Primal Loss: The Now-Adult Children of Divorce Speak

by Leila Miller

leave….” I don't think people understand how guarded someone can become, especially someone who has been taught that love is conditional.

If you were to ask me whether parents who can't stand each other should get divorced and "be happy" or remain married for the sake of the children and "be miserable,” I'd say remain married every time. Children need a father and a mother, obviously, but they need a father and a mother in the house with them, involved in their lives. When parents are divorced, these things are simply not possible to the extent they must be. [12]

As an adult child of divorce, there is no 20/20 hindsight. You were a child when something incredibly traumatic happened, and you will always look at it through the eyes you had and the age you were when it happened. It becomes an event that is frozen in time. The wound festers, but never heals. As an adult, you often imagine yourself in the role of your parents, making the same choices they made. You imagine the subtext that was unique to their marriage…trying to make sense of how that situation was created…and you try to find a way in which it makes sense to you and your circumstances. It’s itchy

though, and it never fits. That’s the legacy of sin—it doesn’t resolve itself and it doesn’t fit. The pain of a broken family is brought back to the surface at every juncture where a family bond is encountered and pondered. It’s the reason why you didn’t know your cousins well (or at all?) or have any meaningful relationships with aunts/uncles, etc. It’s the reason your extended family is outside the bubble and either doesn’t want to have anything to do with the toxic situation your parents created in the divorce, or doesn’t understand how to relate to you. Dysfunction invariably surfaces in each interaction you do have, and the reality of your parents’ divorce is that the fruit it grows is never out of reach—but that fruit nourishes only more dysfunction. Divorce is a life sentence for the child.

I’ll always remember the words of the priest during the homily of our wedding Mass when he pointed to the crucifix and said, “That is your job, and if you aren’t ready for it, then we shouldn’t be having this wedding.” My wife and kids deserve nothing less. [48]

We’ve also made a commitment of transparency with each other when it comes to saying “yes” to activities. We make sure to discern together each new outside commitment, wanting to make sure we’re still making time for each other, and that our absence doesn’t create too much stress on our marriage and family life. My parents’ divorce taught me that we should be saving the majority of our “yeses” for God, each other, and our family. If we pour out too much of ourselves to the outside world, we have nothing left to offer God and our spouse. [49]

Yes, kids may be resilient,

but do they deserve brokenness? Do they deserve division? Do they deserve visitations and custody agreements and holidays straddled and tugged between parents and grandparents? I hear people say, “I’d die for my kids,” and I always wonder if they'd be willing to live for them. Because I can say that living for them, in my experience, is really hard. It is hard to persevere for the sake of others.

The divorce essentially removed a protective parent from my life, and I was abused from age three until I was 18.

The fact is, marriage sometimes sucks…but divorce always sucks. At a minimum, when parents divorce, kids do not see the struggles of marriage and the ways to work out conflict, or the healing of forgiveness between spouses. I believe that the three most important words in marriage are not “I love you,” but “I am sorry” and “Please forgive me.”

We wanted to be able to step into a single house, into the embrace of both our mother and our father.

I want to tell people to stop! Just stop being selfish…children are innocent, period. They shouldn’t have to be resilient so you can “be happy” or “fulfilled” or whatever it is you think you’re missing out on.

Kids are people pleasers, whether it’s for Mom and Dad, their teacher, or some other person of authority in their lives. They may look happy or sound happy if that’s what you want from them, but that doesn’t always mean that way down deep they are happy!

Life is about sacrifices…big ones, little ones. When done out of love, it is so much better and the rewards are so much greater than you or I being “happy” 24/7. No one ever said it would be easy! Look at the cross…do you think that was easy for Christ?? No, but He did it anyway, and He did it because He loves us. And so, what…you can’t stay in your marriage and love your spouse like you promised to do until this life ends? Why, because you’re unhappy? Get over yourself…the world does not revolve around you…stop being selfish. Pray, stay, and pray—and repeat. Put a smile on your face and speak to God in your heart until the season of sadness within your marriage passes. And it will pass, one way or another. Be true to your vows, be true to your children, and be true to yourself in upholding the “in good times and in bad times” part of your marriage. Make yourself little in the eyes of God, your spouse, and your children so that you can find your lasting joy!!

Kids

Kids are happy when their parents do not live selfishly. Kids are happy when their parents strive to live in humility. [56]

That is what divorce is. It is not a storm to be weathered, but a total upheaval of the ground beneath you. Kids survive all the time and go on to lead happy lives and build solid families based on loving marriages, but they are never the same—never what they could have been if the ground had remained stable and supportive beneath them. [5]

People should let the children process their sadness and grief, and reassure them that those feelings are absolutely normal! [54]

So, yes, resilience is great—and some children are resilient—but it’s not a replacement for love when love is lacking. Resilience is the consolation prize when a child isn’t reason enough to love. It shouldn’t be anyone’s goal to attribute this poverty as a virtue.

Kids and parents experience divorce differently; even into adulthood, our roles in the family are fundamentally different, and we will always experience family life from a different angle than our parents. A parent might be able to totally start over with a new spouse, experiencing freedom from the first marriage and only minimal contact with the first spouse. For the child, however, their worlds will forever be fundamentally split. Forever. There is no starting over with a clean slate; things are now complicated and fractured. Divorce starts a family onto two different paths that, as the years unfold, grow further and further apart. It's not a one-time event, but rather an ever-changing and ever-widening gap that only the children are really tasked with straddling and reconciling, season after season, change after change. I think these platitudinal statements are short-sighted, too. At the time of the initial split, kids aren't mature enough to fully process the divorce the way the parents are. I would tell them to fully expect their feelings and perceptions, even about the initial split, to change throughout their lives.

Even with the "best" divorces like mine, a seven-year-old should never be in a position to somehow take the responsibility of her parents' emotions. She should never have to think about which parent gets to hear or see something from her first, for fear of hurting the other parent’s feelings. She should never have to feel like she doesn't belong in the home of her parents.

The need for resilience shouldn’t stem from bad actions by the creators, protectors, and primary educators of children.