Fight for Your Children, Not Over Them

Children ought not to be victims of the choices adults make for them

Wade Horn

A few posts ago I was talking about a friend of a friend whose wife had been to see a lawyer about ending their marriage. My friend said that if it had been his wife, he would end the marriage right then.

I wasn’t surprised when my friend shared that he was going to court this morning to support his friend. The wife took their two children, aged 5 and 2, and moved into an apartment. There have been dueling restraining orders, accusations of domestic abuse, and more. In other words, a hot mess.

Unfortunately, this is only a slightly exaggerated version of what happens with far too many couples. And the children are the losers.

It’s a common belief that children are resilient and recover just fine from divorce. As a child of one myself, I respectfully disagree. Especially when one or both of the parents are angry and/or vengeful.

If you have children, you don’t really get divorced. You are still tied together as long as one of your children is alive.

And if all you have to fight about is your kids, they become your hostages.

I still remember one of my earliest clients. She was brought to me as a 5-year-old suffering from anxiety. Of course, she was. She was the figurative rope in her divorced parents tug of war. She was taught to lie because she knew she could never say positive things about either parent to the other.

I couldn’t really give her any tools to escape the situation.

I ran into her grandfather about fifteen years after she was my client. He was talking about his granddaughter getting married. I mentioned my client’s name. He said, “No, another granddaughter. The one you knew is a mess.”

She never stood a chance.

As a parent, you are your child’s first teacher of relationships. You may think they don’t know about the fights or the distancing or the dislike. But they absorb it like the air they breathe. They don’t fully understand it, but they integrate it. And many, me included, feel it’s their fault.

These feelings and experiences shape their future relationships.  And the legacy of divorce goes on.

And evidence shows that children do better when they grow up in stable, two-parent families.

But you can stop it. You can take responsibility for keeping your marriage on track and your family together.

But don’t wait too long. Don’t be in denial that it could never happen because things “aren’t that bad”.

Because you can either fight for your children or fight over them.

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Previously Published on The Hero Husband Project

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