After years of bitching and arguing, my parents are finally separating. My dad apparently broke the news to my mom that he was moving out last night when I was out with some friends. My sister just moved into college so it’s going to be just me and my mom for now.
I’m still in high school, and after seeing my parents’ (excuse my french) fucked up relationship steadily decline for years, I already have doubts about marriage and relationships in general. I mean, I know there are happy marriages out there, but I haven’t seen very many in my short lifetime. I was just hoping I could get input from some Dopers who have had happy, lasting relationships and some advice from those who have gone through similar experiences as I am right now on keeping your parents’ messed up relationship from making you have doubts about your own.
I’m not a marriage expert or anything, but I have just passed my eighth anniversary with my wife. I have also had experience counseling people who are having maritial difficulties. One of the things that I have seen is that some couples will have a perfect relationship from the beginning until death do they part. Some couples will have a f****d up relationship from the start, and some will start out good and get messed up. Mostly it is about understanding that people change. If you can adapt to the changes in your SO, your relationship may last. If your SO can adapt to the changes in you, then your relationship will probibly last.
Sometimes adults look at their relationship and realize that the best way to fix it is to end it. I know that it may seem as though all marraiges are doomed to you right now, but being in high school, you may want to explore how to have a relationship with someone now. I’m not going to tell you you do not have the maturity to have an adult relationship right now, because I do not know you well enough to say that, but you haven’t had enough life experiences to be able to judge what type of person you would want to spend the rest of your life with.
I’m really sorry to hear that your parents are breaking up. I would reccommend that you talk to a professional, a teacher, or a close friend that you trust to help you work through some of the feelings you are having.
As a teacher, I can tell you that unfortunately some marriages do fail and that it’s always hard on the kids.
As Sgt Schwartz said, do talk to someone. You are not alone and others do understand what you’re going through.
My parents have been happily married for 60 years. Good luck to you!
Deb and I just celebrated our 23d anniversary. Her parents were married for 52 years, until my FIL died and my parents were married 32 years until my dad died. None of my sibs are divorced or separated and, among my 15 cousins and 10 cousins-once-removed on my Dad’s side of the family, there have only been four divorces, three of which involved people who, it turned out, suffered mental or emotional illness. (My Mom’s side of the family has not been as fortunate, but the numbers are still far fewer than a 50% divorce rate.)
Of course, this rules me out as someone with any real experience watching people close to me divorce, but I can talk about how to survive marriage, pretty well.
Being married is not always easy, but it is not a death sentence for love, or even for romance. (Why, I bought Deb flowers not more than five years ago.)
In my experience, the people who have been most successful in marriage are those who talked out the whole range of issues (money, kids, jobs, sex, chores, vacations, living conditions, etc.) before they married. Communication is essential all the time, but nothing breaks communication like an erroneous assumption that is broken with a surprise. People who simply “fall in love” then rush out to marry without talking it through are the ones most likely to suffer a divorce. (And we will hear now from several posters who married after a whilrwind weekend courtship and have steadfastly stayed together for thirty or forty years. I am not going to say that such things never happen, but if one wants to consider the odds, the odds are heavily stacked against the folks who only started talking after the exchange of rings.)
I see marriage positively as a huge leap forward in one’s maturation, because it teaches you - in a way that nothing else can - that life requires communication and compromise. And this helps you grow in all other areas of life.
I expect a lot of unhappy marriages involve people who are control freaks and/or poor communicators. But ending the marriage doesn’t solve those problems; they go on to play out their same personal issues with other people (not to mention in the workplace, etc.). Unless there is counseling or therapy.
Date a lot of people…don’t settle in relationships until you are 25 or so. You should be meeting lots of people so you can see what you like in a person.
Choose a career goal…and achieve it BEFORE you get married.
Or don’t get married at all. You can do whatever you want. Don’t let anyone pressure you one way or the other. That includes society, family, and the person you are dating.
Eleven years of marriage to a guy I think is my best friend. Its great. Someone who scratches my back, takes care of me when I’m sick, travels with me, listens to me bitch…and in return he gets someone who scratches his back, takes care of him when he’s sick, travels with him and listens to him bitch.
But, I think that even in a great marriage its important to have other sources of contentment and company - hobbies, friends, work – whatever. Although I’m pretty sure Braianiac4 isn’t about to run off with a hot blonde (redhead maybe…), I’m not putting all my eggs into one basket and I think that is a recipe for not being content.
I, personally, would never get married despite the fact that the Tashaboy and I have been together nearly two years, live together, get along together, rarely fight, are happy, and totally in love. I, personally (for me) do not believe in marriage, partially because it’s such a pain in the ass if you wind up having to get a divorce (which I also do not believe in) and secondly because I think that the concept has become cheapened nowadays, when young couples seem to think of it not as a lifetime committment, but the next step in the relationship (holding hands to hugging to kissing to making out to sex to marriage…doesn’t really follow, does it?).
However.
My parents have been married 22 years and still act like a bunch of giggling teenagers sometimes. It’s cute.
But the really awe-inspiring kind of thing I like about the concept of marriage comes out of a story my paper did recently. This is said story. It’s a prime example of how beautiful some marriages can be.
Stick with it, would be my advice - live never comes out like you planned. Don’t give up on the idea of being with someone or marrying them, just because your parents weren’t suited for each other, but don’t expect it, either.
I hope everything goes well for you and your parents.
You didn’t ask for pity, but will you accept empathy? My parents divorced after 27 years; even though I was 25 and had moved out & married, it was very difficult for me. I’m so sorry for what you’re going through.
I don’t blame you for being cautious about marriage, that’s a good idea at your age anyway. Actually, it’s probably good at any age.
It might be helpful for you to know that a whole lotta people (most?) marry someone who’s a lot like their opposite-sex parent, because (a) they’re familiar, and (b) this gives them a chance to work through their problems with that parent (or just repeat them indefinitely). It’s not that they set out to be miserable; they just don’t know any better.
My husband and I have been married for 18 years, and yes, we started out together for all the “wrong” reasons, but have kept working through our problems and are still together.
I hope that you have some opportunities to heal - not all families are like yours.
Well, my parents’ marriage isn’t half as good as mine.
Frankly, NOT doing all the things they do is one of the ways we have a great marriage. I mean, you can let it get you down, or you can use it as an example of things not to do.
I think most failed marriages fail at least in part because people married for the sake of getting married; it was The Right Thing To Do, or they set off In Search Of a Wife/Husband and thus arranged a wedding the moment they got into a steady relationship with someone who met their mental checklist of marriagability.
Marriages that work tend to be the ones where you meet someone, date them because you want to date them, and then later come to the realization that you want to spend you life with them.
My parents’ marriage was a battleground, and they finally divorced. I was quite cynical about marriage for a long time. Didn’t find someone I really wanted to marry until I was over thirty. I’ve been married to him for 26 years, and I can honestly say that I don’t think I’d have had the courage to endure some of the hardships that life has dealt me if I didn’t have this man by my side. I believe he feels the same way about me. As a team, we are immensely stronger and more resilient (and happier) than we could ever have been alone.
Some folks think that living together without being married is essentially the same thing, but in my experience it isn’t. I had several serious live-in relationships before I met my husband, and the depth of commitment just wasn’t there. I don’t know why, but (in my case, at least) that little piece of paper with the County Clerk’s signature on it has proven to be one of the essential ingredients that hold my life together.
For the good examples, my parents were married for 47 years (until my Mom died) my in-laws were married for 65 years, and we’ve been married for 28 and counting. So it can work.
Marriage takes work, continuing work, and change is hard. Having kids move out can be hard also. Marriage can be wonderful, but it is never wonderful all the time. The main thing is to go into it carefully, not in a rush, but optimistically. Nothing you do is guaranteed - picking a college, getting a job, asking someone for a date, or getting married. But if you don’t take the risk your life will be boring, and you’ll have lots of regrets.
My grandparents have been married more than 70 years now. They won’t make it to 75…Grandpa is just too fragile now…but I wish he were stronger so they could just go on and on.
My other grandparents were married at least 45 years, until grandpa died.
I only have to look at them, to know that marriages can be good…for a long, long time.
Of the 4 kids in my family, 3 have marriages lasting longer than 12 years. One got divorced, but his second marriage seems strong.
I think…people who treat each other with courtesy and consideration, even when they get angry, are likely to be able to keep a marriage together. When they start allowing themselves to lash out and hurt, it only gets worse from there. I’m sorry you’ve had to see that, to endure it. But you can learn from it and say “I will not do THIS when I get into a relationship, marriage or otherwise. I will treat my partner with courtesy.” It goes a long way.
I did not read it that way. I saw it only as an observation that marriage (with the usual unspoken caveats about being ready for it and investing oneself in it) was both a recognition of and a step into maturation. I did not see any claims that only people who married had reached some magic point of maturity.
I remember being in college, and meeting a young married couple at my church. They had 3 little boys, ages 1, 3, and 5 (now all grown up and the eldest is himself a married man!). I told the wife once that the young men I knew didn’t have the…something…that her husband had, which was my way of saying “Gee, what a nice man you’re married to, why can’t I meet somebody like that?”
She said, the reason he seemed so nice, is all his rough edges had been rubbed off by the process of staying in a relationship. And that it worked both ways; that he had rubbed off her rough edges too. (They have been married I think 30 years now. I’m still in touch with them from time to time).
I think the process of consciously staying in a committed relationship over time, and working on it mindfully when it struggles, does push people into new levels of maturity. But it is hard work, and requires the cooperation of both partners.
Somebody called marriage the school of love. That is, it’s one of the places where you really have to get down and love someone; that’s as in a verb, not as in a fluttery romantic feeling. It’s work. It’s also a lot of fun, and brings joy and huge rewards, but it’s still work.
Anyway. Been happily married for 10 years now, since age 22. Yeah, talking about issues is important, mutual respect and courtesy. Respect is very important; if, on some level, one of you does not respect the other (opinions, religion, inherent worth, whatever), then that’s a huge problem. It’s not always conscious, people don’t always realize when they’re treating a person they are attracted to with contempt, but it’s something to watch for.
I sympathize with your unhappy situation. It’s very hard to trust someone enough to marry them, and when you haven’t had a good example to learn from, it makes it much harder. Luckily you have lots of time, and with thought and introspection and all that good stuff, you can learn to change your mental template of ‘what marriage should look like.’ Good luck and all.
I didn’t mean to seem condescending. I tried to generalize (instead of writing in the first person) because I’ve seen this dramatic maturation in a lot of other people in addition to myself.
But, I’m sure there are other ways of getting there, and I’m sure some people are born with that wisdom.
Now that all the touchy-feely crap and platitudes about communication and hard work are out of the way, I’d like to say that statistically, at least 50% of all marriages in this country are total crap, resulting in divorce or worse (two of my kids are part of the statistics). I would suggest that far more than that should never have taken place and that there are many who suffer in silence. I was one of the latter. Longevity does not always mean happiness; it’s quite possible that it’s merely a sign of resignation on the part of one or both parties.
But there are those gems that are worthwhile. My present spouse and I connect on nearly every level. Miscommunications are rare and we respect each other too much to expect the other to change to conform to some sort of marital ideal.
Marriage is just the legal form of living together. If you’re having problems with the person you’re living with, things aren’t going to change after some clown in a collar performs incantations over you and your best friend barfs all over his rented tux. Reality checks are critical before making a legally binding commitment to another person to whom you will be financially beholden should things not work out. Is this really someone you can stand to be around 24/7 for the forseeable future?
In conclusion, marriage isn’t necessarily a total crock. That’s too broad a brush to paint with. But venture there cautiously, my friend. Blindly entering into any arrangement without regard for your well-being is foolish.
Depends a lot on whether they’re in any way like their same-sex parent, too. My aunt is a female version of her Dad in many ways, whereas the main thing she’s got in common with her mother is between her legs; neither of her two husbands is like Gramps at all. She and the first one divorced when I was 11: the only two good things to come out of that marriage are my cousins, but then, she’d married that particular guy in order to get out of the house - he just happened to be available at the time and acceptable to her parents. The second one is a quiet guy who’s been supportive through her medical problems and who is a good match to her mercurial personality. He calms her down and supports her; she pulls him out of his shell.
My SiL is a lot like Mom in that they’re both very controlling; both make plans that they expect to see fulfilled even when they don’t deign share them with the principals. But she also happens to be very down-to-earth; this makes her a good counterweight to my brother, he of the enormous imagination and terrible mood swings. He would ignore the Law of Gravity if he could; she finds it too lax. Being in contact with him has awakened parts of her brain that had never been watered by her parents; she’s his anchor.
Another thing: sometimes, a relationship that’s perceived as “bad” by those not directly in it is seen as “good” by those inside. My grandparents are one of those couples who have a fight in order to make up This wouldn’t have hurt their daughters half as much as it did if they’d known the whole story when they were young - but all they got to see was the very-public quarrels, never the in-private steaming sex. Those two were still “partaking marital duties” in their eighties. A relationship is not about what works for other people… it’s about what works for you.
This wouldn’t have hurt their daughters half as much as it did if they’d known the whole story when they were young - but all they got to see was the very-public quarrels, never the in-private steaming sex. Those two were still “partaking marital duties” in their eighties. A relationship is not about what works for other people… it’s about what works for you.