While divorce can be a hardship for kids, it can also be
the best thing you could do for them. Put simply, there are
some marriages that just don’t deserve to live. If you can’t
or don’t want to fix it, maybe you should put it out of its
misery. Your kids might just thank you for it someday.
In fact, a rotten marriage or a lousy parent can
constitute an undesirable role model for a kid. When
conflict and violence dominate a family, divorce is a welcome
relief. It can mean personal safety, perhaps for the first
time in years. It can mean that we stop being victims.
When one parent calls a definite halt to irresponsible
and damaging behavior from the other they show their kids
that respect and responsibility are indispensable family
virtues.
When parents can be honest about the damage their bad
marriage is doing to their kids and do something about it,
the message to the kids is, “I care about you.”
Just because a divorce is positive doesn’t mean it isn’t
painful. But there are things that are worse and more
damaging than the pain of loss. Living in denial for years
is probably more destructive. It teaches kids to ignore
reality and to accept dysfunction as normal. It teaches them
not to trust their own perceptions.
Often, after a divorce, a child will experience a better
relationship with a parent than they did before. Indeed,
some parents are more available to their children after a
divorce than they have been throughout the marriage. When
the dysfunctional marriage ends the child may be able to see
their parent’s true nature for the first time.
Some divorces are worse than others. The same divorce
may be worse for one spouse than it is for the other. The
one being left may suffer more than the leaver. What is
positive for one partner may be negative for the other. The
child, observing this, learns that two apparently opposite
viewpoints can both be true. Also, that you can love two
people who don’t love each other.