Divorce Dont's 101

As a child of divorce, I feel I have earned the right to speak out on the topic, only I don’t want to talk about how it effected my ability to love and trust – that’s been written about before. But I have yet to see something written by a grown adult to the parents of their past. So, here it is…

First off, the very most important thing is to remember that no matter what age your child is when the divorce is happening, they are still your child. They are not your friend. They are not your confidant. They are not there for you to vent or complain to.

Secondly, your kids should never be put in between their parents. They shouldn’t have to choose sides, even if there is a definite bad guy. No matter how you try and paint the picture, when they look back on the situation years later, the bad guy might turn out to be the person who left, regardless of if it was warranted or not.

Growing up, my parents were always up front and honest with my brother and I and while I valued their transparency, looking back, I think it was a little too much, a lot too soon. I wasn’t old enough to understand the complexities of adulthood or marriage. The squeaky wheel got the grease in the sense of: the parent that spoke out about what was happening was telling their version of events, tainted by their hurt and anger and even perhaps their subconsciously-malicious intent. It was their truth, but that didn’t mean it was the truth. The parent who doesn’t say anything in defense of themselves or against the other parent is the other side of the story that doesn’t get heard.

Bottom line, children should not be sounding boards for a “who-dun-it” story of a marriage dissolved. At the time, I never doubted what I heard. I believed it was the truth. The more I was told the sordid details, the more defenseless I felt. How could I back up one parent without hurting the other one? As time went on, I no longer saw it the same way as I did at the time of their split. No matter what the “bad guy” did, I was more angry with the parent who shared the stories than I was with the parent who made the mistakes.

As an adult, I can look back on the memories and form my own opinion. Not only am I graced with the maturity of being an adult myself, but I also know my parents really well. I know their personalities, their stories and their hearts. I can better understand why they made the decisions that they did. There’s a clarity that I can see that they can’t, because they were too close to the situation. I grew up thinking that one of my parents was a victim, and the other the perpetrator, but now I can see the mistakes that they both made, the conclusions that they jumped to, and what they both could have done differently. It’s been over a decade since my parents split up, and I still can’t listen to Toby Keith’s “She Never Cried in Front of Me” without ugly crying. I had one parent who didn’t share enough and another who shared too much, but to the wrong person. Everything that happened was for the best, I see that now. Divorce isn’t black and white, and as a child, I should have only seen it in shades of grey.