Divorce

[xenologer]

Why are people surprised to learn that I have parents who got divorced? What exactly does a "child of a broken home" look like?

I propose a different definition of a broken home, or of a "whole" home. My homes were all broken before divorces happened. If my mother hadn't gone through divorces, she wouldn't be married to my stepfather now. Doesn't that mean she was right to discard the broken and malfunctioning marriages that came before?

Maybe we should borrow from the Fremen the "attitude of the knife--chopping off what's incomplete and saying: 'Now it's complete because it's ended here.'" Maybe then we can better judge what's broken and what's not.

I don't like feeling that this revelation--that there have been divorces in my family--adds to people's understandings of me. What is that knowing "Ah," or the enlightened nod? What do you know now that you didn't before? What's wrong with me that's suddenly been given an explanation, or right with me that suddenly has a cause? What does it even matter? I had more trouble and pain from the parent who stayed than the ones who came and went, and as bad as it all was I still got the best of it. It could have been much worse, and without the option of divorce it would have been.

So where's the tragedy? Where's the significance?

So now you know that my mother and father (and father, and father) have several marriages spread out among all of them, complete with other families and children. But what have you really learned?

Comments

[poshspice.livejournal.com]

I don't see why people would be surprised. I feel like practically everyone has divorced parents - it's not like this is 1953.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

It's hard for me to imagine growing up another way, let alone see why my family would have been less "broken" without divorce.

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

I'm always more surprised to run into people whose parents aren't divorced, honestly. And referring to it as a "broken" family is stupid. If the relationship isn't working, if it's falling apart, then you should end it.