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Marriage Breakup

3. The Pain of Divorce

A series that considers means of countering Divorce

This page is not pleasant, but it is necessary. We live in a bizarre world that tries to make out that divorce is all right. On this page we simply give some introductory food for thought to challenge the craziness that says divorce is all right! 

If you have accepted the idea that divorces don't harm people, please read this page carefully. A major deception in our society, which future generations will probably look back on with horror, is that divorce is normal, acceptable and a reasonable way of handling marriage difficulties.

Contents of this Page

1. A Wife's View

1.1   A wife's view of 'the other woman'

1.2   A wife's anguish

   

2. A Child's View

2.1   Generally about Children of Divorces

2.2   Unhappy Divorces

2.3   'Good' Divorces

    

3. And So?     

      

1. A Wife's View

1.1 A wife's view of 'the other woman

Mary, we'll call her that, is now a Christian. A number of years ago, before she became a Christian, her husband entered into an adulterous relationship and eventually left for the other woman. Mary's letter, which she held onto and subsequently let us have, shows something of the pain and anger that people, mostly women in similar situations, feel. No, it's not pleasant, but that's how she felt. Don't ever say the jilted partner is OK!

1.2 A Wife's Anguish

The following are extracts from her letter to him (which she never sent) that show the turmoil

of the early days before the final split came:

No doubt these letters could be multiplied thousands of times over by those who have been

abandoned in their marriages by their unfaithful partners.   

2. A Child's View

2.1 Generally about children of divorces 

The present writer has experience of observing details of children in school and hearing anecdotal reports from teachers within schools, all pointing to the same conclusion: when a marriage breaks up, the children are upset. Often when the children are upset their work suffers and even their behaviour becomes antisocial.

In 2002, the Institute for the Study of Civil Society produced a document called “The Fatherless Family” which concluded the following:

Children living without their biological fathers

•  Are more likely to live in poverty and deprivation
•  Have more trouble in school
•  Tend to have more trouble getting along with others
•  Have higher risk of health problems
•  Are at greater risk of suffering physical, emotional, or sexual abuse.
•  Are more likely to run away from home

Teenagers living without their biological fathers

•  Are more likely to experience problems with sexual health
•  Are more likely to become teenage parents
•  Are more likely to offend
•  Are more likely to smoke
•  Are more likely to drink alcohol
•  Are more likely to take drugs
•  Are more likely to play truant from school
•  Are more likely to be excluded from school
•  Are more likely to leave school at 16
•  Are more likely to have adjustment problems

Young adults who grew up not living with their biological fathers

•  Are less likely to attain qualifications
•  Are more likely to experience unemployment
•  Are more likely to have low incomes
•  Are more likely be on income support
•  Are more likely to experience homelessness
•  Are more likely to be caught offending and go to jail
•  Are more likely to suffer from long term emotional and psychological problems
•  Are more likely to develop health problems
•  Tend to enter partnerships earlier and more often as a cohabitation
•  Are more likely to divorce or dissolve their cohabiting unions
•  Are more likely to have children outside marriage or outside any partnership

The conclusions are inescapable: divorces do no favours for children!

2.2 Unhappy Divorces

Elizabeth Marquardt (see 2.3 below) wrote, "Divorce is the ultimate break up, and break-ups are almost unfailingly messy, painful and chaotic."

Anyone who has got close to children of divorcing parents knows that there are many children who have strong feelings of hostility towards the father who abandoned them. 

Unhappy divorces are those where the separation was probably after months or years of marital conflict and the separation is acrimonious.    

In 2002, University of Chicago sociologist, Linda Waite, led a team which produced a study that found no evidence that unhappily married adults who divorced, were typically any happier than unhappily married people who stayed married. 

One of their conclusions indicated that 2 out of 3 unhappily married adults who avoided divorce or separation ended up happily married five years later, and only 1 out of 5 unhappy spouses who divorced or separated had happily remarried in the same time.

These findings undermine the suggestion that unhappy marriages have no future and will thus be harmful to the children. Conflict, working out different value systems, and coming to a compromise conclusion, is part of any and every marriage. This means that there will be upsets and disagreements, and so for much of the time this is just a natural part of family life and accepted by the children.

It is only when the upsets are continuous that this will be likely to cause anxiety within the children. For much of the time the children are too busy in their own childish world to really take in the details of conflicts going on between the parents.

Unhappy divorces are therefore those where the parents have probably let the level of antagonism rise to an unacceptable level for a long period of time and have either not been given any help, or not thought help was possible, and therefore never taken a variety of steps to lower the emotional temperature.

2.3 'Good' Divorces

 To call Elizabeth Marquardt a child is no longer accurate, but she is the daughter of two people who divorced. She has carried out research and written a book called "Between Two Worlds", the subtitle of which is 'The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce'. It was published in 2005 by Crown Publishers of New York and is essential reading for anyone under misconceptions of 'good divorces'.

Elizabeth's book and research, is not about bad, messy divorces, but those we label 'good divorces'.

In her Introduction she declares that the book is NOT arguing that

In chapter 1 she explains that she was born in 1970 and her parents were separated when she was two. Her first memories were of her parents apart. She acknowledges that she was loved but that made it worse because she was constantly separated from one of them.

Indeed this is the central concern she has, that children of divorced parents, perhaps especially when it was a ‘good' divorce, are torn in two by having to live two lives, going backwards and forwards between the two usually very different lives of their parents.

In chapter 2 she unpacks this more fully, noting that a divorce is a beginning of a new split life for the child, not merely the end of an old life. As she considers what a marriage does for a child she ponders on the whole effect of two different people struggling to come to oneness within their relationship, something that becomes valuable for the child to learn for its future experience of life.

In chapter 3 she speaks about ‘Little Adults', children who are forced to grow up quickly, forced to mature early by the workings of divorce. She says, “Now we had the responsibility of bridging our parents' increasingly different worlds.” That's a big responsibility. The child may see one or both parents in tears, and vulnerable. The anguish is conveyed. Even more the child may feel a responsibility to support one or both parents in their anguish and separateness. Sometimes feelings have to be suppressed, simply to cope with what is going on.

You need to read the book – there is so much more!

Conclusion: Even with ‘good divorces' the effect of transiting between two different lives, or of emotionally supporting one or both parents, can put undue strain on the children.

In Elizabeth Marquardt's words, there are no good divorces!