Children of Divorce (Seeking personal experience)

An idea for a novel dropped into my head, and I know its going to bother me for the rest of my life if I don't at least try to write it. However, one of my main characters parents have just divorced. She's 16 and rebels. However, I've never experienced divorce. Would anyone who's had the experience of parents divorcing be willing to share with me how they felt? I know that's kind of personal, but I really want to make this legit. Either just respond to this thread or private message me. Thank you so much.

Hi there! This is exactly the sort of question that fits best in the Reference Desk. I'm going to move it over there, and change the title to something that will help others find your question.

I know I'm not going to have a normal response, but I actually thought it was best that my parents divorced. I was 18 at the time. If you want more details, you can PM me.

My Dad walked out when I was week old, and they got divorced soon after. I see him every other weekend. I'm very, very, very glad my parents divorced, as to say I don't get on well with my father at all, and neither does the rest of my family. I don't know if that has any relevance for you, but if you have any questions...

My parents didn't get divorced, but my friend's parents did, however, when she was in high school. She always said "about time. They hated each other."

My parents are in the process of getting a divorce. They have been having marriage problems since I was seven or eight years old. The thing is that I wanted my parents to divorce all through high school. I just wanted it to be done. This didn't happen, because my dad was loathe to part with his money and because my mom knew that once she split from my dad she couldn't interfere with any problems we'd have with him. I'm sure that's not typical, because you hear 5942035 stories about how kids want their families to get back together and don't want to choose between parents, etc.

I don't get along with my dad well, so to me I was actually pleased when I found out my parents were actually separating. But when I was younger, it bothered me. It took me a long time to realize that first, my parents weren't going to get back together no matter how much I hoped otherwise, and second, that my mom, my brother, and I were a family, and that was okay. My mom and my brother are my best friends - because I'm close to them, I don't feel like I'm caught in the middle or without a family, and we're so close partly because my dad was gone.

Hope this helps! (:

My parents finally got divorced when I was 20; I was 8 when I started thinking that they should just do it, so they'd stop fighting all the time.

Maybe it's because my sisters and I were pretty much grown up when it happened (my younger sister was 18), but it really wasn't that bad. I lived with my dad for a little while when I was home from college, because the apartment my mom ended up in was a two bedroom, so my younger sister was living with her and my older sister was living on her own. Then my mom bought a house, so I had a room there, and my older sister ended up having to move back in with our dad for a while. We still do things as a family--I need to call my father this week to figure out when the five of us are going out to dinner for mine, my sister's, and my mother's birthdays, since they're all in February.

My younger sister didn't take the divorce as well as my older sister and I did. But she also sort of didn't see it coming, and she was the only one really living at home when this was all happening, since I was away at college and our older sister was living on her own. I think she agrees these days that they're a lot better off being divorced.

I think the weirdest part for me was that, just before the divorce was finalized (but after my dad had already moved out), my mom sold the house we'd lived in for 15 years, because she couldn't afford it by herself. We literally moved out three days after I got home from college, and that weekend that I was home, there wasn't any furniture in the house, so I was sleeping on the floor of my old bedroom with my blankets from school.

My parents are divorced. It was best for both of them, and I'm happy for them. And I love my stepmother.

I'm not a very good example of a teenager who might rebel against this sort of thing :P

I was about 13 when my parents divorced, but I didn't really rebel, partly because it wasn't my personality, but also because the whole ordeal was my mother rebelling against the whole being a mom and wife thing. It's hard to be a rebellious teen when your mother is too busy acting like a self-centered, hormone-crazed teenager herself.

I'm sure if my mother were still alive she would bring up various things I had done that she found rebellious, like being smart-mouthed, or crabby or nasty, but at thirteen, I think she would have had to put up with them anyway, and vicious arguments had been going on for a while. Being forced to leave our childhood home to move to another state and enter a new school because she got primary custody was not going to make us happy nor particularly cooperative but it really didn't stop the arguing, she just argued with me instead of my father. (Hmm, what is the common denominator here?)

The biggest issue was my mother divorced my father to follow her dream, which as an adult I now realize was to marry her rich doctor boyfriend. When that didn't work out, she was very bitter and argumentative, but when the money ran low, my father wasn't so bad and she tried to get back together with him. She had tried to poison us against our father with stories of abuse, extramarital affairs and emotional abuse (which my sister still believes to this day), but she underestimated my ability to see through her b.s. (Hint: if you want the kids to believe your husband is a cheater, don't complain openly about your BOYFRIEND'S behavior, and if you claim their father is emotionally abusive, remember they can hear you when you spew verbal abuse at the top of your lungs, even when you made them 'go play outside').

One particularly nasty issue (that is apparently quite common amongst dysfunctional divorcees with children) that would always lead to trouble between me and my mother is the fact that children or divorce still look like/resemble/share character traits/quirks/facial structure and expressions with the other parent. Some divorcing parents will grow to hate (or cultivate hate) for the other parent to such an extent, that they will get angry and lash out at a child if they happen to say, do or 'make a face' like the other parent. There is nothing the child can do to NOT look like someone who shares half their genes, and it's totally irrational on the part of the parent, but it happens, particularly when they are already stressed or angry about something else. Often in an otherwise unrelated argument, a certain look or phrase unlocks the anger the parent has against their previous spouse. Combine this with a young teen just about to enter menarche and you can imagine how nasty arguments could get.

Eventually my father got sick with what turned out to be terminal cancer, and he and my mother remarried. Gone were the abuse accusations, and the party line was 'I married him so we could be a family again.' After he died, she tried the whole 'he was so abusive' crap all over again. My sister still can't reconcile the two, but believes Saint Mommy. I never got along with my mother because I knew it was all crap, and even there was some truth to it (Dad wasn't a saint either), there was no good reason for telling us beyond drama and victim playing for my mother.

Some people should divorce because they just can't get along. Some people are just self-centered people who never should have had children to begin with, much less have gotten married. And while some people think divorce 'damages' children, sometimes that's just the loudest period of time in a long history of dysfunction, a symptom of a more systemic problem. While it's good that people CAN divorce now, what isn't good is that people often feel no responsibility to be good spouses or parents because divorce is so easy.

Feel free to PM if you have more questions.

This is a rather unusual situation, but it might be relevant. My parents aren't divorced yet, but they made it clear some time ago that they're going to get divorced as soon as my youngest sibling has moved out of the house. They don't hate each other or even particularly dislike each other; they just don't romantically love each other anymore, either. (That change is due in part to the fact that my father figured out a few years ago that he's actually gay. Honestly, though, I think it would have happened, regardless. I can't imagine how they ever fell in love in the first place; their personalities grate like fingernails on a chalkboard.) For the moment, they consider themselves to be in an "open marriage," which is to say that they've both had boyfriends and neither considers it cheating. Coming to this point has been a very gradual process, so neither I nor my siblings were surprised or upset when they first explained it to us (at which time I was 16, my brother 13, and my sister 11).

My parents divorced when I was seven.

In short, my parent's respective partners were probably mentally ill. Also, my parents used emotional blackmail in order to win me on their side. It ranged from "You don't want me to be alone, right?" to "Your life is going to be worse if you live with them." I'm not going to go too much into detail, but there was so much dysfunction in my house, I'm surprised my brother and I weren't taken away.

I know my experiences aren't typical of divorce, but for years I believed that every divorced family was like this (and by extension, every married couple...I mean, they had to get divorced at some point in my mind). The amount of shock I had while watching Cadet Kelly was truly amazing. I had no idea that divorced parents can stand in the same room together. Not only could my parents not be in the same room together, but they couldn't even enter the building at the same time or go through the same entrance. I honestly hated my parents for getting divorced and while it might've been bad if they stayed together, I can't imagine it being that much worse.

My parents got divorced when I was 5 years old and that's because I don't remember the time when they were happy together and that stuff. I remember a little bit of the time of the divorce but not really. I see him every second weekend, every tuesday and every second thursday. That might sound stressy, but he lives just across the street^^ I don't know it any other way so I don't think things like "It's good that they are divorced now" or "I want them to get back together". It has never been about that. But I think the reaction of a teenager whose parents want to divorce is mostly just like the others told before. They say things like "It's better this way, they hate each other, I knew it before, ...". But I know many teenagers who say so and in the night they lie in bed crying. Of course that's not the same with everyone, some of them really mean it I guess. The best thing is that you can decide. You are the writer, you are god ;)

My parents divorced when I was 7 years old I think. I didn't really understand. My mom started sleeping in my room and sharing a bed with me before they really said what was happening. I think it was best that they divorced, they didn't get along too well and argued a lot, really loud and sometimes threw things. Right after they were divorced, my mom moved with me and my older brother to stay with her friend in Louisiana. My dad was in California, where we moved from, and I found it very upsetting to be parted from him. Eventually, we moved back and now I see my dad whenever he's off usually. My parents get along now and way better than when they were married. But I haven't rebelled or anything since it happened. I was really upset at the time but I don't think it's affected me much.

Hope this helps. :]

My parents got divorced when I was 5.

My mom and stepdad separated when I was in middle school, and formally divorced when I was in high school. I still remember when he left her... she took me to school the next morning (unusual) and was apologizing and bawling while driving my sisters to daycare. Needless to say, I'm so glad that they aren't together anymore. He was horrible for her.