To The Parents Who Stayed Together ‘For Their Kids,’ We Really Wish You Hadn’t
“The Parent Trap” was one of my favorite movies growing up. Who didn’t want to find out they had an identical twin out there?
Separated at birth, twins Hallie and Annie meet at summer camp and switch places in hopes of getting their divorced parents, Elizabeth and Nick, back together. It’s a cute movie full of its own quirks (furniture on the roof? peanut butter and Oreos?).
My favorite part, though, was always the ending. After reuniting and almost falling back into love, Elizabeth and Nick go their separate ways, and Elizabeth and Annie fly back to London, leaving Hallie and her father back in Napa Valley.
But when Elizabeth and Annie walk into their house, it is Hallie who greets them, saying “did you know the Concord gets you here in half the time?”
Elizabeth is momentarily stunned until she realizes the father of her children and the love of her life followed her across the world, too. They kiss, triumphant music plays, the twins smile as their parents fall back into love, and Hallie drops to the ground in surprise, grinning “We actually did it!” and the movie ends with another wedding and Natalie Cole singing. It’s magical.
I would think most kids who grew up with divorced parents dreamed that their parents would fall back in love and remarry. I think as a young child, you hold onto that hope because it was better than the realization that your parents would never be together.
My parents met at an Italian feast in 1996. My mother was on vacation here in Chicago with her uncle and friends, and my paternal grandmother invited them over to dinner at her house after the feast. My mother and father met there. They talked on the phone every day, from Chicago and Italy in 1997, and were married in 1998.
They’re still married today. I wish they weren’t.
Between 40 and 50 percent of American marriages end in divorce. The reason for each divorce varies. They can include: adultery, money, children, or things simply “not working out.” 75 percent of married Americans say they are happy. But what about the other 25 percent? Do they wish they were divorced? Do they blame the fact that they stayed together on their children?
Research shows that staying in an unhealthy marriage is detrimental to children. These kids can begin to form beliefs of low self-esteem, of believing they are responsible for the failure in their parents’ marriage, chronic stress, intimacy issues, communication issues, and are more likely to suffer from depression. So what is the conclusion?
Sometimes it’s better to be the kid who doesn’t want mommy and daddy to be happy together and stop fighting.
Did I ever hope for that? I’m not sure. All I know is that at some point I stopped believing there was ever a possibility. That it would have been better for me had they gotten divorced.
A friend of mine told me how “lucky” I was that my parents were still together. She didn’t understand that I had spent the weekend crying in my car because of their fighting. How I had gotten caught in their crossfire. How their words hurt me, too. I didn’t feel very lucky. As far as I knew, both of her parents were still involved in her life, and they were still civil with each other. That was more than I could say.
As I grow older, my memories of them happy became more and more faded. I can’t remember if there was ever a time when they didn’t fight. I just remember all of the screaming matches over stupid things and how they told me to keep my mouth shut.
Until someone pointed out to me how bad I was at communicating my feelings, I didn’t realize how much I internalized it all. How incapable I was of saying how I felt because my feelings were always claimed to be invalid. According to them, I was unappreciative and whiny. I wasn’t malnourished or starving and no one was hitting me, so I didn’t have a reason to be upset with them.
I was supposed to pretend everything was fine and ignore the war that happened in front of me. Because of me.
This is the part where you say, “but it’s not your fault” and you can argue that point to the ends of the Earth, however, parents will use that. They’ll say “I stayed with your mother because of you” and “we got into this fight because of you” and even if you think you’re letting it bounce off, part of it stays with you, and you blame yourself for things that are out of your control.
I spent my whole childhood feeling like I was trapped inside of a cardboard box. There was no air, it was a struggle to breathe, and no matter how many times I banged on the box, no one opened it. No one heard me. I felt suffocated.
Every smart adult in my life told me to tell them how I felt. They didn’t understand that I tried. I told them to get a divorce. If they got a divorce I could let go of the breath I was holding and I would be free. My mother won’t leave unless my father divorces her, my father is too cheap to divorce her, and the cycle continues.
Another thing is the lies. One parent will trash talk the other, tell you something completely terrible that makes you feel like the scum of the Earth, and the other will refute it and say it never happened. You don’t know who is lying. You don’t know who to trust. If you’re an only child, you become delusional because you can’t remember who said what anymore. You go through it alone. You become trapped in their words and only their words.
My father used to corner me every time we got into a car to unload his emotional baggage on me. About how my mother was a heartless woman who didn’t love him, how he wanted them to do normal couple things, how she wouldn’t sign their checks. They didn’t have joint bank accounts or cosign on a house or pay the same bills. They might as well have been divorced. They don’t even talk to each other unless it is to demand that the other does something. He would say the word ‘divorce’ and I’d feel the weight of the world on my shoulders double each time.
Once I went to college, I realized it really was not my problem. They could do whatever they wanted: divorce, stay together, talk, not talk. They couldn’t blame me for their faults because I didn’t live there anymore. As long as they’d paid my tuition, I would gladly answer their phone calls, message them, and help them with their tech problems. I wasn’t homesick for them in the slightest. The distance and the time between us allowed me to love my parents again and not resent them.
My mother told me I looked happy. I couldn’t lie. I’d had the weight of the world lifted off my shoulders. I felt free, free to do whatever I wanted.
Relationships are hard and complicated. I get that. But only the people in them can make them complicated. Someone once said to me, “you always have a choice to walk away, even if you don’t think you do,” and that applies here more than anywhere else. My parents had the choice to be happy and be free. Instead, we were all prisoners within ourselves.
Kids notice everything. They ingest everything. They are more perceptive than you think. And if you keep fighting, they’ll start blaming themselves. They’ll lash out, or they’ll push everything inside because they’ll feel their problems fall short to the war. It will all bottle up until they can’t hold it in anymore. They will resent you. They will count down the days until they can leave, and then they won’t come back. If you’re lucky, they’ll find a way to love you again and understand your choices, that is if your choices actually had reasoning.
In short: I wish my parents had gotten a divorce when I was younger. We could have all been happier. I want them to be happy.
They bring out the worst in each other. I know my parents are decent humans. But it doesn’t mean that the war between them didn’t leave me with emotional scars. They are invisible scars that I will carry with me forever.
