOULD have been divorced – hell, never should have gotten married in the first place – and I grew up with some pretty weird (and sad) ideas about how marriage is supposed to work. It also wasn’t much fun living in a house full of tension and bickering and lacking in parental affection.