I just watched a show on TV that dealt with adult children of divorce, and I have to say that I got a little impatient with all the whining they did.
Let me first say that divorce absolutely sucks. No two ways...it sucks for everyone concerned. I mean, who gets married and says to themselves, "I only expect this to last for a little while, but we'll have kids anyway and torture them with our problems and breakup."? Divorce hurts everyone; especially the children....any fool knows that.
BUT...
These adult children were on this show expressing their continuing "anger" and "hurt" and resentment with their parents for having "broken up the home."
I say: You are adults....get over it. One woman was giving her mother a hard time for "not being there" after the divorce....the mother, by the way, was horribly hurt by the divorce and did not want it. She had to give away her dog, move out of the family home, go back to school, and get a full-time job; she had to support three kids..(because God knows it's the woman's financial circumstances which change when there's a divorce and it's rarely for the better.
Put that on top of the fact that women get paid less than men for doing the exact same job and you have a woman who has to work more than one job just to survive.....yeah, she's "not going to be there" as much. This mother had a lot of anger herself....her husband was the only man she ever had been with; married at 16, and had thought it was going to be for life. Suddenly she finds her whole world turned upside down....who can blame her for being angry?
Her daughter, this "adult" child was also whining because she said her mother didn't give her enough praise and depended on her too much to help out at home while the mom was working. Gee.......TOUGH! The person this girl should be mad at is the father who skipped out on his family to follow his own selfish desires. (He is, of course, remarried to a much younger woman.)
Sometimes, a person has no choice but to get out of a terrible marriage for reasons of physical or emotional abuse. What would the children in this type of situation have their mother do? Would it be better to stay in such a ridiculous and dangerous marriage "just for the kids' sake"? Does any kid in their right mind want to be in that kind of home?
The mistake I think that too many divorced women make is in turning their kids into a sounding board, trying to make "friends" out of them and trying to get them on your side by badmouthing the other parent. Big, big mistakes!! All those will come back to bite you...hard! Talk to your friends....not your kids....and discuss your frustrations with your friends out of your kids' hearing. As a parent, you need to be a rock, not a marshmallow. You cannot fall apart; you don't have that luxury.
Kids always need you to be a parent, not a friend...but, most especially when there's been a divorce. And please, don't burden them with what went wrong with the marriage. First of all, they don't want to hear that. Secondly, they won't understand it anyway; not having the life experience to relate to any of it. And, third, if you badmouth the other parent, the kid will automatically think: "Well, if he/she is so bad, and I'm one-half of them, then I must be bad, too."
Believe me, I know from experience how hard it is to keep your mouth shut when you hear your kids cry for their father, and blame you for "taking him away from us" and act like he was Mr. Wonderful even though he was not a good father at all because of his addictions and selfishness. Many, many times I wanted to scream with frustration...and, at night I did...into my pillow!
My children, when I left their father, were a boy, age 14, a girl, age 8 and a girl, age 4. My son was old enough to understand. My 4 year old was really too young to know much of what was going on, although she did ask for her daddy quite often. It was my 8 year old daughter who was most devastated by the divorce, and who was most angry with me for years. She was "Daddy's Girl." Because I did not talk against her father, she didn't understand why we left him. It was so very tempting to let it all out just so I wouldn't have to feel her anger and hurt directed at me....but I knew that wasn't the right thing to do.
Eventually, when she and her younger sister grew up, they saw for themselves why I left and took them away, not only from their father, but to another state where I knew they'd have a more stable environment and a better life. He showed his true colors, as I knew he would, and I didn't have to say a word.
I know the divorce affected my children; how could it not? I know they resented having to help so much around the house and I know it was hard because I had to be both mother and father and I had to be tough on them...(read my other posts and you will see what I mean.) but, too bad. We were a family and I expected things from them. Now that they're all grown, we've talked more about the whys and the wherefores of the past and the reasons for everything, because now they can understand more. Their father died two years ago and all of us, including me, were at his bedside and we all made our peace with him and forgave him...because that's what you do when you want to move on.
As adults, I do not believe that my children are hanging on to the past and still mad about the divorce....one of the reasons why is because they have lives of their own and realize that whatever happened in childhood is the past and you cannot live in the past or you lose the present, and won't have much of a future.
Everyone has things in the past that they wish didn't happen, whether it's childhood or later on...but, here's the thing: You are an adult now. Only you have the ability to make your present and future what you want it to be. You have the choice to either continue to whine about your childhood and whatever you perceive to be injustices done to you by your parents or whomever else, or, you can learn from past experiences and go on to make your own life what you want it to be. It's just that simple. Quit making it hard.
Like I have said many times: "If you don't like the way your bed is made, get out of it and re-make it!"
Sunday, January 27, 2008
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I hate the adult whiners of a divorced family. None of us got married and thought it would not be "happy ever after". If that were the case, why would we have gotten married in the first place?
I know that I was young, just 18 years old and married my childhood sweetheart and he was just 19 years old. We had no idea how we were going to have to struggle to make it. But, we did. We succeeded, kept moving up the ladder in the job world and making a better life for ourselves. We had decided not to have children. I was from a divorced family and was raised only by my Mother. In fact, I didn't even meet my Father until I was 18 years old. A little too late to be a Father then. He had a guilt trip going on because he was slowly dying of cancer. I looked into his face and it was like looking into my own face. His eyes were my eyes, his lips were my lips, everything about his face was my face. I told him that as far as I was concerned, he had been dead for years. This might sound cruel to some of you out there, but my Mother struggled, worked her butt off and thank God, had the support of her family to help raise me. I was raised well and never ever regretted the struggle we had to make it through life.
After my husband and I were married for 7 years, we tried to have a baby. I had many miscarriages and it was not a pretty situation. When I finally did get pregnant and was able to make it through the first three months, I was restricted to bed rest for weeks at a time. I had a really tough pregnancy. I delivered two months early. Not something we had expected. But, we made it through it together.
When our child was four years old, we split up. She was Daddy's little girl and was torn apart. For the first two weeks of our separation, I literally laid on the couch with this little child in my arms and just held her and talked to her. I was so very, very lucky to have such a wonderful support group of friends. People who would come over all the time, ask us to their house, take us to dinner, just anything to ease the pain that they knew I was going through in my marriage falling apart and the hurt this little girl was going through.
I never ever trashed her Dad or bad mouthed him in or to our child. What good what it do? Just tear the child apart a little more? My anger was always taken out in the shower. I would cry, yell and complain to myself what went wrong? He continued to be a good Dad for a very long time. Then one day, he took the wrong route - by then, we both lived in different states - and he bad mouthed me to our child. That was it, the door was open. I called and talked to him about it. We made an agreement, no more bashing. Things were good between us for years and then we both moved to our original home state. At first, we managed to have a good relationship for the sake of our child. But then, it got ugly. I knew I had to put a stop to it immediately. One day, he was at our house and he said something really awful to me in front of our child. His comment was "Your Mom was a bit**, you are a bit**, and now you are making our daughter into a bit** too". Our daughter was 14 years old then. She was sitting at the kitchen table listening to all of this going on. She stood up and SCREAMED "STOP IT". She turned and looked at her Father and said to him "you know Dad, sometimes being a bit** is something all a woman has to hang onto". She very calmly sat down at the table and didn't say another word. I called him outside and we talked. No more of this crap in front of our child. Enough is enough. If you want to continue to see her and be involved in her life, then let's just keep this from happening again. It worked for awhile and then started again. That is when my daugher told me that she had enough. She did not want to see him again. It took her until she was 21 years old to ever see him again or even speak to him.
Now, as an adult, she does have a relationship with him, but not the relationship she has with me. She is like me. I can forgive, but I cannot forget.
He and I are still friends, but that took years. We talk on a regular basis and actually tried dating for a year or so in 2006. Things didn't work out and we both went our separate ways. No big deal. We live and learn.
But children of divorced parents should really take a look at themselves as adults. Most people are bitter and not happy with themselves at all. No matter what the professionals say, if you don't like yourself, then who else is going to like you?
As the Author said, if you don't like the bed you made, then get off your lazy butt and remake it! Divorces are all too commmon in this day and age. People should work more at their marriage, their family life and life in general.
If, as an adult, you want to whine about your life, get a grip - NO ONE CARES OR WANTS TO HEAR IT.
My sincere condolences to all of you out there that think your life was so tragic. CHANGE IT! You and only you and can make a change to make yourself a different person. Stop doing the whining thing. It doesn't stop who you look at in the mirror every morning. You and only you can make a difference.
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