So Sad

 I've read so many of your stories here and can relate to many.  My parents never fought.  I thought we were such a happy family.  We were always together back in the 60's and 70's, my siblings and I playing together, my mom a sturdy housewife who was always there for us, my dad a solid working man - a highschool teacher and organist at our church......it was such a shock that night to hear the yelling and see my dad holding my crying mother trying to comfort her.  He had met another woman and was leaving her.  I was the oldest at 14, and after witnessing this scene, ran into the house to keep my siblings away and protected from it.  We all cried in our rooms waiting for it to be over.  My dad called to me and my parents took me, alone and sitting between them in the car, to a quiet spot and parked.  My mom told me dad was leaving and began to sob and she hugged me so tight.  I was so stunned and asked WHY?  He said he loved someone else.  That was the beginning of years of trial and error.  Dad's new girlfriend had a daughter my sister's age.  We were all brought to her house for the weekend, but I think having 5 kids in her house suddenly was too much for this new woman, and the prospect of having to do this every weekend was unthinkable.  My dad quietly dropped out of our lives, leaving us wondering, leaving us to be the ones to come to him if we wanted to see him.  That was the choice he made.  He left us to make our own choices.  My mom remarried soon after he left, to a man who was a drinker, but also a stable hardworking German man.  He was also divorced so he shared a lot with my mother.  They are still together.

Our parents are people too.  They are people who had children. People of that generation were expected to get married and have families.  How many people married the wrong person?  Divorce was unheard of, and if you chose it as a means to make your life happier, you were risking everything. Now that I'm older, I've been through my own relationships, and I've have had to evaluate what it means to marry.  I married someone when I was too young, probably because I was looking to replace my lost unit, to create my own and 'do it properly'.  But I divorced him shortly after.   Marriage and divorce are only pieces of paper that outline the time frame you are in in any given relationship.  

Should a relationship last your whole life?  Can you predict your future?  How you will grow as a person?  Who you will grow with?  Divorce was created because there were so many unhappy people who were probably carrying on relationships with others outside their marriage anyway.  The children, however, are the ones who suffer.  They are not old enough to rationalize all this stuff.  The young ones say they weren't affected, and that's why - because they never had to think about what's 'normal' and what is 'tragedy'.  That's a good thing.  A human saved.

Because divorce is so new to us (only a few generations), it has taken a while to know it's effect on children.  It is so important for parents who decide to divorce and who have children to make the right choices and to make the transition as smooth as possible. But who knows by instinct, through all your human emotions, to do this right the first time?  We all make mistakes.  

Children are sponges.  They learn from their parents.  If parents continue to be there for their children, and tell them that it's got nothing to do with them, that they are individuals, and sometimes this happens but they will never stop being part of their lives.......easier said than done eh?

Parents are just human, just like you and me.