# Staying Together For the Kids



## visigoth77 (Apr 26, 2013)

So my husband and I have been unhappily married for 13 years. I can't actually remember a time in which we were ever really very happy with each other.

Five years ago we were pretty much just coasting and I accidentally got pregnant. It was a stressful time due to the baby's health, etc. After we jumped that hurdle, we've pretty much been fighting nonstop. Every day. Just constant bickering and sniping and the occasional shouting. Terrible, I know.

Our daughter is 5 now and she rarely asks about why Mommy and Daddy don't get along, but have we already screwed her up irreparably? Is she doomed to repeat our mistakes? 

Say we get divorced right at the time she's going to start school (in two months) wouldn't that just do more damage?

I don't want her whole life to be disrupted by starting kindergarten and then not having both of us to come home to after school. I'm a SAHM and she's never even had a babysitter. And my husband has worked from home her whole life.

She's never known anything other than a two parent household where the parents are around 24/7. 

So say the fighting stopped tomorrow. Not saying we could love each other, that's not possible. But if we just quit arguing. Is it better to be in a two parent household where the parents are basically roommates or better to divorce and just let her deal with the fallout?

And this is so completely selfish, I know, but I'm 35 and my husband is 36. Do we really want to be almost 50 years old, waiting until she graduates from high school, to end it? We've already spent 13 years of our lives with the wrong people. 

Part of me says if I love my daughter I'll just tough it out for her sake and give up on any chance of love for myself. And then another part is kind of depressed at that idea.

Has anyone heard of someone sticking it out for the kids who didn't eventually end up feeling bitter and used up at the end of it all?


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## Chuck71 (Nov 5, 2012)

I have heard I guess 25-30. In short.... most ended badly. A few faked their way through it and agreed to open marriage on terms. A few realized aftre a few years of doing their own things, they missed their spouse. So it has varying outcomes but a betting person would choose 'ending badly.'


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## visigoth77 (Apr 26, 2013)

I figure most people do just end up angry. I guess when having to make a choice of whose life to destroy, mine or my daughter's, she didn't do anything to cause this, so we'll just put on the fake smiles for the next 12 years. She's not showing any signs of being upset by our crappy marriage, no anger issues or anything like that. But then, she's not old enough to be in a relationship of her own so I don't know how it's going to affect her either way down the line.


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## daisygirl 41 (Aug 5, 2011)

Don't shout and bicker in front of her. 
She might not be showing any outward signs but she probably knows things aren't as they should be. 
My concern would be what you're daughter will learn from this? To stay married and be miserable? Would you want her to do that in her marriage.
Is there any way you and H can fix this? Have you tried MC? There must have been love there at some time.
What happened to it?

Your daughters life won't be destroyed of you divorce. Kids adapt pretty well to these things.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## visigoth77 (Apr 26, 2013)

We try not to fight in front of her too much but as a family we are ALWAYS together so it's not always that easy. Maybe once she goes to kindergarten in July we can just scream at each other all day and by the time school's out for the day, we won't have any interest in fighting.

I don't know exactly what I would want my daughter to do. Would I want her to walk away from her child because she wants to be happy? Truthfully I'd probably say the same thing I've said to myself. "Why punish the kid?" 


As far as my husband and I are concerned, neither of us see any point in marriage counseling because neither of us want to save the marriage. 

We were never really in love in a traditional sense. It was fun to hang out together. We just got married so we could keep dating. We met in college and then he graduated a year ahead of me and moved back to his hometown which was three hours away. We had a fairly easy relationship, I mean why wouldn't it have been? There was no lawn to mow, very little in the way of bills to pay, he lived with his parents that first year out of school while job hunting. 

But my mother is ultra conservative and would not let me live with him after I graduated from college. Not without being married. In retrospect I should have just moved out and told her to deal with it, but I was young and had lived under my mother's boot my whole life so defying her didn't seem like a viable option at the time.

So we got married so that we could keep dating. But faced with both of us working all day every day, when it finally came time to be together in the evenings, we realized we just didn't have that much in common. No one wanted to give up their precious few hours of free time to do whatever the other person wanted to do. We tried it for a while but eventually just stopped hanging out together unless it was a mutually interesting activity.

We had already been discussing going our separate ways when the condom broke, in fact I had planned to move out within just a few months.

My parents fought every day of my childhood while his parents have never had even a single argument. Not even when his father was having an affair that lasted over five years. So neither of us has had examples of a really decent marriage. In his mind I should just be quiet all the time, like his mother. But I'm not his mother so......


Yeah it just won't work out.


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## Hope1964 (Sep 26, 2011)

I got divorced when my kids were little. Left my ex when they were 4 months, 2 years and 4 years. Today they're 19, 21 and 23 and I have never regretted my decision one bit. The kids have expressed that they wish we'd stayed together, but that's because they don't know any better. They don't know what it was like when we were together. Every child wants their parents to stay together, because that's how it's supposed to be. Today they're happy well adjusted adults.

I was lucky enough to get sole custody. You and your stbxh should look into some kind of co-parenting classes or something to make the transition as smooth as possible for your daughter.


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## visigoth77 (Apr 26, 2013)

I didn't even know such a thing as co-parenting classes existed. He would never go to one though. Do they have a "How to co-parent with your uncooperative ex class?"


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## EleGirl (Dec 3, 2011)

visigoth77 said:


> So say the fighting stopped tomorrow. Not saying we could love each other, that's not possible. But if we just quit arguing. Is it better to be in a two parent household where the parents are basically roommates or better to divorce and just let her deal with the fallout?


Was there ever love between the two of you?


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## Hope1964 (Sep 26, 2011)

LOL they might. Where I live, we have what's called The Family Center that offers all kinds of different classes for parenting, including parenting after divorce.


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## visigoth77 (Apr 26, 2013)

EleGirl said:


> Was there ever love between the two of you?


When I look back, no. I mean we both love some of the same things. Movies, TV, video games, music. But not each other really. All that stuff was a fulfilling substitute for a long time. I don't think either of us realized it.


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## mattsmom (Apr 2, 2013)

Children learn what they live. Do you think you and your husband can "fake it" well enough that she will know what a normal relationship looks like when it comes time for her to find a husband? My greatest motivation when I left my first husband was the fact that I didn't want my children to grow up and think that was the way married people were supposed to behave. Granted, my situation at the time was very different from the one you describe, but the premise with the children is still the same.

Blessings,
Mattsmom


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## visigoth77 (Apr 26, 2013)

mattsmom said:


> Children learn what they live. Do you think you and your husband can "fake it" well enough that she will know what a normal relationship looks like when it comes time for her to find a husband?


I honestly can't see either one of us ever getting married again after this. We'd probably date but neither one of us is going down this road again. So it isn't as though my daughter would ever have the opportunity to see a 'normal' relationship unless she was at a friend's house or something.


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## Hope1964 (Sep 26, 2011)

I hate it when people think that mom+dad+kids is what's normal and everything else isn't. My kids grew up in a normal home, thank you very much. Just because I was a single mom didn't make us all abnormal!


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## visigoth77 (Apr 26, 2013)

Hope1964 said:


> I hate it when people think that mom+dad+kids is what's normal and everything else isn't. My kids grew up in a normal home, thank you very much. Just because I was a single mom didn't make us all abnormal!


That's why I put normal in quotes because I didn't want to start a whole "WHAT'S NORMAL???!!" debate. But I agree with that idea. My friend is going through a terrible divorce right now. Her soldier husband came home from his second Afghan tour with PTSD and just decided he didn't want them anymore. And the other day her son told her they (She and her son) aren't a family anymore because they don't have a Dad. She was devastated.

Single moms or dads aren't abnormal. It may not be society's ideal but whose marriage is really and truly like a Father Knows Best rerun every single day?


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## SlowlyGettingWiser (Apr 7, 2012)

> Part of me says if I love my daughter I'll just tough it out for her sake and give up on any chance of love for myself. And then another part is kind of depressed at that idea.


If you LOVE your daughter, SHOW HER that people WILL make mistakes, that they CAN acknowledge them, recover from them, and move on to make their lives better after having LEARNED from their mistakes!

What more valuable lesson is there?

If you two stay together, your daughter WILL marry a man who is EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE to her. She is doomed to it because *that* is what she sees in YOUR marriage. She will repeat it BECAUSE it's familiar....she won't necessarily LIKE IT, but she'll UNDERSTAND it....she'll be able to PREDICT outcomes. Is *that* what you two want for her? That will be HER idea of a "normal" marriage.


Get out.
Both of you get into a co-parenting class (some states MANDATE it for divorcing parents.) Tell your husband to do it for your DAUGHTER...he OWES it to her as her FATHER!
Get into Individualized Counseling for YOURSELF to fix your OWN problems. You have them or you would not be in this situation...or questioning *why* you're in it.

Try reading "Codependent No More" (might be free via your library). Read the book CAREFULLY and answer the questions at the end of every chapter. You'll be AMAZED at what you learn about yourself, accept it, deal with it, and fix it. Then, you'll have HEALTHIER RELATIONSHIPS from here on out to model for your daughter.


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## mattsmom (Apr 2, 2013)

_I hate it when people think that mom+dad+kids is what's normal and everything else isn't. My kids grew up in a normal home, thank you very much. Just because I was a single mom didn't make us all abnormal_! 

Hope1964,

I hope you didn't misunderstand, because I certainly didn't mean to be offensive. I, too, raised my children as a single mother, and they are absolutely amazing. I left my first husband, because I didn't want my children to think that the way he and I lived together was "normal" and that they should expect their relationships to be like that. 

I don't know what a truly "normal" relationship looks like, but I feel rather certain that it doesn't involve two people living in the same house, but never communicating, touching, or giving the appearance that they care for one another. I wanted my children to grow up knowing that when two people loved each other, they wanted to be near one another. If that means that Mommy and Daddy don't live together, anymore, then so be it. The people that remain, either Mommy and the kids or Daddy and the kids can still have a "normal" loving relationship within the home.

Thanks,
Mattsmom


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## Wiltshireman (Jan 23, 2013)

I can see how a couple who had "fallen out of love" or become "just friends" might stay together in order to provide a stable / financially secure home for their growing children.

But if as you say your relationship has degenerated into one long argument you would not be doing right by anyone (you, your partner, your child) by putting yourselves through the ringer on a daily basis. If counseling / marriage guidance have not or will not improve things for you both then I am sorry to say that you might be better off cutting your losses and trying for an amicable separation. If it does come to this then if possible / practicable do try for joint custody so that the child will have regular contact with both parents.


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## mattsmom (Apr 2, 2013)

SlowlyGettingWiser,

Excellent advice. "Codependent No More" is an wonderful resource. I tried a CoDA meeting prior to moving to Podunk. I think with a different group, it could have been amazingly beneficial. It might be good for Visigoth to check into and see if there are any meetings of that type in her area. It's just good to have the support of others who understand where you're coming from. It sounds crazy, but if there are no CoDA meetings near you, Al Anon is good even if your spouse isn't alcoholic. It still deals with issues of codependence.

Blessings,
Mattsmom


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