i, too , was relieved when my parents divorced.
i remember saying to my mom "don't you think we would be happier if dad did not live here?" i had lived with YEARS of unhappiness. an alcoholic father and parents who did not spend time together. we did nothing as a family and they slept in separate rooms but stayed together for "me".. well, basically, when i was a young teenager i told my mom "you are NOT doing me any favors by staying married"

it is pretty bad when the KIDS tell you to divorce.
i did NOT want my children coming to me in their teenage years and saying that.

and the VERY sad thing is, since THAT is what i grew up with, i thought independent behaviors were ok in a marriage because that is all my parents did was live independently of each other. consult with your husband before spending money? why should i? POJA? what was that? and when things got bad in my own marriage and he started sleeping on the couch (for 2 years) well, i didn't think much of it at first because that is what my parents did. then it hit me "omg, this is what my parents did!" when he made it quite clear he had NO desire to work on the marriage out i tossed him. my kids have since told me that they thought it was normal for daddy's to sleep on the couch and for families to NOT do things together. THANK GOD I ENDED THAT MARRIAGE WHEN I DID lest my kids repeat his patterns.

divorce is hard on kids for sure, but so is a bad marriage where they have to walk on eggshells and are learning it is ok for daddy's to have "female friends" that mommy doesn't know about and it is ok for parents to live separate lives and not sleep in the same room, and it is ok for families not to do things together. THAT would have been far more damaging to them in the long run than getting over a divorce is going to be. it is bad enough that they have to figure out in their heads why their father is such a narcissistic sociopathic F*cked up *sshole. THAT is what my SON has for an example of a man. i am so glad we are moving closer to my parents at the end of June so he can spend more time with my family and have better role models in his life.

ok, vent over.

mlhb

i think the jist of this post was for waywards who think the kids will be ok if they chase after their love of other person and divorce so they can be happy with other person.

my ex wasn't going anywhere. he lived in our home, had me still taking care of him and the kids, and could go and do whatever and whoever he wanted whenever he wanted. it was all i could do to get him to leave! i had to literally force him to. he wasn't going to leave for one of his other women but he wasn't going to stop screwing them either. everything that went on in our house was a bad example for our kids.

and now he lives with one of his other women and my kids know exactly that she is an other woman. how confusing is that for them? not only is he teaching them that it is ok to "shack up" but it is ok to do so with someone else's wife.

errrr....

i don't wish bad things on people but i'd have no issue with a VERY BIG bus running him over accidently.

mlhb

MEDC, i can't wait for the day my kids look their father in the eye and tell him what they think of what he has done!

they have cornered ow however and asked her why she was "dating" their father while still married to her husband and while their father was still with me... (love the honesty of kids) so she told them that she did NOT start dating their father until he and i were separated. when my kids told me this i reminded them of all of the times that their father had spent time with ow with them present. i told them if she could lie to her own husband she would have no problem lying to them. and further more, that it was because of her relationship with their father that her 4 month marriage ended.

they quickly saw through her lies.

my kids are pretty blunt so i just can't wait for the day....

mlhb

Note that every wayward that plans to divorce always has a "good reason" and has rationalized the divorce. We all know it is REALLY so she/he can pursue an adulterous affair, but they always have a whole laundry list of "grievances" going back to the dawn of time to "justify" abandoning their children. Waywards manufacture and exaggerate grievances to justify ANYTHING. Oh, I forgot! Its not abandonment! They will be seeing the children every other weekend and on Wednesdays!!

The point of this thread was not to dispute the occasional necessity of divorce, which is justified sometimes, but to show foggy waywards that the children WILL NOT BE OK! They should not feel GOOD about running off to chase cheap sleazy sex! Sure, children are better off with a single parent, than a married couple where there is ABUSE. That is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether the children "WILL BE OK" when the wayward abandons them for her adultery partner. NO, THEY WON'T BE "OK!"

THEY WILL NEVER BE THE SAME!

I changed the topic to better reflect my point. Here is my starting post:

Adulterers seeking divorce often tell others that the "children will be just fine" to assuage their guilt. The statistics don't quite bear that out. Chasing one's personal "happiness" comes at a high price to children.

i completely agree with that melody.

my ex actually said to me "isn't it better if we stay together but just live separate lives so the kids have both of us here?"

i was like "um... HELL NO! that is NOT ok"

waywards... what pieces of work they are.

if you were to ask my ex he would tell you he is a great dad.
he will also say the reason we are not together is because i threw him out. if not for that, he would still be here...

he asked me about some of his paperwork the other day of which, after 3 years, is not here anymore trust me. so he says to me "well, when you threw me out i didn't take all of my stuff with me" and i was like "um, i threw you out because you couldn't seem to keep your penis from screwing any woman in town who would open her legs for you. THAT is why you don't live here anymore"

that shut him up.

mlhb

Mel. . .

Leave us add a bit to:


Sins of the fathers (and mothers) visit those same children as they move through life and become adults. Childhood is where all of us learn and mold. Adultery marks each and every person associated with it, be that person a child or adult, in unpredictable ways that are not often of positive note. The profound hurts of childhood have long lasting and most often, very negative molding of how the child becomes the adult.

The kid grows up to think adultery is the norm.

The kid grows up to hate adultery and the wayward parent with a passion.

The kid grows up to hate adultery, causing a future relationship to be unrecoverable because the parents didn't.

The kid grows up to think that personal happiness as defined by the wayward is more important than how a failure to honor their vows affects a family.

I guess there are dozens of negative and ongoing character issues where children are screwed, blued and tattood as they move forward to becoming of age, if not necessarily grownups.

Larry

and i am sure the children are one of the biggest reasons that God never intended for divorce. in a perfect world, spouses would not cheat on each other or cause each other harm and their marriages would last.

i am teaching my children that marriage is a very serious deal and to really know someone before you marry, etc. i am teaching everything about what marriage is supposed to be and what is and is not ok to happen in a marriage. this is guidance i did not have and it caused me catastrophic results.

God meant marriage to be forever and He obviously had very good reasons for that. the children being one of those good reasons.

mlhb

That is exactly why I am leaving mine. Selfishness, denial and perfectly bad example. Should have realized that its true sins of the father are visited upon the kids. His father was totally a messed up man. Left their mother for a 30 year old age difference. She had him around for a few years then dumped him at an old age. So he was left with nothing. When he died his boys didn't come to see him and were not at the funeral. Only my family went.

This thread is punching all my buttons tonight.

I stayed with a formerly-wonderful-man-turned-alien, after 4 D-days, because I (and he) could not see any happy scenario for our 14 year old (going on 10) , developmentally-delayed, autistic, bipolar son-- without two present, invested parents.

I had no illusions that he stayed for me.

I could not pull the plug on my son's best hope for a better life.

I can tell you that it is all getting better. My son, my marriage, me, my formerly-alien, beginning to turn wonderful H.

I don't believe it's ever healthy to stay in a marriage with an adulterer just for the sake of the kids. My father did that for years. My mother had the habit to "wander". She got pregnant with another man's child when my father was stationed in Miss. and my mother and I were living with my grandparents. I was about one. Dad took her back, forgave her, and raised the child as his own. That is until the baby was about one and my mother disappeared again. My dad was still in the service and couldn't care for 2 small children so he brought us to my grandmother and she raised us until Mom came back again. This pattern continued for 15 years and 2 more children and Dad always took her back "for the sake of the children". I have had to live thru my life with whispers of family and rumors of my mother's habits. I have 2 sisters who have followed the same path with men because they saw this growing up so why should they think it was wrong? Being as I was the oldest, I have always been responsible to care for my siblings so I saw how desertion was wrong and hurtful. I think my father should be on a pedestal for the crap he put up with and the forgiveness he gave Mom when she rubbed his face in every A, but I wish to h&ll he had booted her out in the beginning and never took her back because a lot of pain would've been avoided for us children!

Just a quick story.

In another life, I had next door neighbor(s). My neighbors consisted of a Mom, a Dad and two kids, boy and girl. We were never social with them but simply waved as good neighbors will as we saw each other mowing the yard and coming and going through life.

Then one day, the police came. This was a week after Mom left to be with her lesbian lover. Dad came home to an empty house from his (rare) three day out of town trip. It seems that Mom had waited until the kids were through college (or almost) along with the oldest, a girl, married off.

Dad mowed the yard, clipped the hedges, swept the driveway and walks, then cleaned the house. This was a week after Mom left. He then hung sheets inside the garage door, turned on the engine and listened to his favorite radio station until he passed on from carbon monoxide poisoning.

At the funeral, Mom didn't seem to happy, but she wasn't exactly morning. The kids were clearly devastated. I have often wondered how those kids turned out; how their lives were changed by their Dad's suicide.

I don't care how Mom made out.

Larry

I'm with you Believer and Mel.

So many times during the adultry, I heard it from fwh and ow.

So much so, that if I ever hear anyone spouting it IRL, I might have to sit on my hands so I don't slap some sense into them.

My dearest 8 year old STILL has behavior issues from all this mess...and my darling oldest OC thinks that anytime anyone disagrees that someone will leave. I remember fussing at the Wookie one night and she runs over to me, throws her arms around me and cried, "Don't leave mommy."

It'll break a mommy's heart to hear that, let me tell you!

When my dad left when I was 12, the first thing he did was get a vasectomy. And told us about it! Like, 'you know, if I had had my way, there wouldn't have been any kids to muck things up.' It still makes my stomach hurt just to think about it 40 years later.

Of course, he didn't want me in the first place anyway, cos I wasn't a boy, though I tried my darndest to become one for him. Especially after he left, since I was sure he left because of me and had to become...better...to get him to keep coming to visit.

It's amazing what parental activities do to kids. For the rest of their lives.