“It’s easy to tell yourself it’s not that bad, and it’s really easy to look at your children while you are all sitting around the dinner table and tell yourself you will stay together to save them.
I’m speaking from experience here:
Staying in a marriage where there is no love is not saving your children. Not even a little bit. Yes, we know it’s going to disrupt and hurt our children if we split. And doing anything to disrupt and hurt them feels unnatural. So, we cling. We stay. We fight the good fight with their feelings and hearts at the forefront of our minds.
We cannot ignore a very important point here: When parents force themselves to stay together when aren’t happy, this is what damages the kids most of all. My husband and I started having problems when our youngest was four years old, and guess what? She knew.
Once I realized my marriage was not about my children, but about the partnership between me and my ex-husband, I was able to get really clear about why we should divorce so I could let my guilt go. We made vows to each other before our kids were born that we weren’t able to honor. Almost every one was broken.
We were in love once, made a beautiful family, but that love went away. We tried, but we weren’t able to get it back. We both deserve to find it again, and our kids need to see both of us loved in the right way. We knew it wasn’t going to be with each other, and trying to fake it for their sake was destroying us. It could have destroyed them, too.
Because we split, they see us getting along. They see us both feeling more at peace and living our best lives. They see us communicating better. They see us putting ourselves first which is setting a good example for them. There’s an impact on the kids when their parents divorce, for sure. I’m not arguing that. How can there not be? But what I’m saying is, if we stayed together for them and they found out our miserableness was for their sake, I truly believe that would cause a lot more harm than our divorce ever did.
It takes time, but the kids adjust to their new life; they adjust to seeing their parents happier for not being together. But they never adjust to watching the two adults in their house walk around unhappy every day.
Staying together for your kids is a bullshit reason to stay married. Stay together for you, separate for you, divorce for you, but not for anyone else. If you aren’t taking a stand for yourself and your happiness, no one else will, regardless of what you sacrifice for them.”
