I'll be chronicling my new life as I go through the divorce process and I hope you'll follow my journey. If you're looking for me to bash my ex, that won't happen. But if you're looking for a woman and mom excited for a new life, if you find it interesting to read about the roller coaster of emotions and all of the things that come with starting over... then join me here.
I wrote this piece on March 20 at 6:20am after my husband and I decided to separate. We spent the night laughing and crying and just hours after our decision I wrote this piece. We are just beginning the divorce process. We are lucky it was a mutual decision. We actually do care about each other and like each other -- more now that we have decided to move on. It is not easy and like so many others going through a divorce, we still face many challenges, but we are working through it and excited to move on with our lives.
Reinventing Divorce
That's what we hope to do.
To our friends who are shocked, and sad, please don't be.
We both deserve to be happy. We both deserve another chance. Our kids deserve to grow up in homes without tension, without arguments, without parents who are angry that they are still together.
We hope to learn from both of our divorced parents' ways.
You won't have to choose sides. You can continue with both of us.
To our kids, who one day may read this: we are doing it for you, too.
You deserve to see and feel love and passion between adults. You deserve parents without anger. You deserve parents who wake up happy. You deserve parents who want to love life. You deserve parents who can parent their best. You deserve parents who are on the same page. You deserve parents who can give you their all.
We can... just in different homes.
So we plan to reinvent divorce.
No nasty lawyers. No ugly custody battles. No financial fights.
We both deserve the kids. We both deserve our friends. We both deserve to be present in our kids' lives. We both deserve to try to live as closely to the way we have been... just in different homes.
We are just two parents who agree to always put our kids first. As long as we both remember that, we can co-parent the way we have been. We can co-exist the way we have been. We can just do it from different homes.
So we will reinvent divorce. We will reinvent our friendship. We will reinvent our lives.
There's no reason to do it any other way. We will create a new way for our kids, so we can live up to what we always wanted for them.... just in different homes.
Others have tried and failed at what we are aiming for. We won't let that happen. Because we can't. We owe it to our kids to put them first. We have seen too many other couples who don't, and we know what happens.
Hopefully we can be a better team apart than we were together. From different homes. That will be the best way to reinvent divorce.
Follow Denise Albert on Twitter: www.twitter.com/themoms
Children can learn from tough experiences. Again, none of us wants our children to have to experience emotional pain and sadness. But life has these things, and if we can teach them resilience in the face of something like this, they learn that they are strong, especially if they have two loving parents in the picture, married or not.
Perhaps if some of you stopped spewing hate and judgment and started to give out love and help, our world would not be so angry.
People who say “it's the best thing for the children”--are always the same: selfish, narcissistic adults still looking for immature love, who refuse to grow up and actually PUT THEIR CHILDREN FIRST! That's the very last thing you're doing. Ask any marriage therapist. I'd bet my life's savings you haven't seen one.
I dare you to ask your boys what they want. At 48, I can still recall the day my parents told us our family was breaking apart. They made all the same promises you've made. NONE came true. Simply NOT POSSIBLE. The result: my siblings and I have all struggled through our lives with various relationship issues. Ask any of us the worst day of our lives and you’ll get the same answer: that very day. ALL of my friends who are victims of divorce say the exact same thing. Divorce—even amicable ones—destroys childhoods.
If you and your husband get along so well, why are you divorcing?? Sounds like you already provide your children a rock of stability! Lemme guess: you've "fallen out of love”? How pathetic. Grow up already.
Hopefully as they are being shuffled between two different homes, they will realize this. As an adult whose parents split when I was 14, I got to tell you, the poignancy of what I lost become more and more relevant the older I get. What I would've given for my parents to have worked it out. I miss having a home base. There was no stability, and it's was a direct result of divorce. Even in the best circumstanes where there isn't much ire (as happened in my family), it still cannot compare to the families of friends in which divorce isn't very present. I didn't even realize how much I craved stability until I was old enough to make it for myself.
Yes, your kids might seem fine. But at some point, and they may never tell you, they will realize that it would've been best if the unit remained whole. There is no substitution for it.
If you and your husband as can get along so well on this, then I highly recommend that you try and figure this out. I cannot encourage you enough in this. I don't know how divorce is for a spouse, but I can tell you that for me, a child thereof, it wasn't something I ever got over. It's simply something I learned to live with. And that's a very mournful place to be.
We have been through a year of marriage counseling and if we divorce, I certainly will do everything in my power to remain amicable with him and always share what's going on in our children's lives, but I don't think that it's healthy or good for children to grow up in a miserable, depressed home with two parents who share very little affection and absolutely no passion. Would you have really preferred that?
Hi messylife,
I want you to know how very sincerely I feel for you. My eyes welled up when I read your response. And I wish I had answers for you, or at least, ones that would feel okay. Please know that I am responding as a child of divorce, not an adult who has gone through one, so I can only comment on what I personally went through and mostly through retrospection. My parents did fight constantly, horribly - it made me a very nervous child, full of anxiety. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. From a very young age, I knew that divorce was a very real possibility. I tried to prepare for it. I read books in elementary school who had characters from divorced families. I didn't want my parents unhappy, but what I really, really wanted was a whole and happy family! I was 6, then 8, and then 10, wanting this. And I had examples of those around, so I knew they were possible, and I just didn't understand why my parents couldn't work it out! Neither of them were cheaters. There wasn't physical abuse. But my mother had a temper and low self-esteem, and my father did the emotional shutdown thing and could be arrogant at times.
Looking back, I see there was a lot of pride and an unwillingness to compromise - when everyone is right, no one is wrong. I love my parents, but I can love them and at the same time realize that I lost my family over a lot of selfish emotions. The marriage seemed to be based on what each one thought they deserved rather that what they had to give, compromise, etc. Some things I understood as wrong right away, and others, I realized when I was older and knew a bit more about the complexities of relationships. Unlike you, I never wanted divorce for my family. I wanted love. I wanted security. I wanted parents who were a team. There was goodness in them. There was kindness. There still is. At the time, though, I think they no longer found it in each other. It was devastating, then, as it still is looking back.
I think, however, that you're attempt to cast divorce as celebration may not be an emotionally healthy response. It will be very painful for your children. They need adults who will sympathize with them, not try to sell them on the fact that this is going to be like a Christmas present.
I hope I can assume that you understand this and that, unless your children are infants or in their 20's, you will consider saving the rhetoric for this blog. Understand that your failures will cause them pain. You can soften the blow by adhering to your list of how to do divorce right, but you can't protect them from the inevitable pain that this will cause.
You can. But you can be an even better team than that if you work toward doing it in your marriage.
It seems that you get along with your spouse.
Marriage isn’t perfect. It’s not easy. People change—hopefully. You owe it to yourselves, each other, your vows and especially your children to do everything within your power to work on making it work. No guarantees, but I would bet that your husband and you would have a high chance for marital success with counseling—if you both went into it with the same commitment people think they are giving on their wedding day.
The problem is that by divorcing you’re refusing to give them “your all.” You CAN give them your all, WILL you?
Children from low-conflict marriages are better off if their parents stay together. You may think they care more about whether you’re happy. Nope. To them, being happy comes through the security of an intact family. You can choose joy within the context of being married. It will be work, but you can do it. Will you?
Adults justify their actions by saying that it will be better for the kids, they’re doing it for the kids, the kids will understand or they’ll be better in the long run. Too bad research doesn’t support those justifications. But of course, your kids will be the exceptions won’t they. They’ll turn out fine like you and your husband, right? I did too. I’m happily married—never divorced, have a college degree, never been incarcerated or done drugs… But I’m just one data point and there are others that dropped out of high school, have problems with addiction, have criminal records and multiple marriages. You and your husband may still do a great job as divorced co-parents, but you can do an even better job as married parents.
I’m not saying you should stay married for the kids. I’m saying that you can choose joy within your marriage and the kids will benefit.
Great! I commend your desire. That will be better for your children than a bitter divorce. But you are sounding beyond naïve. Why? Idealism is great, but you’re dismissing all those people who’ve gone before you—like you have no idea they exist. You’re going to be the exception. You know you and your spouse and you know that you can do it—and you sound as though it will be effortless. Those who have gone before and either succeeded or failed at the nice divorce are insulted; it either didn’t work even with all their efforts or it was hard, with a lot of bumps in the road.
A better approach to the article would be to tell everyone what you want to do and outline how you plan to do it and ask for advice from those who have gone before. But instead you are coming in behind others, but acting as though you know more.
Talk to those who have succeeded at a cordial divorce, and those who tried and yet it fell apart. And even more important, how about talking to those who succeeded at rebuilding their marriages and going to marriage counseling keeping open minds regarding staying married to each other or proceeding with your divorce.
Beverly Willett
www.beverlywillett.com
But since my divorce I have been in a few relationships. And one was for several years and as we moved along together it simply became apparent that our personalities weren't a fit. I tried. But she was very much stuck in her way of life and it got more and more severe and less joyful once we were out of the initial crazy love stage. So it ended, mutually, and we both moved on to date other people if we wished. This wasn't my marriage experience, but I (and perhaps all of us) need to realize that it can be someone's marriage experience. Yes, the author and her husband took vows and had children - they are supposed to make some efforts to ride it out, learn, compromise. My ex walked away - there was no chance.
I believe if the author and her husband immediately begin to date it will indeed look like they were simply bored, middle aged parents looking for the next thrill at the expense of their children, friends, and family. I hope that isn't the case.