I’ve been following this post, and a discussion arose there about whether or not a couple should stay together for the kids. Well, I’ve been asking myself this for a while now, since I think that’s pretty much the only reason left that my husband and I are together. It seems to me that in the case that’s discussed in the other thread that staying together for the sake of the child is outweighed by a lot of other issues. If it came down to where the other issues aren’t there, what do you think should happen? I’m putting my own relationship forward for discussion on this point.
Here is the situation:
[ul]
[li]Married for 22 years, two kids, age 15 and 16 (boy and girl).[/li][li]I haven’t been happy for 10 or 15 years. [/li][li]I didn’t have the finances or stability to leave before, but now that’s not as much of an issue now.[/li][li]I’m the primary caregiver in the relationship, but my husband is involved with the kids, especially when it comes to school.[/li][li]My husband is the disciplinarian, although I think I would be a lot tougher if I was the only parent available. He tends to talk tough, while I’m much better at following through with discipline.[/li][li]My husband says he still loves me, but I don’t think we have any basis for a marriage - with have no interests in common other than the kids and the house, we completely disagree on a lot of issues, especially politically and spiritually.[/li][li]There’s no sex going on anywhere. I can’t remember the last time he and I were together (my preference) and neither one of us have anyone on the side (to my knowledge, anyway).[/li][li]I’ve talked to my husband about this, and he’s said that if he has to, he’ll move out and leave the kids with me, but he would make a divorce very ugly (how’s that for love?).[/li][/ul]
I would love it if my husband would just leave, but he doesn’t want to, and wants to keep working on a marriage that I think has been dead for years. We have gone to counseling, but it didn’t really bring anything new to the table. I want out, but so far I’m hanging around to keep the kids (and everyone else) from being hurt. As it is, we are pretty much living separately now, we just happen to live in the same house and have the same kids. The kids seem to be oblivious to the problems, although I’m not sure how they can miss the fact that he sleeps on the couch almost every night.
So what’s your opinion on this? I’m very undecided about what I should do and I’ll be paying close attention to the arguments here, but I won’t be making any life decisions based solely on your opinions.
I’m sorry to hear you aren’t happy. Oftentimes the children know what is going on and wonder to themselves why you stay where you are miserable. I would say (from my experience) that you are doing the kids no favors by staying there. I left my first husband when my child was young because I was miserable. Sure I missed out on a lot of his life but it was for the best. You really need to think long and hard about the situation hun. Good luck.
IANA Shrink, so I can only tell you my personal experience. My parents’ marriage was not ugly or abusive. It wasn’t happy either. The best thing they ever did was get a divorce & find people that they could really be happy with. I know from discussions with my siblings that they feel the same way. Now when we are in relationships, we tend to compare them to our parents second marriages. I can’t imagine what I would think was a successful relationship if the one I based it on was the one my parents had with each other.
When they were married did you realize they weren’t happy? Was it a topic of discussion, or was it something that everyone knew but just didn’t talk about?
Ditto here – except that mine are still together, God knows why. From their marriage I learned that I would probably not enjoy being married. I learned that men never do anything right and it’s the woman’s job to nag them all the time. I learned that the major part of communication in a relationship is passive-aggressive sniping. I remember being creeped out the two or three times I saw my parents sitting next to each other on the couch – not in the normal “Ewww, who wants to think about their parents doing it” way, but because it was so far outside the norm for them to act friendly toward each other.
When I was a teenager, a particularly raucous fight resulted in my mom kicking my dad out. He lived in the family RV out behind his workplace for about six months. It was the most peaceful and pleasant time of my childhood, completely tension-free. Too bad she let him back. She still bitches about things he’s been doing for forty years, and he still tunes her out and continues to do what he knows bugs her.
You may think your kids are not aware of what’s going on, but I’m quite certain that they are. Please think about what you are teaching them about how a relationship should work.
I should add that I’m quite happily married to a man whose parents’ marriage was no picnic either. We are both amazed that we managed to avoid all of their mistakes.
Since your kids are older, maybe you should have a family talk and see what their input is. It’ll be extremely hard, and it’s probably something you should discuss with your husband first, but then you’d know how they feel. And depending on their opinions, perhaps hubby would be more amenable to a more amicable divorce.
I’d see how they feel about things - you might be surprised.
Is the situation between yourself and your husband negative or just non-positive—i.e. is there fighting, dissension, making things unpleasant for each other, or do you basically get along in a cool, loveless way?
It sounds like your husband wants to stay together, but you don’t. Why, specifically? What would you gain by being on your own?
Do you and your husband both have good relationships with the kids and take an active part in their lives? If you and he split up, the kids would no longer get to live with both their parents, nor have the daily interaction that comes with living with them. It might also affect their standard of living, if you and your husband are no longer combining resources to support a single household. If this is a major issue, it might be worth waiting a couple of years until the kids are grown up and can move out on their own.
I was only 6 when they got divorced. I only knew that they didn’t spend much time together & my father was rarely home. It was like they didn’t have anything in common but the kids. I don’t have one memory of them smiling or laughing with each other. It’s like they were had more fun when they were apart. That’s what I remember of my parents marriage.
Coming from a divorced family, I have to say that one of my best memories of my mother was when she was happy - once she met her current husband (my step-father). Children gain nothing by having two miserable parents under the same roof versus having two less-miserable parents (who have a chance to begin their lives anew) under two roofs.
Your husband’s misdirected sense of obligation is preventing both of you from achieving a good deal of happiness.
I’ve stayed in an unhappy, lonely marriage for a lot of years, too many to count. My husband travelled 3/4 of the time for about twelve years, then it didn’t matter, we couldn’t be a real family anyway. Now that he’s gone a lot less I avoid planning any kind of family outings because it makes me too sad to be with him. We never talk or laugh or have fun all together, it’s always me and the kids or him and the kids.
So, no, I don’t think you’re doing the kids a favor by staying together if you’re truly miserable. Children shouldn’t see that marriage is sad and lonely.
Judging soley from the marriages I know that stayed together for the kids:
The kids are nothing but an excuse to not have to deal with change.
So many of my friend’s parents (and my parents, too) were in unhappy relationships while we were growing up. Now we’re all grown up with families of our own and they are still together, still unhappy.
As I have said before, if you stay for the sake of the children, set a fund aside for therapy bills that they will probably incur later on.
I can’t agree more with the posters that say a child will benefit from one happy parent vs two unhappy ones.
What does her husband gain by blackmailing her into staying? That’s what he’s doing, you know, with his threats to make things ugly if she files for divorce.
I’m gonna buck the “Don’t stay together for the kids” conensus and say “Staying together for the kids may not be a bad idea.” Forget message boards, find a counselor of some sort and deal with it there. For what it’s worth, my parents divorce (when I was in 7th grade) caught me completely off guard, and my parents were both far more fucked up alone then they were together–at least in how they acted around me.
I’m sorry you find yourself in an unhappy situation, WVmom. I would agree with the chorus that you shouldn’t stay together just for the sake of the kids at this stage. However, you should not divorce or separate immediately after your kids leave the nest. I know a few people whose parents broke up while they were freshmen in college, and it really messed them up, because it was obvious that the parents only stayed together for their sake, and it erased any sense of stability that undergirded the new experiences of life on their own, something important to young adults starting off without their support network nearby like it always had been in the past. If you want to break up, you need to do it before your kids move out, or you need to wait until at least a couple years later.
I hate to sound like Ann Landers, but have you tried counseling?
Your kids are old enough to be involved also. I get that you are unhappy (and it sounds like you got unhappy right after your kids were born) but I don’t quite get why. Plenty of people disagree politically and spiritually with their spouses. Could one of you be depressed? There are plenty of reasons not to stay together, but you haven’t mentioned anything the two of you have done to try to improve things.
You brought up some of the main points that have concerned me.
Our relationship is not entirely negative, we just don’t do anything together. It’s kind of a non-marriage. He would like to have a more loving relationship, but I don’t. I’m the bad guy here, I just don’t have any feelings for him and I’d like to be free. What would I gain? Not a lot, really. Freedom - freedom from obligation, freedom from guilt, freedom from the tension. I would lose the support system of having another adult in the house to back me up (this is something that scares me - I’ve never lived alone before). Certainly splitting up our income would have an impact on our standard of living, too, but nothing insurmountable.
The kids have a pretty good relationship with their father, but he is not as involved as I am. He works 6 days a week, has a lot of meetings and plays golf, all things that take him away for long periods of time. I think that that is what eroded our relationship, too. He just wasn’t around and I devoted myself to the kids. I would hate to see the kids lose what little time they have with their dad, especially my son. I think he needs a father right now.
So, it comes down to whether the freedom from a non-marriage would outweight the negative impact of a home without a father.
To give you some perspective on what your kids may be feeling:
I have a friend whose parents’ marriage, while not generally ugly and no longer abusive, is badbadbad. He has spent his life since middle school knowing that his parents are unhappy and waiting for them to divorce. He expects them to do so after he’s finished college. He wishes it would happen sooner, for his sake and theirs.
I’m not saying that divorce is definitely what your children would choose were they given the reins, but they’re definitely old enough to have picked up on the cracks in your marriage, and I don’t believe anybody can be happy in that kind of family environment.