This Has To Be Said

Thinking about divorce? Have older children? Grown children?

Here is something you must know:

Your child will never be old enough to listen to you vent about your spouse.

Tolstoy said that happy families are all the same, and that unhappy families are all different. I'm paraphrasing. But after personal experience and lots of observation, I've decided that there are a lot of similarities between divorcing families, or at least between divorcing families with adult children.

A quick Google search will find you evidence that divorce is on the rise for older couples, and it will find you evidence that it isn't. But my personal experience is with a lot of friends and relatives who have survived their parents' divorce as adults. When I was a kid I knew one kid with divorced parents; now it seems like every time I catch up with an old friend one of the first things she says is "well, my parents got divorced." My own parents spent most of my 20s in a prolonged vicious emotional divorce battle. My in-laws divorced two years ago after almost 40 years of marriage. My college apartment mate's parents were divorcing our senior year and I'd come home to find her dad morosely smoking in our living room every day for weeks. Another relative is now going through parental marital difficulties. I could go on.

For the adult children of the marriage, I've noticed certain common threads.

• We've all gone through a process of re-writing our memories of childhood and trying to determine if what we remember was actually what was going on. The process is sad and poignant.
• We've all questioned our own relationships (if we're in one) or our ability to have a relationship. Our parents were our first model of how to have a relationship. I remember asking both my parents how they met and how they knew it was love. Now it seems it wasn't; how does that affect my basis for evaluating relationships?
• We've all questioned our own existence. Many of us were the "reason" our parents got married in the 60s and 70s. Were we actually the source of the trouble? Even if we're in our 30s and know this is an irrational thought, the thought is still there.
• We've all been asked to be our parents' support people emotionally. Many of us have also been asked to be our parents' advisors on finances and/or financial settlement decisions.
  
• Everything about the divorce takes a lot of mental energy to even discuss casually, and it can be very challenging since we have full lives with jobs and children and can't always afford the time to process our parents' divorce. We particularly can't process it on their timeline.
  

I've read that in a "healthy" divorce with younger children the children should be assured that they are still loved and valued by both parents and that life will go on, just with both parents in separate houses. I'm sure that doesn't happen a lot, but with adult children it happens even less. Instead, we are asked to play a role and take a side. If we don't want to discuss it we're accused of disloyalty or of being emotionally closed off. We fantasize about being under 18, and how much easier this would have been then.

If you are a person with adult children going through a divorce, could I ask that you do a few things?

• Don't question your childrens' love for you. Your children love you, even if they don't want to discuss this.
• Remember you are still their parent. They want to make you happy. If you make outrageous demands of them, they will try to do them. It doesn't mean the demand wasn't outrageous. It is very hard for them to say no to you. Don't abuse that.
  
• Don't look to your children for validation of your decision. Even if it is the best decision for you, it will always be a little heartbreaking for them.
• As your child goes through the process of re-writing their history, don't make it be the same as their history. I once read a great book about the Tokyo subway gassings called Underground. People who were at the same scene told different stories and both stories were true to them. Let your child figure out what is true to him or her; it doesn't have to match what is true for you. Neither one of you has exact photographic memory of things that happened 20 years ago.
• Reassure your child that his or her childhood was still an important and valued time in your life.
  
• Don't ask your children for financial advice. Even if they have MBAs or are CPAs or just have ability with numbers, this isn't something they want to take on. The emotional strain and the conflict of interest is too large.
• If there is another person involved, don't assume that their reaction has anything to do with that person. No, they aren't happy about the other person, but they aren't naive enough to think that that is the whole issue. They do, however, have an issue with your constant discussion of the other person.
• Ask your child about his or her life. Does every discussion have to be about your life?

OK, I'm asking more than one or two things. But this is a very sad time for your children, even if they are adults. Their family as they knew it is over. Every holiday from now on feels like a test. Something has broken and they feel like it is their fault and they don't know how to fix it.

They love you. They want you to be happy.