A Second Look at the Vicious Cycle of Divorce

Sometimes children benefit more from divorce than they do from an unhappy marriage,this article talks about the benefits for the children.

I am one of those children of divorce who grew up only to get divorced myself. It is the typical sad story. But then why am I so happy?

My parents divorced when I was five. I don't recall much, other than a hazy impression of my mother arguing with my father while he was shaving and she was teasing her hair (it was the early '60s). It may have happened once, it may have happened nightly. After the divorce, life was different. On Mom's days, we rode our bikes to the Met and picnicked in the park. On Dad's days we played songs on the jukebox and sipped Shirley Temples at Allen's Bar. In some ways it was better, in some ways worse. I didn't have another life to compare it to.

As I approached adulthood, I sensed that my parents' divorce could be a serious handicap to my own future happiness. For one thing, peers and elders always reacted to my story with such fervent sympathy. It seemed increasingly clear that I would need to overcome this psycho-developmental hurdle if I wanted to have a strong and lasting relationship myself. So starting in college, I went to see a psychotherapist who talked to me about my relationships and what he first called my fear of commitment. He tried hard to help me remember feelings I had about my parents' divorce, but no more memories emerged. When, after six months I felt ready to stop, he said it was my fear of commitment surfacing, and so, to prove him wrong I stayed another year.

When I moved to the city to start my adult life, it wasn't long before a bumpy relationship sent me back to therapy. We talked about work, sibling rivalry and other identity issues but it seemed that the silent specter in the corner of the room was always my parents' divorce and how to overcome its legacy.

Four years later, my therapy had ostensibly worked. I was married to a smart, funny, charming man, with an Ivy League degree and a glamorous career. Of course, marriage had its challenges, for which the proper antidote seemed to be more therapy. I talked and talked and talked. Session after session seemed directed toward bringing up harrowing emotions from the year of the infamous split. I gamely went down the emotional rabbit hole each time, hoping to find the precious but elusive key that would unlock all the secrets. But I never had a major epiphany about my parents' divorce.

I was aware of an acutely painful longing for my father (who died five years after they split), as well as my parents' conflicting values. I also became aware that, in order to right my own family's story, I had chosen a husband who was as close to my own father as I could find. My inner ambition was to try and do one better than my own mother and keep our marriage together.

For more read:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elise-pettus/a-second-look-at-the-vicious_b_4476163.html