Divorce: Mothers and Children

I’m on a philosophical journey to find my true path. When I was considering leaving my marriage, the biggest concern for me was my children. Their happiness, love, needs, and desires were always considered first and now I was torn with such emotional grief of what a separation/divorce would bring into their world.

My children were surprised by the idea of a separation, although deep within themselves they must have known that their dad and I were unhappy, but probably figured it would work itself out. 

For most of their life up until this point, we lived as a normal comfortable loving family and although they were seventeen and twenty-one at the time, it was not easy for them. 

Here I was trying to talk with my children to let them know how unhappy I was and that my life was dying inside of me. They could not quite comprehend that sleeping on the sofa for two years was that awful. When I tried to explain to my daughter that I didn’t want to sleep on the couch forever, she came back with “just go on up to your bed then.” Simple solution from the mouth of babes. 

I carried throughout the day a heavy darkness on my soul and then went to sleep with it at night. My happiness? For the first time in my life, I had thought about what would make me happy and if I chose my happiness, my life, my desire to not only be alive, but to live ... if I chose that, I was putting myself in front of my children’s happiness, and it was almost too much for me to bear that burden.

I had friends who consoled me and most of them said that because my children were older, they would not be affected as they would, had they been younger. I never truly believed those words, but I had to believe them if I wanted to live. 

A lot of people do indeed choose to live together in an unhappy marriage and possibly stay together for the sake of their children. In today’s society, our children need to know that they come from a stable home life, with two parents who love them and who wanted them in the first place. That of course being the finest of all worlds. However, as unfortunate as it is, marriages and the vows of love, honor, and cherish for life have become as meaningless as doing the laundry.