Why is it that divorce books, movies, etc. imply that most divorces are mutual decisions, occurring after years of conflict/marriage counseling etc.? Why don't they deal with the fact that most divorces are unilateral and involve infidelity? Why do they act as if spouses leaving their families for an OP is an uncommon occurrence? Why did the parenting course I was forced to take NEVER mention infidelity, even though the instructors recommended not getting involved in a new relationship too soon after divorce?

<BR>sounds like they except divorce as a natural end of marriage. <P>The instructors, directors, authors, etc. must be SICK IN THE HEAD They should come to this site and find out what is really going on in the real world.<P>Keo<P><p>[This message has been edited by Keosha (edited February 26, 2000).]

The reason they probably advise not getting involved too soon after divorce is so that you don't get hurt again; try to step back and acknowledge to yourself that there are certain things that attract you, maybe not always the right things. <P>But, I'm in the rebound mode tonight myself.<BR>Hey, anybody interested in a 5'9", statuesque, redhead? Just kidding, I think

Nellie,<BR>I agree. It seems everything you see and read nowadays about divorce.....make it sound so natural.....so unpainful. Even the stuff I hear about the effects that it has on children (from court to evaluators) make it sound like the children don't feel a thing, that they simply don't have eyes....ears....or any feelings. Yet when I read some books, like Fatherless America, it can just break your heart at what the children go through.<P>It seems that it is so acceptable for people to have affairs.....get divorced.....and go on. YUK I have found very few...if any, that think that affairs....divorce.....seperations are just a natural part of life. <P>Since all of this has happened to me I have done so much reading and searching for answers for my pain....the pain of the children.....the pain of families. <P>Why don't the judges....courts.....custody evaluators.....counselors etc. know this stuff. Do they read? Do they realize that their liberal attitudes on all of this have made this society one hell of a place to live in.<P>Where have morals and values gone? Where has commitment gone? But most of all....where has their faith in God gone?<P>Nancy

I hate to say it, but we are the minority in this issue. The bottom line is <B>it's a sorry world.</B> The good people here a amoung the few that hold honor to the value of the family.<P>The lefties that write all these physcobable books don't get it. I think the Harley's have it right, by treating infidelity as an addiction. Most of the books I read don't acknowlege that. <P>Hollywood doesn't help one bit either. How often do you see movies or TV programs that show commitment, sacrifice and family as how it should be.<P>As you can tell this is a very sore topic for me so I'll get down off my box now.<P>Bill<P>"Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed." Proverbs 16:3<P><P>------------------<BR>BB<BR>

Keosha, RCoaster, Mental, and WilliamJ,<P>In addition to the fact that books and movies downplay the impact of divorce, one thing that really bothers me is that most of them largely ignore the role of infidelity. In the books on helping children cope, why are there no chapters on talking with your six year old about infidelity? Or on what to say to your teenagers when they say, "Once a cheater, always a cheater?" Why in the required divorce course do they discuss making sure your childern feel like both homes are theirs, but how to handle the situation where one parent is living with an OP in his or her home? Not only do they completely ignore infidelity and its impact on children, but they pretend that parents do not leave one household and immediately move in with an OP.

I hear you Nellie, and you're right. <BR>I haven't seen any books dealing with those problems, when they are so important.<BR>ANd I also feel that divorce, infidelity and things like that seem to be downplayed, and discussed as natural. <BR>How natural is that? When we see our children going trough pain, while you're fighting our own pain, when we have to let them go for the weekend knowing they will be spending it with the person that helped destroy our marriage?<BR>A lot of people nowadays talk about affairs as if they're just a normal thing happening to all marriages. <BR>WHy getting married in the first place if it is so?<BR>Monogamy seems to be for the narrow minded - in their opinion, not mine! and some sort of "old fashioned" thing.<BR>It just makes me sad.<BR>My H never really left,although he packed his suitcase and told me he was leaving, and divorce was discussed only briefly.<BR>Still my 5 yr old son, learned that whenever I did something he didn't like, he could just throw a few clothes on his school bag and tell me he was living. My daugher refuse to go to school as part of another broken family.Both of them started having problems at school, that aren't completely solved yet, although almost 2 years have passed.<BR>Where is the book that can help us with that ?<BR>Have a good weekend, my friend. <BR>Kat<P>------------------<BR>Each and everyone of us is deserving of a kind word, a gentle thought, and the gift of understanding.

Nellie1-<P>The fact is that it all seems to be a part of what we all learn and choose to live by in our lives as it relates to being open and honest.<P>Peggy Vaughan dearpeggy.com believes that it goes back to how we treat our children and how a family handles talking about the "Difficult" subjects. Her argument is that many topics, Including sex are not only hard to talk about in the family/religious setting, but it is also surrounded with a secret veil that can make it be ignored very easily. She believes adults need to start to address honesty and being upfront in a loving and caring way to help take the secrecy part of sex out of the pattern of how she believes most adults raise their children and can lead to feeling secrecy is ok in affairs.<P>Give her site a visit for more from her and her perspective.<P>mrrlk

There is going to be a movie on lifetime this month in March, called The other woman's husband, or something like that. It has Lisa Rena in it. I am going to torture myself to watch it to see if it portrays divorce, or affairs properly. I know I will be in for a long night and a box of tissue ahead!

Kat,<P>I don't think our therapist believed me when I told her that yes, there was an atmosphere of love and affection between us before the affair. <P>I wonder that myself - why get married? <P>mrrlk,<P>My H grew up in a household where apparently little was discussed. My kids feel free to talk to me about almost anything - sometimes I am amazed at what they will talk to me about. <P>A few months before he left, I asked my H to talk to our 12 year old son about sex. My H replied that he was welcome to ask him questions if he wanted to - he seemed to have no clue why he should initiate the discussion. After he left, I discovered that our son knew less than I thought about sex, and told my H that. He bought him a book. Guess who was left to explain things to him - and there is so much that I can't really identify with or explain, since I'm not male.<P>lonelymom,<P>I had a hard enough time watching The Story of Us. I kept thinking that our relationship was so much better than theirs. At least they could identify their problems rather than just speaking in vauge generalities. <P>

Why? because it's not politically correct to talk about RIGHT and WRONG anymore. It makes me want to puke! It's all this I'm ok, you're ok bull$hit that has perpetuated itself for way to long in my opinion.This world is going to hell in a handbasket. All you hear anymore is ME ME ME ME! So sad.

I hate how society has become full of "recyclable" marriages. It's all about ME ME ME without any regard of who gets affected. Well..at least, that's how it seems to me.<P>For instance, do you ever notice that when you confide in a friend or relative that your spouse has had an affair? Most people will respond with, "Divorce him/her!"<P>It's always DIVORCE is the answer. What ever happenned to focusing on working on the marriage to pull it back together??

NO trust, it's the concept of the easy way out. Making an effort is just too much.<BR>Currently it seems that the idea is starting back from scratch will avoid having to work hard to rebuild.<BR>I know that way back - and maybe still today - people will stay in marriages that were abusive and damaging just because they worried what the other people would think, or because they thought that was the way it should be. Nowadays... Well I call tyhis the 8 or 88 sindrome, and it's happening everywhere and with everything. It goes like this: something is happenig that is wrong here's the 8. In order make it better, things are changed. HOwever, instead of subtle changes that will lead to a balanced outcome, there's a sudden and complete shift to the opposite side.Making it as unbalanced as it was before, only in the opposite direction, there's the 88. A safe and fair "in between" is never achieved.<BR>Added to that, due to a lot of factors that I'm not even going to discuss, people are more and more feeling that the world owes them, and things should be easy and come exactly the way they want. This is happening in every area of our lives, and everything seems to be telling us that we should be first , and to disregard the rest if needed.<BR>I am all for new ideas and quite unconventional myself, but I can see that there is a need for balance out there, and it's not happening.<BR>Codes of moral, respect for others, and other things like that are being dismissed under the new philosofies of life, just because to follow them people can't think about themselves first and foremost, which doesn't fit in the way things are going.<BR>What's important is to get ahead, conquer, be agressive to get what you want.<BR>In this scheme of things, old fashioned thoughts as commitment, loyalty, morals don't fit, of course.<BR>Kat<P>------------------<BR>Each and everyone of us is deserving of a kind word, a gentle thought, and the gift of understanding.

Two good books on the subject are "The Divorce Culture" by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, and "The Case Against Divorce" <BR>by Diane Medved. <P>The first book explores the history of divorce in America and how it came to be so prevalent. Interestingly, although some commentators on the right blame the left for the rise of divorce, historically it has been shown that both sides of the political spectrum pushed for easier divorce, if for different reasons.<P>In writing her book, Dr. Medved actually set out to right a book about the positve aspects of divorce. To her surprise, and credit, her view was completely turned around by her research. She now states emphaticaly that most divorces are avoidable, that children suffer terribly and never get over it, that people often divorce for the wrong reasons, and that almost all divorces are extremely painful and destructive. She destroys all of the myths about divorce, including the "it's a mutual decision for the best" myth.<P>Fortunately, more and more people are beginning to see divorce for what it is: a destructive short-sighted act, a crime against our children, and the most common social problem today.<P>Think about it: when asked about social problems today many people site alcoholism, drug abuse, sexism, racism, gambling addictions, AIDS, crime, etc. Serious as these problems are, they are no where near as wide spread as divorce. Divorce strikes 50% of all marriages, a much higher statistic than any of these other problems.<P>It's high time for a reality check on this plague of divorce.

mthrrhbard,<P>I also think that children are not valued anymore, and that pop psychologists have convinced parents that families don't have much influence on how the kids turn out - so why bother worrying about them.<P>No Trust,<P>Few people do care who gets affected - by divorce, by layoffs, by the fact that society is becoming more and more polarized economically. <P>Kat,<P>I agree that there is rarely a happy medium. <P>The Amish blame some of society's problems on the fact that fathers are not at home with the children very much, as fewer and fewer people, even Amish, farm, and the vast majority of men, and more recently both parents, are gone from their children most of the time. I think they have a point. There is no sense of family anymore for many people - a family is just a group of roommates living parallel lives, with little or no dependence on each other. I was reading a story to my daughter the other day about an Amish family where three children came down sick simultaneously, and how they told their seven year old when he got sick that they would have to find someone to come in to help with the chores. Now that child would grow up knowing that he was a valued, crucial, contributing member of the family. I don't think people believe anymore that each and every member of the family is critically important, that everyone is dependent on everyone else in the family, that family is more important than anything, including peers, that a family is far more than just the sum of its parts.<P>Kenneth,<P>There are some people out there who realize how devastating divorce is, and how it rarely is a mutual decision, but I have never seen anything written for parents concerning dealing with the effects of one parent's infidelity on children. The books, the mandatory course - all of them are full of "don't worry, they'll get over it" cr**, and most of them completely ignore the infidelity issue all together. <P>I found it almost impossible to find a pro-marriage therapist - and then it turned out that he and his wife of thirty years had divorced because he couldn't meet her need for organization - somehow I doubt that that was the real reason.

edited by claudia103<p>[This message has been edited by Claudia103 (edited March 12, 2000).]

Hi Claudia..<P>I'm glad to hear that you live in a supportive environment. That really helps. Where I live, if people were to have the knowledge that my H had an affair, the first thing they would say is "divorce him!" If my parents even knew, they would be pissed off that I stayed and worked on my marriage. What the heck happenned to most of society?? It is so sad.