To be quite honest with you all, by the time my father decided to leave I was kinda glad. My parents had been fighting for too long, at night too, I could barely sleep right and I had to wake up early for school. I was done with it myself...
The first advice I have for you, from the perspective of someone who saw his parents divorce, is to not let it get as bad as for your own kids to wish you'd get divorced.
Sure, I cried when I got the news. Was it uncertainty? Maybe. Was it the fact that my sisters were crying? Probably...because I was fed up and kinda glad under the tears.
Today for the first time I was able to get my mom to recognize that she is, to put it simply, intense. She needs to get that stuff checked and probably get medicated, because she is quick to judgment and has a hard time letting go of emotion.
She was trying to give me some advice, which I do appreciate, about how I should also be aware of my own obsessions. We all are kinda nutty in that family, smart as hell but crazy as fuck too.
I did listen to the advice, this is something that I've been pondering on lately and been watchful of for a while.
I took the opportunity to get some more sincerity from my mother since she was in the mood, and I asked her to please explain why she divorced my father.
She started giving me the run-around right away. I told her that I wasn't trying to find out any details, all I wanted to know was the reason. I actually had to ask her if he had cheated because she wouldn't say, just kept going around in circles. My sister was nearby too, listening closely, because as it turns out I'm almost 31 and she's only a year younger...we were never told why it all went down.
Even if it had been an amicable separation, it was still our lives too and we had a right to know, if not for anything for closure, which is what I told her and she understood that.
But theirs was anything but amicable, before the age of 12 I was already embarrassed by my parents' behavior, especially hers. How can you submit your kids to thinking your parents are fistfighting every night and think it's not their business to know what all that was about? I mean, these grown adults were passing argumentative messages between them and using their kids to deliver their words/aggression to each other...grotesque!
To this day my mother can't help herself to every now and then make a comment along the lines of "you get that from your father" and every single time she's referencing a negative trait.
But what can you do? Can't teach an old dog new tricks.
I wouldn't say I was terribly damaged by seeing it go down, I was older, I actually met my parents when they were people... hard-working and highly appreciated members of society, semi-rational people, somewhat peaceful and harmonious. But my youngest sister? Recently I found out she has no recollection of our mother taking care of herself.
My mother would spend hours in front of a mirror getting her hair perfect, perfect makeup, perfectly ironed clothing, and made sure to smell good too. My mother would turn heads and get women to stop her daily just to ask about her hair or makeup even though she's always been modest.
But my youngest sister never did see, or doesn't remember seeing, my mother being employed or even having a semblance of control. Could that be a factor in that she's never really had a job? Could having that mess as a role model have affected her so drastically? She'd be real pissed if she knew I was writing about her, but what if this can help a parent rethink the way they're going about the end of their relationship?
It is hard indeed to accept that it is the end, but better an end to a sorta nice story than the beginning of a nightmare.
I learned a lot of useful things from my parents' divorce and their behavior afterward, mostly how not to do things, but still learned valuable lessons.
The best thing you can do for your kids is to find happiness and encourage your co-parent to also find happiness.
Kids don't need their parents living together, it's probably ideal, but that's not what they need. Kids need to know that their parents love them and will be there for them, and they also need to see role models in their parents.
Though I have in fact learned, despite the fact that I don't think about it much if at all, and expecting to think of it less now that I have closure in that I know the main reason for the split, I can't help but wonder every now and then how our lives would be today if only they had been somewhat civilized.
If you're a kid from divorced parents and struggle with this questioning of what it could have been, just know that there's a bunch of people who had the perfect family by our standards and they turned out criminally horribly. You're good, you're your own person, you decide.
There are things i know, accept as truths, and so i think everyone knows them,
but really, only a corner of the internet is talking about them.
The man-o-sphere, red-pill (men), MGTOW...
It is the RARE woman/mother who will refrain from verbally putting down the father.
It comes naturally to wimminz, to put down, to berate, to belittle those they are upset with.
However, wimminz do not see how bad this is to their children.
If wimminz movements actually cared about the children, (that they espouse constantly "think of the children") then there would be world wide message to not put down the father of your children.
Because, in doing so, you are putting down half of your child.
Destroying half of your child.
And wimminz do it constantly to assuage their feelings.
This is a reason that children over 5 should be given to the father after divorce.
Some words you may want to look up, if you do not already know them:
CPTSD - complex post-traumatic stress disorder (it came from a lot of little traumas)
Borderline Personality Disorder
Covert Narcissism.
This is a mark of wisdom. I know you are intelligent enough to understand that not every father to a 5-year-old is going to be better than the mother. I've known of mothers who could have said plenty about the father and never did. I know you know this too, I'm typing mostly for everyone else.
I'd entertain pretty much anything, although I know this is a highly controversial subject so the smart thing would be for me not to touch it. I'll research your references anyways.
Very few people like to be told what to do, the main thing with the gender subject is that you need to make it VERY CLEAR that you're not saying women can't do something or shouldn't be able to do something. It pains me to have to say this every time but apparently it's necessary right now for constructive conversation.
Biologically, I can explain (not justify!) what you claim is an actual trend of women using their words to hurt, as the best use of their communication skills for survival.
Females can be easily overpowered by men as a general rule, physically, but language and thus learning are the biological realm of females, very few rational men would try to deny this...also, let's not forget, that women mostly end up with the job of teaching children to speak. With each child they birth they learn and relearn the way the human brain processes information, by closely watching their child develop around language and different experiences. Women need to teach a handful of words to children as quickly as possible to lighten their own load and make the chances the offspring will survive notably higher...they need to learn how to make you understand something for the sake of human survival.
Understanding that it might just be about survival after all, doesn't it make sense that at least the "quick reply" part of their language skills, considering in a few ways their body is not as sturdy as that of males, would try to compensate as a fight mechanism?
They don't actually have to be in danger, they just need to feel threatened, and then if she's not careful she could end up speaking out loud exactly what she believes will hurt you the most...and the likelihood is that whatever she says is exactly what would hurt you the most. She needs to be able to disable any man with her brain and her voice and her movement and whatever else she has except her physical strength.
I hope this makes sense to you and helps you understand that it's not necessarily all malice if you've met a lot of women who have purposedly harmed you a lot with their words.