I never expected how my father’s serial divorce would affect me over time.
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My biological parents divorced when I was under the age of two, and I have no real memories of them ever being together. Their divorce was a reality that I grew up with, but not a traumatic event. After the divorce, my mother found love with a woman, and we formed a family when I was four. When I say “my parents,” I mean my two moms, not my mother and father. My moms were the people who raised me.
This is not to say that my father did not contribute to parenting me; although he lived on the other side of the country, my brother and I would visit him twice a year. My father was a hopeless romantic, and loved to fall in love, fall out of love, and then fall in love with someone else. As a result, I have had four stepmothers and a few significant almost-step-mothers in between. Most of them I didn’t particularly like and I wasn’t particularly sad to see them go. Still, it was a loss, and I missed my assorted step-siblings in unexpected moments, though I didn’t dwell on it very much.
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What I didn’t expect was how my non-custodial parent’s serial divorce affected me over time. I didn’t live with him, after all. I had a solid family base with committed parents 90% of the year. The divorces didn’t seem to be worth discussing with anyone, they didn’t seem to affect me. When I filled out a stress evaluation in high school and answered yes to the question about recently having parents divorce, I felt like a fraud. It wasn’t really my parents. It wasn’t that big of a deal.
I’m sure he never gave much thought to the example he was setting, seeing as he lived over 3,000 miles away. But children watch their parents for clues to understand themselves as well as clues to how grownups act, even ones that live far away.
I always treated my mother’s partner as someone who would go away eventually, or who could be driven away if we tried hard enough. I loved her, I fought with her, I treated her as a parent, but deep down inside, I knew that she could leave anytime she wanted to. I had seen it happen over and over. All the family pictures and labels of step-sister or step-mother did not make any of my former family members stay in contact with me. When my dad broke up with them, they vanished from my life. Even though I did not live with my father, I was learning from his example.
As an adult, I married and divorced twice before I decided I wasn’t a good candidate for marriage. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in love, it was that I did not view marriage as a life-long contract. I am not saying that view is necessarily bad, or that people have to stay married forever. I am just saying that I couldn’t fathom a marriage that did stay together. I know I will love my kids forever, I know I will love my parents forever. I can’t turn that love off. But I have not historically looked at marriage with the same eye. I tried, but I couldn’t overcome the voice of experience in my head. I will love you forever, unless you…until you…except if you….
Secretly, I always worried I inherited some discontented gene from my father, making me incapable of life-long commitment. I saw my mother and her partner dance in the kitchen for over thirty years, and I knew I wanted that. I craved a stable life-long relationship, but I didn’t know if I had it in me. I didn’t know how to mean it forever. Was I more like my mom or my dad?
I did eventually fall in love again, and feel what it meant to know that I would love someone forever. But I still don’t know if I can hack being legally tied to anther person again. That unstable relationship role model provide by my father eroded my faith in relationships and eroded my faith in myself. Even though he wasn’t there full-time, he still mattered in deeper ways than I ever fathomed.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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It’s lot to process. My parents were always separated and divorced when I as yeas old. Both were cheaters. I always looked at my friend’s parents searching for a real marriage role model. The husband coming home from work. Supper being prepared and he walks up behind her and hugs her. The table is set and we sit down to eat together. The evening is piano and family time together. I felt such joy on those rare occasions with that family. Now, I am going through a second divorce. Both times, abandoned without explanation. People say my husband is a… Read more »
Sorry. The keys were messing up. I was 8 when my parents divorced.
I might have had a lot to add to the discussion, as my mother has been married seven times.
In my experience it seems kids that do not see much of one parent tend to idolize that parent and emulate them. It’s not surprising you feel you inherited this trait. I think it takes a lot of courage and being self aware to admit that. I grew up in a household with 2 parents that loved me but it was clear from the time that I was aware that my mother loved my father a lot more than he loved her. He was never faithful and it pained me to see my mom always hurting. Their marriage legally ended… Read more »
I definitely think that children idolize the noncustodial parent – I certainly did. Thanks for the insightful and personal response. I think parents don’t always realize how much their children watch them and learn unintentionally.
I don’t understand this. You say your mother had one stable relationship that you grew up in, while your father, whom you almost never saw, had several relationships… And the far away one affected you to lose your faith in lasting relationships, but your mothers’ that you grew up in would not affect you correspondingly stronger to believe that relationships could indeed be something lasting?
If that is correctly understood, I don’t understand why you blame your fathers influence for that without questioning why your mother’s relationship wasn’t enough of a role model to outweigh that?
Part of the problem is that my father was my heterosexual role model. My mother was gay, so I didn’t necessarily give her relationship the weight I should have in terms of what I wanted to emulate. Even though my father wasn’t around, we did still spend all summer there and a week or two in the winter, so he did matter. Thank you for commenting though, writing for me is about processing things, not necessarily having all the answers.
Wow – the author and I are so much alike.
I am twice married and divorced – never had a “healthy” marriage growing up to emulate. My mother left when I was 2 to be with a man that mistrated her. I lived with my dad and he was a serial cheater and has been married 5 times.
I just CANT do the legal commitment right now. I just dont think I can again. Other than my kids, I willing to lose anything and anyone. I dont think I can love a man unconditionally.
Just a comment – I don’t know if your lack of stable relationships as an adult should really be blamed on your dad 3,000 miles away while you were being raised by your moms. maybe none of it has anything to do with any of it, but more likely the culprit is the nurture of the parents closest to you and with whom you spent the most time.
It’s both a question of whether I inherited his propensity or learned from it. One of the problems with one hetero parent and one homosexual parent is that the one that is the same persuasion as the child often serves as a stronger role model, in my opinion. Kids look to their parents to see how to act, and I knew I was straight, so I watched him more. It might not be the same with two straight parents. I don’t know. I just thought that many people think that their actions don’t count if they aren’t custodial parents, but… Read more »