"I love everyone from afar": Adults about parental divorce
LAST YEAR IN RUSSIA WAS ONLY ABOUT MILLION MARRIAGE - and about 600 thousand divorces. Attitudes toward marriage are gradually changing, many couples are no longer trying to maintain relationships that have exhausted themselves, regardless of how long they have been together and whether there are common children. True, the latter, such a decision affects not less than the partners themselves. We talked to those whose parents divorced, asking if they could easily survive the separation of their loved ones, how their relationship with their mother and father was built and how it affected their own lives.
Parents divorced when I was six. I clearly remember the day when Dad informed me about this, but I do not remember what words he had picked up, how he explained why. This news was the end of the world - it was the very reliable crash that struck. Then for many more years I made the same wish: that father and mother were together again.
After the divorce, my mother and I moved in with her parents, and it was even fun - true, only me, not my mother. She was cold and reluctantly let me go to meetings with my dad, but did not turn against me and did not forbid to see him. He (as I understand it now) smoothed the guilt with gifts and entertainment, it was fun with him, and I did not feel any resentment for a ruined family. I selflessly loved him and defended him from frequent grandmother's reproaches. At that time I had a complete set of grandparents who began to compete in love with me, jealous, fight for attention, a weekend - so in a sense, divorce multiplied the love around me by two. But he also taught diplomacy: it was hard not to tear up between relatives, to give everyone time, not to offend anyone, and to prove to everyone that he was, despite everything, the most beloved.
Soon my mother met her second husband, we moved to another city, traveled a lot, lived in prosperity and harmony. My grandfather gave me a lot: he showed the world, instilled a love of reading, raised the necessary qualities, motivated and helped. Therefore, my mother's divorce from him, I was experiencing, perhaps even harder than a divorce from dad. I already studied at the institute and perceived this story in an adult way, with a whole range of complex feelings. Perhaps it was this divorce that helped me understand a lot about the family, about the relationship between a man and a woman, about myself.
Each time it was scary and painful, but everything always turned to the best. The answer is the banal "time heals." Despair and apathy were replaced by concentration of will and a jerk, a new stage in life, independence and fearlessness. And I am glad that none of the parents could tolerate each other “for the sake of” - this would only be worse. Now I communicate perfectly with my parents, my second mother's husband, and all of my father's subsequent wives — such a complex big family. I have two little sisters from my father's third marriage, who still do not understand how it is possible that I, too, are father's daughter. Dad and mom still communicate exclusively with hamstrings and formal holiday greetings.
Just remember the time when my parents divorced, will not work, but the feelings I was about two years. Naturally, I do not remember anything. All my childhood I was surrounded by a large family, I rightly consider myself "the son of the regiment." Already at a conscious age, I realized that I don’t have a dad, and I took it calmly: someone doesn’t have an aunt or uncle, and I don’t have a father — it happens. While I was in kindergarten and elementary school, we saw him once every six months in amusement parks and gaming centers, but all this time I perceived him as a friend of the family. The last time we met was when I was ten years old or so, why I stopped knowing after this meeting, I don’t know, my parents finally stopped talking.
Since then, for many years I have been completely unaware of what is happening in my father’s life, I have never communicated with relatives from my father’s side either. I used to dream that my father and I meet by chance and he asks in great detail about my life. In reality, everything turned out a little different. Not long ago, quite suddenly a distant relative found me on social networks and asked if I wanted to talk to my father. I did not want to.
What do I think about all this? No circumstances would make me stop communicating with my child. But it is a pity for me here not for myself, but for my mother: the family helped, but she had to take many of the questions of my growing up, including financial ones, completely on myself. I do not feel myself injured in this story. Moreover, quite often I joke on this topic: I hope that at least "Papa Jones" will not leave me.
My parents divorced when I was thirteen years old. I returned from a camp in Germany, and my mother took me to my grandmother's apartment - for a couple of days I didn’t quite understand what was happening. The city was small, I did not need to change the school and class. But I began to live with my dad together, I started to cook, clean the apartment. Dad was also lonely, we went together in karaoke with him: he sang "Cruiser Aurora", and I - "Reykjavik".
My best friend felt that I now live too far away (about fifteen minutes on foot), and slowly stopped communicating with me. In the evenings I cried, thought my mother was to blame. I lost interest in my parents. A couple of years later, when I left the country for a year, I was very happy and did not miss anyone. I managed to establish a really warm relationship with my mother when I went to study in Moscow and got older.
Now I communicate with my mom and dad, they are with each other - only occasionally, when it is really necessary. In addition to me, they still have a common child - my brother - and another daughter from a new marriage. It seems to me that our parents were young and stupid and began to treat children’s feelings responsibly only with the advent of the third child, after forty. Before that, they were constantly solving their problems at our expense with my brother. The most unpleasant thing was communicating through us, transferring the attitude of each other to us (you can describe it with the phrase "Tell your daddy ..."). Of course, they loved us, earned money for all our activities and trips, but at the same time they always figured out relationships. Now I am very glad that their new children at home are completely different. Little girls grow up with the understanding that my brother and I have other father and mother. My brother lives with one, then with another parent. I love everyone from afar.
Parents divorced when I was eighteen years old. I remember, I was on a date, my mother called me, she did not cry, but her voice was strange - she asked me to come home as soon as possible. I didn’t ask any questions, I immediately realized: my mother finally found out that her father had another woman. The fact is that for more than one year I have been aware of dad's double life. It seemed impossible not to notice: my father drank heavily, went on strange business trips, and when he was at home, he locked himself in a room and talked to someone quietly on the phone for a long time. But my mother did not guess anything. It protects the psyche: people stubbornly do not notice the unpleasant truth, although for others it is obvious. Until the moment when everything was revealed, the situation in the family had been depressing for several years. Mom went to work with her head, her father was more likely to be absent, I suffered from the inability to reveal my secret to my mom, my brother experienced a difficult transitional age, and I did not get any support. We haven't had a family for a long time.
That evening, the four of us gathered at home and talked for the first time in three years. It turned out that Dad's mistress became pregnant, and he was forced to finally resolve the situation - not in our favor. I still consider that conversation the most difficult in my life. Parents divorced quickly and since then for ten years have never talked. Dad left for a new family, and my brother and I stayed at home with my mom, who for a long time and hard lived through treachery. I, as an adult daughter, became as if my mother's mother: she comforted, encouraged, hated and despised her father with her.
For a long time I denied that the parental situation influenced me in any way, because at the time of the divorce I was an adult. However, it took me many years to realize the consequences of that injury. “Bugs” began to emerge in my attempts to build relationships with men: paradoxically, I chose exclusively inaccessible, most often married. I spent a long time with a psychotherapist before I was finally able to break this scenario. Nevertheless, I still can not forgive my father for not even the fact that he left us, but the fact that he did not find the strength to stop the family hell of uncertainty and understatement, in which we all lived, much earlier. I rarely communicate with my dad; we have no close relations. I also do not intersect with his wife and children from the new marriage. Mom's all went well - she married again.
My parents divorced twenty-eight years ago, when I was about five, and my brother was two and a half years younger. But we learned about their divorce much later, as they decided to keep the family visible for their children. When discussing this mess with the mother, we all understand that this is utter nonsense, since children are the first to suffer from the created appearance of “everything is good, we are a family”. Both parents begin their own, other personal life. Children somehow see all sorts of uncles and aunts that are like friends of a father or mother. But at six, seven, eight years, we still understood that if an uncle stays in the house while dad is away on a business trip, it is strange. If as soon as mom leaves for a business trip, dad drags the children to some aunt and asks them to take a walk - this is also strange. Children pretend that this is the way it should be, but doubts creep in. Mum and dad live in different rooms, explaining that dad snores, and mom needs to get enough sleep, as she works very hard.
To keep the family's visibility with the parents was not very successful: they quarreled before our eyes. Brother stuttered for a long time. I quietly hated my father. But one day (I was already eight) mom still talked to us and explained that she and dad can no longer live together. We roared for a long time, since both at that moment thought that they were doing what was best: mother kept the family, and I was silent, fearing that she would feel bad.
When the performance ended, it became easier - the quarrels stopped. But classmates found out about it - there were different situations. It happened that the well-wishers shouted after them: "Fatherlessness!" I could still stand it alone, but if my brother and I were together, it was getting dark in my eyes, and I fought, it doesn't matter if the boys called it or the girls. My brother was more worried about this situation, stuttering did not go away, and I was terribly hurt for him.
I know that there were agreements so that my father could communicate with us, my mother never put a spoke in the wheels, but he appeared only once. At the beginning of spring I came to congratulate my brother on his birthday and his mother on the 8th of March, but he simply forgot about me. Mom gave me the candies he gave her, but we knew perfectly well that they were not meant for me.
Relations between the parents ceased completely, we also do not communicate with relatives on the father's line: after the divorce, those grandparents simply struck us out of life. Where is he, what is with him now, no one knows - only some rumors rush periodically. I know that we have a sister and her name is Ksyusha. Once I saw my father on the street: I was about fifteen, I was driving to my grandmother, I saw a man with a stroller and realized that he was a father - but he looked away and pretended not to notice, and I also passed by. A shiver ran through my body, I was thrown into a fever - how could you turn away from me? At that time, we already had a person who became our real father: we passed the adoption process, but the biological father did not appear at the court hearing, although he was officially invited.
My brother and I held each other all childhood and experienced everything together - and now we just do not spill water. Of course, the game of parents reflected in our future, growing up, communication style, behavior with the opposite sex and how we build our own families. Brother made the perfect family. He does not care for the children, and I am sure that he will not allow them to plunge into our childhood. My family life was different, but this is another story. But the main thing: we speak frankly and confidentially with the children so that it does not turn out that every family member tries to do what he thinks is best, hiding and hiding something from each other - and in the end everyone suffers.
My parents divorced in 1994, I was four years old. I do not remember them together. When I grew up, I asked my parents why they divorced - and I heard a lot of different stories. I remember my mother’s stories about how difficult it was for her: she was always busy with me herself, her father was constantly at work, then he began to drink. In general, it was very difficult for her, and at some point they filed for divorce with the wording "they did not agree with the characters."
During a divorce, the parents agreed that I would stay with my father and grandmother, and my mother would see me at the weekend. This condition was set by her father: she had to communicate with the child. I don’t remember how the process itself took place - I lived at home all the time, with my father and grandmother, and for the weekend I came to my mother, she always didn’t live very far. Of course, in my childhood I really wanted to have my mother not only on weekends.
Now I communicate with both parents. It so happened that I lived with my father until I was seventeen years old - until graduation. When I was fifteen, my grandmother died, and we began to live with him together. We had a “cheerful” life: a casserole of lettuce, a casserole of soup for a week — none of us particularly loves and does not know how to cook. Mom is economic - I, of course, had an example before my eyes, but I cannot say that I resemble her. When you do not see it every day, it is more difficult for you: you have to learn everything by yourself. When I was seventeen and I went to college, I moved to my mother and stepfather (she married for the second time). When I was in my fourth year, she divorced and we moved to her apartment. After some time, when I was twenty-three, I began to live separately.
Parents always talked, without some ugly quarrels and conflicts. They were skeptical about each other, but calm. But my paternal grandmother categorically disliked my mother and in every way possible set me up against her.
Until a certain point, I thought that my child would never grow up in an incomplete family, and I would give birth only if I was 100% sure that the father of the child would not leave me. Then I grew up and realized that it would not be like this: you cannot be reinforced confident in a person. Now he loves, and then something happens, he loses his love and wants to leave - and what, will you keep him? Now I think that I will give birth to a child only if I am sure that I can provide one hundred percent myself. It will be honest: I see no reason to count on someone other than myself.
I look at families who live together for the sake of the children - they are rarely happy, more often it’s a habit, a common apartment, that they cannot part. It seems that to disperse and preserve human relations is not the worst option. You can be a parent - and it is not necessary for this to live together. Another thing is that it is better to start children really consciously, to love this person - because only love can win life. It seems to me that Mom and Dad had the same story: they didn’t really love each other very much, so life became an obstacle. Well, my father had a lot of work back then: he wrote his candidate’s thesis and this was probably more important to him.
My parents divorced when I was six, now I'm twenty-five. The divorce, of course, affected me negatively. My mom seemed to be trying to be both mom and dad at the same time. I adopted her model of behavior - a super-strong woman who does not know how and does not allow herself to be weak, which greatly hinders relations with men. Plus, I lived in constant fear for my own relationships and searched for men in the prototype of the pope, as he was not enough during his childhood and adolescence. It turns out such an internal contradiction: on the one hand, you are a little girl who wants to be taken care of, on the other hand, you cannot afford it. And, of course, there was a feeling of guilt, because I considered myself guilty of divorce.
Parents after a divorce never talked. I have long been living separately from my mother, our communication is neutral and diplomatic. Dad saw rarely, and at meetings he behaved like an old friend, and not like a father. Divorce as if punched a hole inside me, and it does not overgrow. Constant remorse and loneliness - this is what leads an incomplete family.
Four years ago my father had a daughter in a new family - we have a difference of twenty-one with her. He treats her exactly as I lacked: responsibly, courageously - and at the same time indulges. Sometimes you ask yourself: why am I worse? Why are parents divorced, and children suffer? And why even after more than twenty years the pain does not go away from this?
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