Progymnasmata

Well written, Comedian. I'm fortunate enough to not have been touched by divorce. While I always envied the kids that got away with more through their parents' separation, I now look back and can easily see, "wow. That was one screwed up kid."
I like how you phrased 'It's like picking the scab off an old wound.' I can relate to that bit, even if not in the same way.

Your edited family history is fairly common, I'm afraid, if not agreeable or right. I fail to understand why good times can't be remembered independently of the bad. =/. Anyway. I feel for you, but both your parents sound like really cool people.

"Families are stories that connect one generation to the next. But my original family story is neither written, pictured, or lived except in pieces with gaps and fissures too wide to for imagination to fill."

Boy, does that sound like a family that's been through a divorce. That is it, even for the parents, and I guess I should know, since I am divorced. I feel a great deal of pain for my kids, but the healing sometimes seems very far away. It has affected them a great deal. Their father is remarried. They visit, but their dad no longer makes an attempt to bond with them individually. He and his wife are a team and they will not be separated.

Lately he has gotten even more unkind. I finally with great sadness mentioned it to my oldest son, who is 25. "You have to be a bad ex," he said, "D's ex is a bad ex, and you have to be bad, too, so it's them against the world." Oh.

It makes me sad that "we" can't be for these wonderful young men more than we have to be against each other. But that seems to be the way it's going to be.

Sorry to hear this Comedian. My parents were devoted (only to obsession) with each other but at the cost of investing themselves in the lives of their children. Intellectually I know I was loved but I never felt it. I've blogged stuff in the past touching elements of this and my only real advice is to attempt some sort of reconcilation with them--though I think you pretty much have. No one walks away from a divorce clean--not even the innocent. So sad. It's the world we live in I'm afraid. Thank you for sharing this. I had thrown away a blog entry just last night regarding my mother as it was too blunt and spiteful and would have helped and honored no one. Take care.

I'll confess that your reaction is somewhat of a revelation. I've always thought that my husband's reaction to his own parents divorce was a bit of an oddity. His father had and affair and left his family. The result is that my husband is perhaps one of the most loyal husbands that I could have ever hoped for. It is one thing that I'm most certain of. He is entirely trustworthy in that regard, and I'm grateful for that. Your wife is lucky to have you :)

Thinking of pictures telling the story of your life... I look at my childhood photos and they very seldom tell the story of life. I think it is partially the nature of it. My photographic history does not tell of my family's story. It hides the arguments and anger. It doesn't tell of the constant battle between my Mom and sister, rather you see happy times and fun vacations. Pictures, whether skewed by how they're taken or altered later, never really tell a story.

Meg

It's difficult to tell whether staying together or moving apart is the best option. My own family would have been better off with a divorce - though we wouldn't have felt that way at the time. There were opportunites to do so, but it was difficult for my Mother to sustain the separation.

My parents were particularly bad for each other, but it is only in retrospect that I could come to such a conclusion. That's only my own view. My siblings may have a different view, though a couple of them, when they were adults, helped my Mother to separate secretly from my Father, and move to where he wouldn't find her.

She died three weeks after escaping to the coast, by all accounts much happier than she had been for many years.

Wow, profound entry Comedian. I was mesmerized with reading this and all the responses. No divorce in my family. There were times my parents probably could have reached a point of divorce, but being old fashion Italian Catholic, divorce was not an option. Frankly I think it was a good thing. I don't feel any fissures, any sense of bifurcation. My vision of my family is extemely cohesive. My sister's husband left her and their two daughters, and while the younger daughter seems to have adjusted, the older daughter refuses to see him. She hates him. It's now been six or seven years (my niece is fifteen) and she has refused to see him at all. She refuses his gifts and visibly becomes uncontrollably angry when there is a suggestion of having him come over. I don't know if she will ever get over it.

Mother Hubbard in a different thread mentioned that divorce should only be for the extreme circumstances. I agree. Society itself is fragmenting itself into groups and types. That is the nature of modern life, but divorce is the most powerful fragmenting force within our lives. Our notion of what it means to be a unit is disappearing. And i don't think that's good.

I feel similarly to Paul about my parents' marriage. I'm in no position to tell them how to live their lives, but throughout my entire childhood and teen years they fought like cats and dogs, constantly threatening separation but never really going through with it. I can't imagine a divorce being any worse for a child than living through the constant uncertainty and turmoil of nonstop fighting. Their relationship is complicated by the fact that my mother has some mental health issues and she is very difficult to be around at times. After fighting with my father she would sometimes disappear for a day or two, and those few days were hell for me, I was always in fear of her committing suicide. Divorce is almost never pretty anyway, even when it is the right thing to do.

This was very beautifully written and I appreciate you sharing this intimate and personal experience. I've seen other men have the same reaction. It's like they always wanted to grow up to be just like their dad and then were suddenly afraid they were just like their dad. It's a shame that this happened to your family. It's so easy for us to think about our own wants and allow our obligations to appear a little less significant. I was a mother before I realized that my dad did not walk on water. It was quiet a blow, and I'm not even talking about a serious offense. I just really always thought he was flawless and then realized that he was just a man. It's silly sounding, but it set me back. I can't imagine the emotional reaction I would have had to something like this.

Divorce really breaks things into fragments .... and somehow i thought that my family were only pieces of something named family that i never felt...
Well ! as much as i enjoyed reading this post by you as much as i felt strange that there are kids like me who experienced what i have been through .... Its so strange sometimes to look around and see your parents separated , see them dislike each other and see the home become just a house.

Do you know Comedian what my deepest fear is ?
Its to fail as a parent just like how my parents did ? I always think of this though am not yet married .. i don't want my kids to go through what i have been through coz i know its hard and i might have been strong enough to overcome it but i don't think my kids can . Maybe that is why i am afraid of the commitment and getting married.

Am happy your a great father... and though i know am not the one to give the advice but be your kids best friend !

Good luck and thanks for sharing this !

Hoope

Wow -- Thanks to everyone for offering your perspectives on this issue and my post. LitNet is truly wise, even though it bickers like a. . .like a. . .family.

It's sort of funny; if I were to go up and edit this blog some more, I'd add to the parts about story telling. The thing that affects me most right now about that old divorce is that I feel like my children can't participate in the story of my family.

I know. I know. I can just add the divorce part. But the story is not that simple. (And I've already had the grandma/grandpa are divorced talk with them). Damn, this feeling is hard to explain. Let me explain it this way:

Let's say you're reading Great Expectations and you're half-way through it. You really like the book thus far. It's a good story and you like the the characters and relationships they have with each other.

You put the book on your night stand and go to sleep.

The next morning you pick up the book to start the first few pages of the second half to go along with your morning coffee. After a couple sentences you realize that it's not Great Expectations; it's the second half of Moby-Dick. You double-check everything, but nothing seems changed except the story is totally different. Who the hell are these people? What the 'eff is going on? Where'd my story go?

Now that Great Expectations/Moby-Dick book feels like the story of my original family. Try explaining that to 5 year old.

God ! is it gonna be that hard to explain ... i really don't want to explain anything .. they will figure everything out when they grow up - well when they come to life first hehehe

If i were you i would only try to make them see the beautiful part of that ... just like how i try to see the happy part of my special and not weird family - it makes sense then ... Life is really strange wheni try to focus on how things goes ..

PS: Great Expectation is one o my fav work for Dickens ..

I imagine that it would be difficult to explain to your children. I don't know where to tell you to start, but perhaps you tell your story instead of that of your family. I imagine that kids understand much more than what they are given credit for, and even though everything upended seeing it through your eyes may help them to understand more.

I wonder, Comedian, if your problem in explaining this to your daughter is less about her and more about your own uncertainty of feeling about your parent's divorce? It's the one thing I couldn't figure out, well written though it is, about this entry: what is it exactly that you're angry/disappointed about? Is it that your parents created an illusion that you felt fooled about, or is it that they didn't keep up the illusion? Both run through the thread and I felt unable to pin down exactly why it is you feel so negatively about it. Perhaps if you're struggling to understand and/or come to terms with it, that is the cause of your difficulty in trying to explain it? I'm curious if you've ever discussed these feelings with your parents?

As to explaining to a 5 year old, well my experience is that kids are much more accepting of what 'society' would deem to be 'unusual' or 'different' family arrangements than adults are. They're not rigid with the illusion of a family 'structure'. Certainly my kids had and have no difficulty understanding or coming to terms with the fact that I am not their brother's Mum, and our neighbours' kids, whose parents are both previously divorced with kids from their previous marriages and a child of their own, have no diffuculty understanding or accepting this arrangement. They just take it in their stride, because they haven't necessarily formed expectations yet of how things 'should' be.

Perhaps it would help to think less of your family as a story or a structure and more like a river. Sometimes a weak spot forms on the bank and the river splits in two. It's still the same river from the same source, but it's gone in a different direction. That's all.

As to your book which starts as Great Expectations and the next time you pick it up it's Moby Dick, that sounds remarkably like if on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino. It's an excellent book, well worth the read.

An interesting, thought provoking blog Comedian. I admire your honesty.

Fifth -- thanks for the really thoughtful response. You know, I think you're right; the major problem is me and my dealing this this old scrap of family history. And your observation about illusions really got me thinkin'. . . . I think wrestling with illusions is part of the issue. But I think the illusion is not the past but the present (in this family situation at least).

My dad is not really that happy now; neither is my mother, but they both act as happy as cheetahs after a kill. And this isn't just my angst talkin' here. I have a good eye for fakery. Then the subject of the other parent is usually one to be avoided. . . .this of course cuts out practically all mention of our growing up. Nice.

Anyway, I'm just ranting here.

But you're right that I don't really know what it is that bothers me still about this. I know it has something to do with the fragmentation, pretending, story-telling. Maybe I'll post another entry when I found out.

It's a shame your Mum and Dad aren't happy. After all that trauma, and I know divorce is traumatic for everyone, at least they should be better off at the end of it. I can understand, now, why you might feel distrustful of them. If they hid what was going on all that time before the divorce and they're still hiding things now then it must be hard to trust them. It's not like you're a child anymore and need protecting, though if this is how they've spent so much of their time perhaps it is hard to switch that off. I don't know. I know there have been times I've hidden things from my kids because I didn't want them to worry, and I wonder if that instinct ever really goes away. I hope so, because I'd much rather have an honest relationship with my kids when they're grown up than the alternative. Because trust goes two ways - perhaps you don't feel you can trust your parents because by hiding things from you it gives the impression that the don't trust you? I have a sister who behaved that way with me, it was almost as though she could never accept me as an adult, although perhaps it was more that she felt she had to be the one who had the answers and couldn't show any sign of 'weakness'. Who knows? Either way it ruined our relationship. Sigh. Emotions are a complex thing.

And I can understand your feelings towards not being able to discuss your childhood. It must be like having no history, or perhaps no shared history. And although it isn't directed towards you, on some level it must feel like a form of rejection.

I hope you figure things out, and if nothing else can find a place where you feel at ease with the situation if not entirely happy.

Divorce. If only people could divorce with grace and maintain, if not love, cordiality and mutual respect. And it would also be good if people could look at a split relationship as less like failure and more like a part of the journey that brought them to here, with good points and bad points just as any journey must have. Because it strikes me that it is not divorce on its own but the way people conduct themselves during and as a result of a divorce that causes the damage. I wouldn't like to see the option gone, but I would like to hope it wasn't necessary. But now I'm pipe dreaming

It doesn't surprise me that they are still unhappy. Except for severe circumstances, people are unhappy not for the situation they are in but for what's in their heart. That's why so many people who divorce once divorce again. Today I heard Larry King is divorcing for the eighth time. Some perspective on divorce:

For every two marriages that occurred in the 1990s, there was one divorce. This does not mean that the divorce rate is 50%. Although, it is correct that in the United States during most of the 1990s, there were about two marriages for every divorce in a single year. But this does not mean that the divorce rate is 50% because the people getting married in a single year are not the same ones getting divorced. This is a very common error and it results from the fact that Vital Statistics reports the number of marriages and divorces for each year. It is easy to think that some type of divorce rate can be calculated from these numbers, but it can't.

and

In 2001, about 20% of adults over age 15 had ever divorced. The number of adults who have ever been married and later divorced is the preferred indicator of the divorce rate. The rate varies for different age groups. Among adults who were 50-59 years old in 2001, 39% of women and 41% of men (these percentages are not statistically different) had ever divorced. This group had the highest divorce rate in 2001.

http://missourifamilies.org/features...efeature17.htm

It's mostly the same people getting divorced multiple times.

You are either happy with yourself or you are not. The situation you find yourself in makes little difference.

Originally Posted by Virgil

It doesn't surprise me that they are still unhappy. Except for severe circumstances, people are unhappy not for the situation they are in but for what's in their heart. That's why so many people who divorce once divorce again...You are either happy with yourself or you are not. The situation you find yourself in makes little difference.

That's a bit of a sweeping generalisation Virgil. There's some truth in it, but it's not the whole story and when it comes to marriage/relationships it's only the tip of the iceberg. Just thinking about the people I know who have been divorced, none of them have been divorced more than once. And often the reason for their divorce is situational - their partner had an affair, or they had an affair, their partner emotionally or physically abused them, etc etc etc. I reckon if you're wife had an affair that'd make your marriage unhappy. Or perhaps it wouldn't. Only you can say. I'm pretty sure it'd make me unhappy if my husband had an affair and I suppose it'd be true to say that if I could find it in my heart to suck it up and forgive him then I'd be happier, but then it also might indicate I didn't care that much about him too, if I wasn't affected by it. The stats are interesting, but I wonder if it says more about cultural changes than it does about self esteem - for example, when I was a child it was very common for people to marry at 18-20 years old, and in my social 'class', for want of a better way to put it, it was not uncommon for people to marry because they'd accidentally become pregnant or in some cases deliberately become pregnant in order to secure a marriage because as soon as a baby was on the way wedding bells would be ringing. I don't think there's so much social pressure these days to get married, and more people seem to be leaving it longer or never bothering.

Of course then there are people who get married for the wrong reasons, or perhaps it's truer to say that it seemed like the right reason at the time but it wasn't enough to sustain the relationship long term, or perhaps in the flush and certainty of youth they really, genuinely thought "this is it!" and only later on did they begin to understand how far those youthful decisions can be off the mark.

I don't doubt that sometimes it is driven by self esteem issues, one way or another. But it's not the sole or necessarily the primary issue. Relationships are much more complex than that.

Yes, you're right, Fifth, my statement was overly sweeping, but i cannot find the actual words to describe the nuance. The perfect phrasing is somewhere in between. You list a number of reasons why marriages might lead to divorce. I did qualify to say that the extreme situation (especially violence) warrents divorce. Emotional abuse is a little fuzzy, but in the cases where there really is emotional abuse, sure that warrents divorce too. I can't help but feel even many one time divorced people are looking for something else, another emotional high. I guess it takes some another try to realize that every day life is hum drum. Yes, people got married younger in the past and divorced much less. I come from an old fashion Italian family, and of the generation before me, between either my mother's and my father's side, there was not a single divorce. None. I can tell you there was a lot of bickering and fighting, but no one left anyone. Of my genereation, I can count several divorces, and I described my sisters above here.

I think it's too easy to divorce these days and people want new experiences over commitment. I guess it's ok with me if kids are not involved. I think it does harm kids. Kids who's parents divorced divorce themselves at a higher rate.

And let me also say, that from my expeience, it's usually the man in the relationship that is mostly at fault.

[QUOTE=The Comedian;bt47651]
Anyway, I'm just ranting here.

But you're right that I don't really know what it is that bothers me still about this. I know it has something to do with the fragmentation, pretending, story-telling. Maybe I'll post another entry when I found out.[/QUOTE]

You've likely got the right of it about what is bothersome. Even though my parents are still married, I've dealt with a similar relationship of adversity between my mom and sister since I was younger. I look at pictures of us as a family and all I can think is "lies, it's all lies". This is what I have to share with my kids, and the happy family is a big fat fairy tale with no happy ending. I don't live at home, and I haven't for years now, but it still rubs me raw to listen to the two of them. I do not know what to say when I'm asked by my kids about it, but they certainly see the problem.

Rant away, I like to. If my screen name was just a bit more anonymous I would say much more about my situation :)