One adult child of divorce shares the reality and heartbreak of divorce and remarriage.  How true!  A child has DNA from both parents.  When one parent criticizes the other parent they are also criticizing the child.   The same is true for family relationships.  

Interesting take on what parents should do when they decide to divorce.

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When parents don’t love each other, they don’t love each others family. When they don’t love each other’s family, they don’t love the family of their child. The child feels alone and can’t show too much love or devotion to either side.

When the parents remarry and have children, they love that new spouse, and that new spouses family. The first child has to watch while the parent loves and gives preference to that new child’s whole family.

This state can continue for the first child’s entire life. watching the parents ignore 1/2 of the first child’s family, and giving preference and love to the latter child’s entire family.

I have lived this as the first child. the anger at the callousness and unfairness never really subsides. And then they wonder why you’re angry and why you never really seem to “get over it.”

When the parents don’t love each other, they should just give the child up for adoption rather than making the child live like that.

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Shared on Marriage-ecosystem.org

Link to site: 

http://www.marriage-ecosystem.org/when-parents-dont-love-each-other.html

#267, When Parents Don’t Love Each Other

When one parent says they want a divorce a common question by the parent who does not want a divorce is ‘what about the  children?’  To which the first parent says ‘the children will be fine’.  The impact of divorce lingers FOR YEARS after the separation!  As demonstrated by this child of divorce who shares the hurt, emotional pain and disappointment of a parents’ divorce.   

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My parents divorced 59 years ago! I loved my mother very much but I never saw my dad again. I can still remember the day he left. All those lies about no impact on the children, is just that, lies!

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#235, Impact of Divorce Lingers On

An adult child of divorce shares how divorce disrupted her life.  Sadly, this  the reality of divorce for some children.  

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I confess that my parents’ divorce was a HUGE burden on me.  Their  trying to be happy met DIVORCE, aka,  I would be unhappy!   The breaking up of my family has been my life.

Since that day of DIVORCE, I have been like a young adult trying to take care of my parents WHO WERE SUPPOSE TO BE TAKING CARE OF ME!

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#217, Burden of Divorce

Artist shares “I have started compiling a record of major life events, similar to a scrapbook yet deeper and focused on the darker sides of life as well. The first major life-changing crisis to happen in my life was the divorce of my parents when I was 10 years old.”

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Deviant Art: Divorce by Sunnenmoon

Link to artwork: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Divorce-168409430

#214, Scrapbooking Parents’ Divorce

An adult child of divorce (parents divorced at age 8) shares her hope to have the happy days back, “when we were together happily.”

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Deviant Art:  Divorce by AkatsukiFan112

Link: http://akatsukifan112.deviantart.com/art/Divorce-215765801

#211, True

The remains of divorce!  

This adult child (age 20) of divorce shares the pain and emotional turmoil of divorce.

.“It has been four years since the divorce. I do not know what it is like to love or be loved unconditionally. I find it hopeless to even try for fear of this gut wrenching pain I knew/know from loving two of the most wonderful people in the world, mom and dad. I do not know if I will ever heal, when will this torment in my head and heart finally cease? I am 20 years old and I want nothing to do with marriage nor children. I am chained by the wounds of those that should have loved me the most, and I am confused”.

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Divorceandkids.com: http://www.divorceandkids.com/Kids%20Quotes-Drawings/kids_quotes.htm#SADNESS

#200, Adult Child: Sadness of Divorce

The children of DIVORCE!  A very revealing photo:

Big eyes with dark and a steady stream of tears.  

The forlorn look on this young ladies face.

The black and white photo with a red rose.

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Deviant Art, Fragile Agony by nannn.

Link to artwork: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Fragile-Agony-117083382

#185, Fragile Agony

No child should have to see their parents fight.

Artist shares a descriptive poem about divorce:

Momma please stop cryin, I can’t stand the sound
Your pain is painful and its tearin’ me down
I hear glasses breakin as I sit up in my bed
I told dad you didn’t mean those nasty things you
said

You fight about money, bout me and my brother
And this I come home to, this is my shelter
It ain’t easy growin up in World War III
Never knowin what love could be, you’ll see
I don’t want love to destroy me like it has done
my family

Can we work it out? Can we be a family?
I promise I’ll be better, Mommy I’ll do anything
Can we work it out? Can we be a family?
I promise I’ll be better, Daddy please don’t
leave

Daddy please stop yellin, I can’t stand the sound

Make mama stop cryin, cuz I need you around
My mama she loves you, no matter what she says
its true
I know that she hurts you, but remember I love
you, too

I ran away today, ran from the noise, ran away
Don’t wanna go back to that place, but don’t have
no choice, no way
It ain’t easy growin up in World War III
Never knowin what love could be, well I’ve seen
I don’t want love to destroy me like it did my
family

Can we work it out? Can we be a family?
I promise I’ll be better, Mommy I’ll do anything
Can we work it out? Can we be a family?
I promise I’ll be better, Daddy please don’t
leave

In our family portrait, we look pretty happy
Let’s play pretend, let’s act like it comes
naturally
I don’t wanna have to split the holidays
I don’t want two addresses
I don’t want a step-brother anyways
And I don’t want my mom to have to change her
last name

In our family portrait we look pretty happy
We look pretty normal, let’s go back to that
In our family portrait we look pretty happy
Let’s play pretend, act like it goes naturally

“Family Portrait” by P!nk

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.Deviant Art, Please Stop Yelling by EranthyaeNoire.

Link to artwork: http://www.deviantart.com/art/SP-Please-Stop-Yelling-115179009

# 183, Please Stop Yelling

One mother shares the reality of divorce for her and her family.

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My mom denies how painful the divorce was for my brothers and I. Once we grew up, she openly mocked the statistics demonstrating poorer outcomes for children whose parents divorced, because we didn’t suffer any of the social pathologies to which we were statistically more susceptible:

• none of us ended up in jail
• all of us graduated from high school
• all of us went to college (two of us finished and even went to grad school: one became a lawyer, one became a veterinarian; the third stopped college but joined the Navy and became a nuclear technician on a fast-attack submarine)
• none of us developed a problem with drugs or alcohol

Now that we’ve all “turned out all right,” my mom continues to mock the above statistics, but what she cannot detect because it cannot be measured is the emotional pain, the psychological upheaval, and the gap in our upbringing and personal development due to the absence of our father.

There is one other “social pathology” to which children of divorce are more susceptible—one that my mom conveniently ignores: it is much more likely that our own marriages will end in divorce.

Mine already has. I’m in an interesting cohort: the first generation of kids affected by the new “no-fault” divorce laws. (My parents divorced in 1975, when I was 9). My children are in another interesting cohort: the kids of the kids of the first no-fault divorces.

I have looked at divorce “from both sides now,” and no matter how you look at it, it stinks. As I was descending the steps of the courthouse after my divorce (I was the respondent, my husband was the petitioner), my attorney, wet-behind-the-ears and unwise, said, “Congratulations. He’s out of your life forever.” I just shook my head and said to him, “If only that were true.” Earlier in the divorce proceedings, an older attorney at the firm had spoken more wisely: “In a way, divorce is almost worse than death, because the relationship ends badly and then you still have to deal with the person as an adversary, at least until all the children grow up. And even then, sometimes the conflict doesn’t end.”

That is my experience exactly. People get divorced because they think it will solve all their problems. In reality, all it does is exchange one terrible set of problems for a completely different but equally terrible set of problems. What a sad inheritance to pass on to one’s children. I’m 46 years old, my kids are 21, 20, and 16, and we’re all still feeling it.

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Shared on marriage-ecosystem.org by CTW.

Link to this story:  http://www.marriage-ecosystem.org/turned-out-all-right.html

 # 177, Turned Out All Right?