When do you decide whether to stay together for the kids? Is this a conscious decision or do you simply let time drift and let the decision be made for you?

I would do hours of research online about the pros and cons of staying together for the kids. Which would cause the kids more or less damage. 

Despite nearly everything I read telling me the opposite of what I wanted to hear, that you should always try and make it work if you can. That marriages are hard work at the best of times and throwing kids into the mix exacerbates that by thousands, I knew that wasn’t the life I wanted. It had got to the point for me where I knew there was no fixing the decayed threads of our marriage. No amount of counselling or trying again or fear of the unknown could make it work. I just couldn’t turn the tap off. The hurt and pain and damage had gone way too deep. It was a part of me and I simply wasn’t able to reverse the impact of all those years. Like a recurring injury which eventually stops healing because the scar tissue is too extensive. That scar tissue becomes something you have to live with for the rest of your life. You can let it define you or you can grow around it until eventually the scars begin to fade, though they will never fully heal.

When your 3 year old is standing in the middle of you with her hands outstretched yelling “stop arguing” or when your children are curled up on your lap while you cry and your husband stands over you, or when your husband is screaming and breaking things and you’re praying your children don’t wake up, when you’re screaming at your husband at the top of your lungs “GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT” and you collapse in hysterics and your 3 year old comes up to you, puts her arms round you and says “it’s ok mummy”.  Or when you no longer have the words to communicate with your husband but just scream at him at the top of your lungs.  No words, just an animal howl, emotions too fraught to even conjure sentences, all witnessed by your children who cover their ears to block the sound. These are all to me, far more damaging than two parents living alone who are much calmer when the other one isn’t around, whose energies are devoted to the children. No more tears and pain and hurt. No more screaming and shouting and smashing. Just calm and peace.

I used to read the insipid and repetitive platitudes about the importance of making a marriage work and staying together for the kids and I would feel so let down. Whilst I agree with that to a degree, people should also be credited with the intelligence to know what their breaking point is. Marriages should never have to stay complete at any cost because x, y or z reason, religion, person or belief system says so. Life is too short to be unhappy and to raise children surrounded by such unhappiness. 

My children were young

My children were young when we separated.  The youngest was 18 months and the oldest 3 years 9 months.  The 18 month old won’t know any different but I believe the 3 year old will struggle more. She was close to her dad when she was young because I worked so he became her primary carer. I can’t quite figure out her level of understanding. She has frequently drawn pictures of the four of us together at nursery. She shows them to me and says “this is when we were a family”. This breaks my heart and I have to explain to her that families come in all different shapes and sizes. That just because mummy and daddy don’t live together any more, does this make me and them or him and them any less of a family. A family can be anything you make it and anything you want it to be. 

Human Behaviour

Humans are designed to be affectionate.  We crave love, affection, security and kindness.  Both adults and children.  The only role models children have for those behaviours and actions are adults and at a very young age before they start school, it is their parents who mostly provide this.  Children absorb and copy the behaviours they see.  And if they are surrounded by two people who at worst are screaming and shouting at one another and at best are unaffectionate, moody, mean and disrespectful this does not bode well for what children understand to be a normal relationship.

My husband and I had a volatile relationship.  He was a volatile person and our behaviour adapted over time to respond to each other in a negative way.  I am a naturally less affectionate person (something my mum said was also true of me as a child).  My children would witness him shouting and swearing but they would also witness me being moody, irritable, withdrawn and utterly disengaged from the relationship.   As someone who struggled to show affection anyway, the manner of our interactions made it an impossibility in the end.  We became incapable of normal human interaction.  I lost the ability to even understand what that was.  

I would watch other couples when we were out to see what their secret was.  I would watch them to see if they argued or snapped at one another and if they did, I would feel vindicated and justified into thinking all couples argue and that our relationship was “normal”.  What I now know is that arguing/disagreeing is perfectly normal and healthy in a relationship.  But it’s the manner of the disagreement, the scale and quantity of the disagreements and most importantly it’s the ability to listen to the other person’s point of view and the ability to practice successful conflict resolution.

I don’t want my daughters growing up thinking ours was a normal relationship. Setting the bar so low for their own future happiness and expectations from a relationship. Should my daughters wish to marry/be in a long term relationship, I want that person to love them unconditionally, to treat them with nothing but respect, love and kindness.

The Effects of Divorce

But on the flip side of this, what are the effects of divorce on children? What coping skills are there for kids? Witnessing an explosive, aggressive insult ridden relationship is without a doubt harmful for children but equally divorce does its damage. 

I have read the statistics and researched the old and now obsolete term “Broken Home”.  It states a myriad of effects such as anger, regression, separation anxiety, promiscuity. difficulty forming healthy relationships, sleep anxiety.  

There are caveats to this such as how old the children are, what kind of relationship their parents go on to have with one another (one of mutual understanding which puts the welfare of the children front and centre or one which is full of hatred and destruction with the children used as pawns).  And also the new relationships the parents go on to have with their children as single parents.  If one parent has been more involved in their childrens’ lives up to the point of breakup, this can make it harder for the other parent to form a relationship. And also whether the parents go on to marry again and form new healthy, loving relationships or move through a series of unhealthy relationships.  

I found this a good article.  Obviously there isn’t a one size fits all and it depends, based on my own experience which I will go into in later blogs, on some of the factors I have listed above.  

But for now all that matters to me is that my children know they are loved unconditionally, more than anything else in this world. They are safe and secure and loved by both of their parents, their aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins. All that matters to me is that I show them this love every minute of every day so whilst the ground may be shifting under their feet, they know that my unconditional love is there to rely on as long as I live. 

A family can be anything you make it and anything you want it to be.