Member Questions

My dad left and divorced my mom by the time I was three years old and my brother was almost 2. Then he re-married another woman by the time I was 9. By the time I was 10 on, I still remember all the fighting and arguing going on to this day. My father still did not get along with my mother either, and then the yelling and screaming matches between him and his second wife (who he divorced when I was 17 or 18), then he married the third wife right before I got married to my husband (but he did live with this woman before that). I now make sure that they behave civilly to each other at every single occasion that I have with my son (who is now 4 +). I don't want him to end up being screwed up as I did. I have forgiven them and moved beyond the craziness and look forward to a somewhat healthy relationship with all my parents.

So, I guess my answer is if a couple has children and they can not get along civilly in front of their children (especially young children), then they should not be together. Life is too short for everyone to keep arguing about stupid stuff. In the meantime, married couples do have arguments and forgive one another in the morning (never go to bed mad, remember?), but you have to look at all the angles of the argument and not just the one side.

I experienced my parents arguing both when they were together and when they were divorced. I think that, as a child, it was very tough hearing the news that they were divorcing...very tough. But now that I'm an adult and have some hindsight, I realized how important it was to me that they would just be...civil to each other. When my father died and my mother said something nice about him, how that tore me up inside because I realized how much it meant to hear something like that. I think personally I would have wanted them divorced and civil, if it was an either/or situation like the one you described. - Paula.