If you are in an unhappy marriage, is it better to stay married just for the sake of the children–or to divorce? Are the affects of divorce on children always negative? What really is best for the children?
Mary is a successful professional who works with couples in the throes of separation and divorce, helping them to separate with as much dignity and respect as possible, and as little harm as possible.
Besides extensive training and education for this work, Mary brings the painful experience of helplessly watching her parents’ marriage self-destruct.
The usual marriage-enders had been there since she was about eight. Mary recalls the late-night shouting, the blaming and criticism, the defensiveness and the utter contempt at times each seemed to hold for the other. She recalls the icy silences and her mother crying. The parents tried to hide or deny their unhappiness, but children always know.
Mary loved her father, but from about age nine she began to pray that her father would leave. He stayed and the conflict continued. Mary was at university when her parents finally divorced.
Mary resented both her parents for staying together and putting her and her brothers through all that turmoil. It took her another ten years and a couple of children of her own to get past that.
So why did her parents stay together in a marriage that was not working? Their explanation was they did it “for the sake of the children.” They didn’t want to “unravel the family.”
Many couples manage to turn a souring relationship around through counselling, but often the deterioration has gone beyond the point of no return before they seek counselling.
What is the damage from staying?
When children under ten see their parents in open conflict, they tend to blame themselves. They tend to put their own lives on hold. As they get older, they may just withdraw and become increasingly isolated from one or both parents.
A few will develop behaviour problems: acting out, defiance, deteriorating grades, bullying, etc.
However, the biggest long-term damage comes from their internalizing what they see modeled. It is the parental modeling that years later leads to the 26-year-old mother handling conflict with her husband by screaming at him, or her husband handling conflict by bullying. It is what they saw their parents do. At an intuitive level, they don’t know any other ways of resolving family conflict.
What is the damage from separating?
The issue for the children’s health and development is not whether the parents are together or apart, but how well they handle conflict. If separating gives them space to cool down and co-parent with mutual respect, the children, as children, will be better off than when their parents were together.
Later, as adult children of parents who were separated, they can draw on a model that says you don’t have to go down with a sinking ship. Their parents didn’t unravel the family by separating. Rather, they separated because the family had already unraveled.
Would you want your daughter or son to stay in a chronically unhappy marriage? Then be careful what you model.
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Hi Dr.Neill,
Thank you very much for your reply…My husband and I had a talk the other day and we both agree that seperation will do us good…at least for the time being…Today I packed everything and am ready to move out.My husband is very calm about it and said we may still see each other though..he suggested that we may even start dating again…well…I am not so sure about it…one voice in my heart still tells me to stay and give it another try…..it has been 9 years since we met…can’t be easy for anyone I guess….anyway…that’s all the news for the time being…wish me luck!:)
Dr Neill,
I read this & know i should separate from my husband. Although we rarely fight, we just don’t talk. My husband is also an alcoholic. However, I just can’t get past taking my children’s father from them & the fear of being a single mother. My children love their father, and there are good times between the kids & their Dad. My chilodren are 4, 6, and 9. Anyway, thank you for printing this excerpt. I just have to find the courage to do it.
Many people stay glued to their marriage because of children or things like financial security. But I don’t think it is worth to spend your life unhappy and miserable.
I am 37 with two children in a miserable marriage. My husband is an alcoholic- he has had DUIs, in trouble with his job which resulted him being in a 30 day rehab. We have been married 16 years and separated twice. The children are 7 and 12 now. Husband is verbally abusive I finally realized and does not refrain anything or words on his mind when fighting with me in front of the children, which happens drunk or sober.
I am on the fence with what to do… I finally mentioned to my sister who told me my family sees it and says I try to cover it up good. Also this marriage has never been emotionally fulfilling with so much other things. He was the person I dated in school and then married because it was the “right thing to do”. Any advise?? How far do you let it go when the children are involved?
Parents handling conflict badly (yelling, abusive behavior, etc.) has more negative effects on the children than the parents being separated. In other words, if separating reduces the amount of verbal abuse, the children benefit.
On Monday my husband and I separated for the 3rd and final time. We have now been married for 10 years and although he was still hoping to make it work it just was not going anywhere. We just don’t make each other happy and seem to bring out the worst in each other. The final straw came when he left on Sunday for work in Scotland and I was relieved and I realized I felt better when he was away. I noticed I am a calmer person with out him here and instead of being down in the dumps and miserable and then getting angry with the children over little things resulting in heated arguments with my 7 year old; I was able to deal with his tantrums and calmly defuse the situation.
I realized that I am not the parent I want to be and think it has everything to do with my unhappy marriage and realized I was doing more damage to my children than good by staying with their father.
It hurts like hell to know I will be hurting my children and dread the day he comes home from Scotland and we have to tell the children as their little hearts will break. But, I believe if we stay amicable with each other and give our children 2 happy homes to live in they will come though this as happier little children.
I have been fighting for 5 years from the 1st separation to make this marriage work and I have finally realized it will never change and my happiness is important for my children. Also, what message would I be giving to my children if I cant show them love and affection for my partner? I don’t want them growing up thinking that’s what a relationship is about. My son not being romantic and my daughter settling for anything less than what she wants! Good luck to you all in your decisions….
Wow thank you for posting this. I’m not married nor have children yet but constantly hear about the damage divorce does to children. I always felt it was a very unfair characterization of divorce as the large scale studies always compare the criminal records and divorce rates of children of divorce and children of parents who stayed together. This is a ridiculous comparison of apples and oranges. Of course a child who grows up with parents in a happy loving marriage will be happier than a child who watched his parents marriage dissolve. A better question to ask is do children who grow up with parents in a miserable or unloving marriage versus parents who end a miserable/unloving marriage going to do better?
Personally, I’m thrilled my parents got divorced and I had the opportunity to grow up in a peaceful, happy home with my mother and wonderful step father. Rather than the terror and chaos of living with a stressed out, miserable mother and angry father.
I’ve known several friends who have either asked their parents to get a divorce or have said they were thrilled they did. Thank you so much for talking about this. I only wish there were more folks in your profession that did.
Thank you for posting this. All this time I have been in a very unhappy marriage and even though I tell my husband I love him and want to be with him. I know in my heart its not what I want or need. Our 3 years of marriage has been a total disaster. I went from being so happy when our daughter was born–to not wanting to smile. With him, even when i see him everyday there’s no passion anymore and half the time I am around him I want nothing more than to run away and be free with my kids.
We argue. We both always have to get the last words and put eachother down. I’m tired and have made many attemps to leave the relationship, but I feel my kids need both their parents in order to be normal. When you post about children acting out in these ways it explains alot of the reasons for my sons behavior. He’s 8. I never realized the damage I was doing untill now. I know I want to be alone but how to get there is the only struggle. I can’t seem to find a solution to this, but I know it will benifit myself and all my kids if i get out now and save their futures of becoming someone who others will adore. So, thanks for your info.
Hi,
Currently I am feeling that there is no other option but to separate from my husband. We have been together since I was 17. I am now 29 and we have three children together. I am no longer in love with my partner. I do love him, but I am unable to show affection towards him. I am so conflicted I do not want to separate my family. I always wanted to experience all the major milestones of a family with him, but I just cannot do this anymore. I try talking to him, try expressing the changes I need in order to be happy i.e spending more time home doing things with our kids, doing yard work together, cleaning out house stuff that I cannot lift etc.
He is a very hard worker, supports our family and does not want me working until our kids are in school. He does come from a family that has anger control issues. He is trying to get a handle on things, but I feel like the damage has been done and my heart cannot forgive him. I do not want my boys to EVER treat women the way he has treated me in the past. I feel sick to my stomach thinking that this could really possibly be over, but I am so tired of wanting things for our family and home life, wanting him to have pride in us, the kids along with our house and yard, and he could care less.
He is a slob, I am always picking up after him, and he’ll say he’s going to get to it, gets mad at me for reminding him and still he will forget and won’t do what he was supposed to do. He smokes pot every single night, all day on weekends at the lake, and sees no problem with this. What am I supposed to do? My life has everything to do with his family. I am the one who has to put all the effort into being with his family. Don’t get me wrong I love his aunts, uncles, cousins, I really do, but he does not see my family even a 1/3 as much as I see his.
If I leave him it will be blamed on me, I will have to deal with him not cooperating, making separating even harder on our children. I am nauseas just thinking about the way he would act and treat me and blatantly blame me in front of our kids. On the surface we look like an ordinary family, who is social when need be, friendly to each other, who occasionally fights, but behind closed doors, I am the numb, depressed wife, anxious, sad, irritable and tired of so much I don’t even know where/what to start at that makes me more depressed about life. Him or me? I don’t know how to leave. I don’t know if I can. I don’t want to separate my family and be blamed or called selfish. I want amazing things for my kids, that is all I want. But, it’s hard to have energy to put into that when I am so miserable. What is wrong with me….everyone will think I am ungrateful if I leave him, no one truly knows what he is like. And I cannot handle the fake we are putting off, I cannot do it much longer. I just want to be happy, and active, and affectionate. Instead I am lethargic, most days I have to take everything in me just to have a decent day with my kids, it’s killing me.
I love my wife and my children more than anything. My biggest fear is losing our family. When I read a compilation of studies spanning over 30 years regarding the effects of divorce on children, I was appaled. I recognized some of the effects on my own life from my parents divorce when I was five years old. I understand that some marriages can turn sour and become unsafe for spouses and children, and attempts to save them from the fires continuously fail. But most importantly, I know that it only takes one spouse who loves their family to salvage a marriage from the ashes. The way we are raised and our interactions with others while we grow play a big part on how we decipher communications from others. For example: I say, “I can’t relax in this house with it looking this way”. She hears, “I think you’re a slob and a bad mother for living this way”. What I meant for her to hear was, “I would like us to work on chores together in a way that sustains a clean house”. We have the hardest times hearing eachother and it is a constant source of unfounded hurt. But I love my wife and need to show her that I do more often and in more ways. For my family, my wife, and my children, I will walk through the fires of hell every day for the rest of my life to keep it alive and nurturing. I could never live with myself knowing how badly I have hurt my children and scared their lives by giving up on the partnership I entered with my wife, our vows and our hopes and dreams and prayers, and the littles lives we started from love of eachother. For them, I will never stop trying.
I’m in an unhealthy marriage and plan to continue just for the sake of my kids. I think my wife would make things so miserable for me, that it would just be easier to stay the course for right now. I married her because she got pregnant and have now stayed together for about 15 years. We are clearly so different in terms of the way we view the world; our values, spirituality, culturally, sexually, etc. In fact, having sex with her is a real struggle for me and has always been so. I refuse to think of separating, as I love my kids so much and want complete access to them all the time. I’m a really involved dad with 2 boys. I spend quality time with them; coaching, homework, PTA, and all. I just can’t bear the thought of loosing them, although I know my wife and I would be happier apart. I’m writing this to see if there are other dads out their in a similar situation and are there resources for me to help me get through another 10 years in a dysfunctional marriage?
Hi Kevin,
I like your comment, however, have you imagined yourself with your wife after all the kids have grown up and they are living their lives on their own? If you come to think of it, it will just be you and your wife left alone in the house and no more kids to take care of (except of course if you are going to take care of your grandchildren)… then what will you do?
Crystal,
I just want to tell you that you are not alone. I share exactly the same problem you are facing. I had tears in my eyes when I read what you have written. Of course, everybody here is having a painful/unhappy life. But yours was something I could relate to very well. I just think that we must start a new perspective in life… Do not expect anything from your husband. If he does the chores..it’s good, if he doesn’t, don’t bother. Do the best you can. Remember not to set a high standards on anything in life. Do things that bring you happiness.
Dear Dr. Neill,
Thank you for publishing this. I’m an 18 year old girl who very accurately developed the behavioral problems you’ve listed. I’ve isolated myself from my parents and once I was of age, I moved far away from them as possible to get away from the turmoil at home.
I’ve grew up very unhappy due to my parent’s conflict, and constantly asked my mother to divorce my father since I was eight. The reason they’ve stayed together was “for my sake”.
My parents married because my mother got pregnant with me and for that reason they’ve been in a very unhappy marriage with nothing but conflict and scarce respect for one another. The year that their marriage was on the brink and with the knowledge that I was old enough to not be an excuse, they’ve conceived another child, not out of love, but out of desperation and an excuse to not face the uncertain future of financial independence. And thus the cycle starts again.
For all the parents that read this, and worry what will happen to your child if you don’t get a divorce; DON’T. In the worse case scenario, they’ll end up like me: antisocial, bitter, and with little emotional connections with my parents.
I have been married for 13 years and we have 2 children. I knew my husband for 8 years before we were romantically involved. He was a friend from the age of 20 and we got to know each other through the building we both worked in. For 8 years he would take me to nice restaurants, wine bars, movies, etc and this was a platonic friendship as for many of those years I was in another long term relationship. He wore suits, nice clothes, was well-mannered, chivalrous (doors opened etc). He was patient, calm, and loyal through and through.
I had been single for almost a year once we started a romantic relationship. There were rocky times in the beginning of our relationship (i.e. he left me at a party once with all of his friends whom I had just met and he drove MY car home and went to bed. This was because he told me he was ready to leave the party and I didn’t leave immediately). After some relationship counseling, I felt it had just been an adjustment period where we were both trying to find our feet in the relationship. We got married after 1 year of dating, and we had our first child 18 months later. That is when our problems started.
When our baby was 1 month old, he started criticizing me very heavily for not being organized enough ….. I ran out of clean baby bottles one morning after a long, sleepless night and when he saw me washing and sterilizing a bottle for a feed, he told me I was a “hopeless mother”. I had post-natal depression and he told me to “get over it … it’s not about you anymore, it’s about the baby”.
His relentless criticism of me continued for 5 years, but we decided to have another child during one of the good periods. I remember him being angry with me in the car one day and he made me get out and pump gas at the petrol station, heavily pregnant because I had been “rude” to him. These are just a couple of examples of hundreds of moments over 13 years.
At the time our 2nd baby was born, I had suffered a broken knee cap due to a fall a couple of days before the caesarean was due. I had to have knee surgery when our baby was a week old and my leg was in a brace for 6 weeks. When our baby was 2 weeks old, my husband turned 40. He actually gave me a hard time because I had not organized something special for his 40th birthday. I had a 2 week old baby and surgery 1 week before and had just come out of hospital. He made me feel like the worst wife on the face of the earth, and so what did I do? I rushed around organizing a surprise dinner with his closest friends.
I have been a fool for 13 years, but now we are at the point where he berates me and talks to me like I’m a piece of dirt in front of our children and I can’t let them see this any more.
He and I are in constant combat, but most of it is silent and he is now working on our 11 year old daughter. He puts me down to her, he laughs at me and involves her in the laughing at me.
I have read psychology pages on ‘victim complex personalities’ and he fits the profile. He had a mentally and verbally abusive father who put his mother down for years until she left him, and his father was an uncaring, rude, dominating husband and father. I feel like history is repeating itself and I am the one paying for the fractured personality and interpersonal problems that his parents relationship caused.
I love my children and as the daughter of happily married parents of 45 years, I NEVER thought I would have children in a broken home. I am worried sick about what divorcing will do to them and I don’ t want to hurt their childhood, but I believe I am doing them more psychological harm by staying with him.
He represses them, but plays the victim and makes it look like I’m ungrateful. He’s extremely cunning, but I’m scared of what he’ll be like and what he’ll say to them if he gets half the custody time.
The other night he made our 6 year old son do the naughty corner in a dark room with the lights turned off. He sat in the room with him, but he knows that our son is scared of the dark. When I questioned him as to why he was making our son sit in the dark, he roared at me to keep out of it and that he was disciplining our son “his way” and that I should butt out. He roared at me like I was a piece of dirt right in front of our daughter and my mother who was in shock with her mouth open in disbelief.
He’s not normal and he’s very manipulative. He plays the martyr all the time and is very clever at painting me as though I’m hopeless and miserable all the time.
I find myself crying privately a lot, and sometimes when he’s rude to me I find myself saying, “Shut up, God I hate you” under my breath.
This is no way to live and I feel duped. I feel like he conned me with chivalry and manners until he “got” me and then all he did for the next 13 years was try to crush my spirit and control me.
I have fantastic support from my parents (who have admitted to me they almost hate him after the things they’ve seen him do to me and others we know), but I am just so worried about damaging my children psychologically.
What do I do? Our beautiful children are 6 and 11. Should I end this before my daughter hits the teenage years? I know he is going to try and turn her against me and I love her more than life itself.
Hey Neill!
I grew up with my sibling in an atmosphere where the father beats the mother to death. My mother was married to my father, later did she realize that she was betrayed and certain facts were not told to her which could have saved her from marrying.
After the marriage, as usual, the whole cycle of beatings and abuses started. She never took the step of divorce. She threatened my father that she would take a divorce if he does not mend his ways. Its been 21 years since they have been together. And I am 20 now. I would rather blame her for not taking any step towards ending it. Had she done that earlier itself, at least my sibling would not have been born and at least one life could have been saved. I do love my father . But some times he’s vulgar. Huh ..
He even beat me indecently many times! I don’t know what love is anymore. I feel that I am being enforced to live with certain people who say that they are my protectors and saviors. Well, they did not protect me anywhere. They can’t even stand up for me when I need them the most.
My father is an alcoholic and he loses his senses when he fights. He drinks daily. Whenever I want to talk to him about studies in abroad, he brushes up the topic saying he does not have money. In India, almost every parent saves it up for their child. He did not. And its a tradition that for girls gold jewellery is made. He did not do that either. I hardly have any gold. I am not complaining about that, it’s just that I feel bad when my friends’ fathers who have same positions as managers make kilograms of gold.
Every night, my father comes and shouts and fights. And my brother too follows the same path. He started scolding me with abuses back a long time. Sometimes he even raises the hand. Last night me and my father had an argument. And my brother abused me for a simple reason. My father does only one thing. He asks, “Why are you talking like that?” The next moment, he hits me on my face twice and it hurts my braces. I have braces on my teeth. I got little blood from the gums. I even called my best friend last night saying I don’t wanna live with them anymore. Even she has a very much similar life just as mine.
My right side of the face still hurts and I am in pain . I wanna run away from here. I don’t feel if my mother is on my side anymore. She is not able to tolerate my thoughts anymore. She thinks I am flying in the air, castles type of girl. I don’t even know what to do. All the options of going away from here seems pointless. If I am not allowed to go out, they may put me into marriage and murder me. If that happens, I surely can’t live with it. I may end my life. I know this is much of confession rather than a complaint. I needed to share this to someone.
Now look here; last night they fight and now they talk like lovebirds. And when asked why do thy do so they reply, “It’s for the children.” Come on, for me? I would rather love to live alone than to live with you.