Mishpacha - Midlife Divorce

amother

Wed, Jun 18 2014, 1:07 am

I was very shocked and saddened to read about Sarah Shapiro and her personal life.
Miriam Adahan also went through a divorce, and there are many others.
I hear about these midlife divorces all the time.
But they are not so new, in fact, in the 50's after 40+ years of marriage, my own grandparents divorced as well. So it is not such a new phenomenon as people may think.
Marriage is something that needs to be worked on every single day.
When I speak to very happily married people they all have these things in common, respect and love for each other 24/7 through thick and thin, devotion and commitment to each other first and foremost.

ILOVELIFE

Mon, Jun 23 2014, 7:17 pm

amother who posted that the day your youngest is happily settled, "you're out":

Why? Why do you think it benefits children to live a life with parents who are unhappy with each other and model a terrible marital relationship? Why do you think that the day children are settled they'll be "Ok" if their parents divorce? What do you think divorce after 30 years does to an adult child? Does it not undermine their trust in society and in anything that seems consistent and constant?

I don't know your situation. It could be you should've left years ago and it could be you should be working until it works. That's not for me to judge. What bothered me in the piece and in this thread is that ppl seem to think ithey're doing their children a huge chessed by sticking it out and leaving later in the game.

amother

Hotpink

Mon, Jun 23 2014, 8:03 pm

amother wrote:

People who are selfish and have personality disorders can't work on their marriages because they think it's not their fault.

Last edited by amother on Sun, Jan 24 2016, 10:34 pm; edited 1 time in total

zaq

Mon, Jun 23 2014, 11:19 pm

amother wrote:

OP here, What I'm saying is they should put in the effort to work on their marriage. Why is it that some couples just give up? I have a relative who divorced after 6 years. It never worked from day one, her DH had some major issues. But if one was happily married for over a decade, can't they at least work to recoup that?

Judgemental much, OP? How do you know your parents didn't try to make a go of it? Ten happy years --who says they were ten happy years? Maybe things were iffy for 10 years and in year 11 they finally understood that whatever they'd hoped for was not going to happen. And what if ten happy years are followed by 20 miserable ones? Maybe something disastrous happened in year 11 that you know nothing about. People change, or life changes them. Formerly shared values turn out to be not so shared after alll. A person who put on a certain persona gets tired of being what he or she isn't. A person who worked hard at some personality trait finds she or he just can't do it any more. Sometimes people are miserable and stay together only for the sake of the children, or their younger siblings' shidduchim, or their own children's shidduchim.

Why do some couples give up? Why do some people die in terrible circumstances and others fight to survive? Why do some wedding guests dance every dance start to finish and some poop out after five minutes? Because people have different personalities, different strengths, different abilities, different energy levels. Rather than criticize a woman with 12 children for not working on her marriage, you should be amazed that she manages to stay sane. In her shoes I don't believe I'd have the energy to work on anything at all, certainly not a difficult marriage.

Look, it's sad when any couple splits up. Tradition says the Mizbeach itself cries when a couple divorces. When that couple is your own parents, so much the worse. You worry about how the breakup will affect you, your sibs, even your children. How will you maneuver family simchas, yom tovim, other special events? Will you be asked to take sides? How will this affect your standing in the community? What will this do to your overall family life? How will you explain to your children? All important considerations.

But understand something: this is your parents' marriage, their lives, and their choice. Your place is to be supportive of both of them, but not to get on your high horse and criticize them because you in your wisdom feel they didn't try hard enough. You have no idea what they did or did not try.

When you're married 30 years or however long your parents have been together (even if it's not so much together as separate but equal), with as many children and challenges as they have, whatever those may be, and you're still happily married, THEN you can maybe open your mouth and give your parents marital advice. but not before.

amother

Thu, Jun 26 2014, 12:09 pm

Yes, it's was in the main Mishpacha magazine.
Personally, I disagree with the poster that said that it's better to be honest and divorce, rather than pretend and then suddenly get divorced when the kids are married, because then the children won't trust the parents.
My parents never got along. Growing up, I always worried that they would get divorced. The very thought of it mortified me. At that stage in my life, even if I saw conflict at times, at least it was just in my house. It was not public. Divorce is public. I am so grateful to my parents for staying together, just so that we weren't stigmatized. Children are very very worried about what others think of them.

I don't know how it would have been different if they had gotten divorced. But I know I always disagreed with the philosophy that was prevalent in the 80s that said, better get divorced than let kids grow up in a home where they see their parents not getting along. Obviously there are extremes , and if there's constant fighting and abuse, perhaps that is more traumatic than growing up with divorced parents. But if it's just that they don't have a loving marriage...well, as a child, I really appreciated having one home and parents who were married to each other.