Staying Together For The Kids — Don’t. A Plea From The Child Of a Loveless Marriage
Love. Companionship. Family.
Those are the words we associate with happiness and content. And indeed, as we make our way through trials and tribulations of life, finding ourselves and our place in the world. These things do make life truly beautiful.
Relationships always have their fair share of challenges. From the expectations and ideals ingrained in us from a barely conscious age to our own prior experiences and insecurities to be overcome. Romantic partnerships consist of many trials and errors, regardless of their longevity or outcome they teach us about ourselves and other people around us.
Ultimately, love is a shining beacon of compassion and understanding. Fueled by compromise and appreciation of the other human being. Ideally, love inspires us to not only elevate ourselves but unconditionally provide a nurturing light for the other person. We all crave that companionship, in one form or another.
However, life’s complications include the simple fact that we may end up with a partner simply not compatible or good for us. Regardless of whether our union was merely an arrangement of inexperience and convenience, or the initial sparks have burned out leaving only a reality of two people objectively not suited to be together.
There is much nuance in understanding when a relationship is worth fighting for versus when it’s a losing battle of crashing tempers and repressed emotions. Let us discuss the specific instances where two people in a partnership are not good for each other. That may mean one or both of them loving another person, their outlooks and goals coming in direct conflict with one another’s, having pent-up aggression and resentment for one another due to inability or unwillingness to communicate.
Now, I do understand there are may be a multitude of reasons preventing people from leaving their partner. Financial dependency, societal and/or family pressure, emotional dependency and so on.
I would like to touch specifically on the argument of staying together for the kids and “keeping the family together”.
Let me share my grievances with that line of thinking.
I’ve never known my biological father. He’d never been interested in having any involvement in my life or in fact taking financial responsibility for bringing a child into this world. So that left my mother struggling with being a solo parent and a sole breadwinner. Despite financial struggles,I was a happy child, only ever conscious of not having a father figure when one of my peers or random adults would ask me about it. I never felt lacking in parental love or attention. Hats off to all the amazing single parents making the most out of what life’s dealt them and staying strong for their children.
I was ten when my mother married my future step-father. A year later my baby sister was born, whom I’ve loved dearly from the very first moment I got to hold her. I didn’t know what having another parent would entail as a child, but I accepted the change excitedly and told my mother I wanted to see her be happy.
It may seem as though being a hyper energetic rambunctious child would prevent me from catching intricate nuances of an adult relationship. But it didn’t. Children are extremely intuitive. They have no vocabulary to articulate it but they understand more than they’re given credit for.
I close my eyes now and remember vividly the confusion at the jumbled emotions causing tightness in my chest, shortness of breath, unease in my mind. Gradually I barely saw my step-father at home, even on the weekends. Seldom arguments regarding holidays and home renovations between my parents became regular shouting matches. I could feel my mother growing increasingly distant and her smiles becoming duller, that mixed in with outbursts of anger towards me regarding chores or minor mistakes I made after she’d been fighting with my step-father earlier that day. As I became a teenager, emotions of hurt and frustration would pent up and explode in small increments. Whenever I called my father out for gas lighting or picking fights with me or my mom he would turn it against my mother,making my “disrespect” of him her responsibility and flaw of her motherhood. He often blamed her for “turning the children against him”. That would result in more fights. So I often bit my tongue to prevent additional stress and arguments.
Aside from regular shouting matches, broken doors and smashed items things were at a peaceful simmering hostility. Snappy remarks and long loud confrontations, silent treatments and mild insults. It was the norm. I knew it wasn’t normal. I knew family members aren’t supposed to make each other feel miserable and alone. Yet that was howI felt, so I internalized the role of peacekeeper in my family. Always neglecting my own hurt for other’s benefit, trembling inside at the prospect of a new conflict, taking the hit for another familymember I wanted to protect in specific instances.
My sister was seven the first time she asked me why mommy and daddy were fighting so much, and asked me if they would get a divorce. I remember, clear as summer sky my immediate thought at that question.
“I wish.”
My story is one of many, over the years I have spoken to many people who come from homes of tense and unhealthy unions. The families held together by feelings of obligation stitching together resentment and hostility are no less broken than those where parents simply make the decision to leave one another. I would argue that explaining to your child that some relationships do not work or last a lifetime, while at the same time maintaining mutual respect and responsibility is far more fruitful than raising a child in a toxic environment.
I’ve come to terms with my emotional issues caused by my family situation, with my deeply rooted fear of conflict, anxiety, and severe people-pleasing tendencies. In a way, I will be dealing with the aftermath of simply growing up my whole life. That does not make me broken. I only wish I had known sooner that I wasn’t alone, that many people close to me were going through similar pain. Caused by a similar approach to marriage by their parents. I also wish someone had come along and forced my parents into either therapy or a divorce court.
I do urge any parent out there to consider this: I know you love your child. And you want to give them all the stars and the moon. You have not failed if you have to make difficult decisions or walk away from a partnership that is not working. Both you and your child deserve better than living in misery. Above all else, your child needs you to take care of your own emotional and physical well-being.
