Think twice, young lovers. Divorce is hell.

I'm watching family members with two young girls do everything wrong in their fresh estrangement. They're bitter, fighting in front of the whole family via e-mail taking cheap shots, frightening the children, the whole ten yards. She's triangulating with certain of his family members against him. He's calling her frigid.

Divorce is hellish. Be careful about picking a marriage partner.

freakin' mouths shut about their problems and their anger in front of their children. I hate that shit so much.

When my daughter's dad and I divorced, we vowed we would never, ever talk badly about each other in front of her. EVER. We may not have been able to make the marriage work, but we made THAT work. She was 2 when we split up. She's now 27, and has told both of us that we kept our word (we did).

A marriage doesn't always work out, but if people focus on their love for their children, the divorce doesn't have to be completely ugly.

I dated a guy once who was divorced. He and his ex, I discovered, were using their children as pawns in their ugly little games against each other. I dumped him, AND I told him why I did. That kind of shit disgusts me beyond words.

EW.

...the wife is triangulating with the man's narcissistic, psychopathic father against the husband. The wife is an authoritarian personality who has continued the belittling critical behavior that the father had always poured out on the husband. It's twisted. So the husband isn't just in a defensive battle against her, he's also battling his childhood wars against the emotional abuse he suffered from his father.

Triangulating with a spouse's parent in a family system is so awful. I'm passing along to them the Co-parenting Survival Guide and also a book on family systems therapy, hoping to quell some of this.

It's weird how we sometimes choose these ways to work out our issues.

the rest of us figured this out some time ago. The man is replicating his childhood in his marriage by choosing an authoritarian, emotionally abusive wife.

The sad part is that sometimes you just can't help people who are mired in a drama. They have to play it out and you can only stand by to pick up the pieces.

I wish they would get some family systems therapy. When they DID go for counseling for a couple of years, the wife would not allow the husband to see the family therapist privately.

FWIW

:shrug:

It means two people -- often of more than one generation -- aligning themselves against another family member. The object of their alignment then becomes what is called the "identified patient" -- the one who is deemed the dysfunction or sick one. Sometimes the identified person is an alcoholic. Sometimes he/she is just the one everyone dumps on. Sometimes the person is dysfunctional because they've been emotionally abused by family members who get some twisted reward out of putting him/her down.

I could only picture it as trying to track down someone with a walkie-talkie, and that didn't seem relevant here.

It's child abuse, pure and simple and brutal.

The term-of-choice when my parents parted company was "trophies," rather than "pawns," but the point is the same, alas.

And it is absolutely unacceptable for them to be airing their ultra-dirty laundry in front of their kids. The kids are going to be in therapy for years to deal with the ramifications of having witnessed their parents engage in such abusive, boundry-less behavior.

Our daughter is a beautiful, loving, caring young woman today, in part because of the vow we made to not drag her through our mud.

I really do not get parents who can't get over themselves enough to do that.

(The exception being a parent who is abusive; children need to be protected from that.)

My ex and I put the kids first, after all -- the differences were between US, the adults, and had nothing to do with our girls. We kept them out of it, and everything was totally civil. Shared joint custody. My ex even helped me go back to school and complete my education (he took the kids on whatever night I had classes).

Consequently, we never had an ounce of trouble with either one of our girls, they are well-adjusted, gorgeous smart young ladies, with healthy self-esteem. They know both of their parents love them, but realize now as adults just how ill-matched their dad and I were for one another.

Using kids as pawns or sounding boards will ultimately backfire. And it's just stupid.

but, it's disgusting they're dragging the children through the mud.

He asked what he should do after he told me he'd filed. I told him that in my experience, no matter what happened between him & his wife, to grit his teeth & keep a civil tongue in his head whenever & where ever he talked about it, especially around his kids. It doesn't matter what happens, or whether the judge seals the record or the courtroom, whatever one person says about the other WILL be passed along to the kids (usually via "helpful" & "concerned" relatives, ie, meddling mothers-in-law).

I told him it would be tough now, but years later, he'd be thankful he'd kept it all civil.

dg

My first marriage ended pretty amicably - my husband and I had just been very young when we married and it didn't work. We remained friends, however, so it was easy to make it as easy as possible on our kids.

My second marriage was a nightmare and it took everything I had but I never, EVER said a bad word about that man in front of our son or my daughters. I gave it the old vague, "Sometimes things just don't work out," answer whenever they asked why we divorced and I gritted my teeth and was civil to him, never keeping him from his son.

My son went to live with him when he was 11. He was in Virginia, I in California. From that day to this, I've seen him only once because his father blocked every effort I made.

However, my son is 19, loves me unconditionally, calls me frequently and knows who the asshole was because I kept my mouth shut and his father did not. He loves his dad but recognizes what a jerk he was about me. It is worth it to try for your kids. They will understand eventually.

this young woman was always providing free marriage advice to everyone who would listen
you see...she had married her twice divorced spouse and she was "the right one" for him..
and then after her first child was born...she went home for a romantic weekend and he told her..."I can't do this"
and he left her.

She ...both of them had shit for assets so the divorce went fast...he wanted out badly and she had no choice but to let him go ...

However...she made his life miserable as far as letting him see that child....the guy was an ass to her but he wanted in the worst way to be a part of that child's life...and she was so vindictive to him that in the end the pity people felt for her initially turned to disgust over her treatment of her ex...

:( I've seen several divorces that were as ugly or worse than that, and I couldn't believe how terrible the people were. To do that and involve the children is obscene. :grr: :mad:

My parents divorced when I was 16. It had been a long time coming, and I had known since I was around 9 years old that there were problems. However, Mom and Dad always made it very, very clear to me and my siblings that they loved us no matter what. They did not air their grievances or problems in front of us, and both of them sat down with us when I was 14 and Dad was getting ready to move out. They told us that just because they couldn't live together any more, it didn't mean that they did not love us. They explained that regardless of their problems, we were just as important to them as we ever were. They let us ask questions, like why Dad was moving out and why they were splitting up. In a tactful way without going into detail, they both said that they had problems that just couldn't be fixed no matter how hard they tried. We all cried and hugged each other, but never once did they drag us into it. :) I credit both Mom and Dad for handling it as well as could be.

I'm going through a hell of a divorce case right now and have been since last freaking September.

My lawyer said to me: "If you'd had a pre-nup then your husband wouldn't be trying to take you for everything you have."
(Yes, a man, 15 years older than me, wants my home, cars and retirement accounts.) :grr:

Me: "no kidding." (Tell me something I don't know for $150.ooo/hour.) :grr: