<p>
Well, that’s not a problem with divorce, at least in my case. (I kept the house; he moved out). </p>
<p>I can see it becoming an issue if one partner leaves and moves to a different city where the adult kids have no particular connection, and are unlikely to visit.</p>
<p>" want my home to be a place where my kids can always come, with their kids, too. An intact marriage seems to facilitate that."</p>
<p>Whether or not I divorce, I don’t see any reason to hang on to a large house just for occassional visits by kids and my future grandkids. If the housing market weren’t so bad now, I’d be ready to downsize. Seems like a waste of money to be paying to heat and cool this large house just for H and me. </p>
<p>I do like the idea of some day going on an ocean voyage or renting a condo with kids/grandkids.</p>
<p>As we age, there can be a long list of medical, psychological, or emotional reasons why we may not show motivation to be physically close with a beloved spouse. We may very much want it to be otherwise, but cannot even show a sign. I think that sometimes older guys need help getting started (so to speak). Can I say that here? And I believe there is one thing that only a rare man will refuse. I hope I am staying within appropriate bounds. </p>
<p>I believe we can spend a fortune on counseling and years talking and trying to unravel the reasons, motivations, and causes of physical estrangement. That approach never worked in my marriage. The only thing that worked for us is letting resentments and history go, putting analysis aside, and (after ruling out medical causes) just getting back to business by any means necessary. This is a war against so many things. We are bombarded daily with visual images of how women and men are “supposed” to look and perform, and about how marriages are “supposed” to be. There is so much pressure, so much discouragement. I say fight like heck, and if you have been then keep going. Throw ego to the wind, and find your way back. I say ego because I believe that when a woman is not being pursued by her man, it can be terribly painful. Those are my feelings, anyway.</p>
<p>Frankly, Northstarmom, after reading a gazillion posts on CC by you, I can pretty much guarantee that your husband is probably secretly dying to find a way back to you. You sound like an incredibly dynamic person. That means that you are definitely a hottie. He has got to want to fix this (all behavioral evidence to the contrary).</p>
<p>I was just reading that the main communication issue in relationships isn’t different styles (“Mars” vs. “Venus”) but taking certain topics off the table. While a lack of physical intimacy can be a big issue in a marriage, a refusal to talk about it or see a doctor or get therapy could lead to divorce.</p>
<p>My H snores very loudly, seriously impacting my sleep and driving me to the couch most nights. I’m not happy about the noise and am concerned about possible health issues, but his refusal to discuss it with me and bring this up with his doctor makes me crazy.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>There are other issues, too. As a adult child of divorce parents (and mine are very friendly, have been divorced 35 years and it’s not unusual for us all to get together) I can attest to the fact that it puts the children in an awkward position from time to time. Some examples (again from the perspective of an adult child of divorced parents):</p>
<p>-Mom and Dad live in different cities and you aren’t willing to drag your child all over the place for the holidays. Who are you going to see? Throw in your spouse’s parents and it gets harder and harder. I rarely spent Christmas with my family of origin - neither do some of my siblings. If I do, it’s an either/or situation - either it’s with Mom and her husband or Dad and his wife - never both.</p>
<p>-Mom or Dad has remarried someone who you don’t particularly like (or they don’t like you or you don’t like each other - take your pick). You will tend to see that parent less frequently than you might have if your parents were still together.</p>
<p>-You want to invite Mom (or Dad) to Christmas or on vacation. Is it going to hurt the other parent? Maybe it’s better not to invite either one to avoid hurt feelings.</p>
<p>This list of possible ‘issues’ is endless. It gets much more difficult when your child marries and starts having kids of their own and/or doesn’t come back to your hometown after college. I wouldn’t agree that it doesn’t effect adult children - divorce is basically the dismantling of your family. Even when it is very amicable, it’s not pleasant. If you want see good example of this - watch “It’s Complicated.” The scene with the(adult) kids on the bed was heartbreaking to me. I knew exactly how they felt.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I’m not saying you should stay in the marriage no matter what. Just understand that it will effect the kids, regardless of their age.</p>
<p>MomLive – thanks. Thanks all I was trying to say. I wasn’t trying to disrespect the loving homes single and remarried women make that welcome home their older children. Of course, a loving relationship between kids and their moms will always endure.</p>
<p>Sacrifice your happiness to avoid some akward moments for adult kids? I guess I’m selfish. My grown kids, if they are typical of well educated kids in their generation, will spread out and have limited time for me. I raised them will full focus, got them successfully launched and now it’s my turn to seek my happiness as they find their adult lives.</p>
<p>I do maintain their childhood home and they are always welcome to visit but I suspect I will visit them more as they get older as happened with my parents. I like my ex and we have no problem both turning up at their events. My kids have also very much liked the 2 significant others I’ve had since my divorce. My oldest son is working for my former bf this summer.</p>
<p>It’s not a question of sacrifice. It’s a question of weighing all factors and deciding how one is happiest.</p>
<p>Redroses – it is wonderful that you found the right solution for you. It’s not so easy for everyone.</p>
<p>I have been divorced once and found it much more traumatic than you did. I guess I just have a different temperament.</p>
<p>For some people, it isn’t necessarily sacrificing their happiness though, because of that “the devil you know vs the devil you don’t”. Who knows if divorce would make someone happier? It might make them sadder (and for many women, substantially poorer).</p>
<p>If people KNEW that they’d be happier, if they could see the other side, it might be different.</p>
<p>What I read in this thread is many people saying don’t even try for real happiness. For so many reasons:</p>
<p>-You many end up lonely
-there are few good men
-you’ll damage your children
-the devil you know…
-you won’t want sex in a few years anyway</p>
<p>For me personally, none of these reasons hold water. Like I perceive many of the posters here to be and is certainly true of many women I know IRL, I was lonlier with a husband who had become a roommate more than anything else. </p>
<p>Money is the only theme here I can’t comment on, my life was not changed much financially by divorce and I appreciate that had a huge impact.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why the go for it attitude is not more popular, and everyone certainly needs to figure out what they need. But this thread is not representative of what I see IRL, which is many, both men and women, having lovely second chapters with much more suitable partners and children who have not suffered.</p>
<p>My ideal would have been to walk into the sunset with the father of my children in a relationship that meet both of our needs and made us both fulfilled. But I married him at 21 when I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and didn’t get lucky like some.</p>
<p>Redroses: How old are you? If you divorced in your forties, that’s one thing. I’m almost sixty. I don’t see that many people in their sixties having lovely second chapters.</p>
<p>Things change.</p>
<p>I can’t speak for others, but I am not saying, “don’t go for it.” If one is sure divorce is the best thing and one has the energy, by all means.</p>
<p>Not everyone is in that position.</p>
<p>And I think people take their own baggage with them. I have been in many relationships. Beginnings are often rosy. They are certainly exciting. </p>
<p>But why oversimplify?</p>
<p>And then there are folks like me. I was happier in my first marriage, though divorce seemed necessary. </p>
<p>And maybe it was. I have grown.</p>
<p>Whatever path we’re on, I don’t think it’s all about happiness. Corny as it sounds I do think is a kind of spiritual template for our lives. I don’t mean as in prudish anti-sex. I mean that it takes finesse to know where our true growth/fulfilment is. And the equation is different for different folks.</p>
<p>*I was lonlier with a husband who had become a roommate more than anything else. *</p>
<p>I think that is what we are talking about- but just changing partners doesn’t guarantee anything different past the initial charge.</p>
<p>and didn’t get lucky like some.</p>
<p>Might be a few who have easy relationships- but I hear others saying it is a lot of hard frigging work.</p>
<p>For me, having a spouse around who’s been present for my entire adult life, and with whom I’ve shared the experiences of establishing a career and parenting our children, is profoundly reassuring, and not something I would give up lightly. I’m not saying it’s always better to stay together, only that narrative continuity, so to speak, has its emotional advantages. I saw my parents go through a really, really rough period when they were the empty-nest age I am now, their troubles exacerbated by serious illness, alcohol abuse, depression, and unemployment. They toughed it out, although at the time I did not see how my mom could put up with my dad or vice versa. Things got better after a few years. Now they’re in their late eighties and one another’s best buddies.</p>
<p>Emerald, I was not looking for a guarantee and don’t have one anymore than anyone else does-I was looking for a chance at the real thing. I am a risk taker and a chance was better for me than what I had.</p>
<p>Mythmom, I’m 52 now, 49 when I divorced. I do agree that the adventure requires a lot of energy. It’s something I gave a lot of thought to. I wanted a lot and knew I’d have to offer a lot. It’s been a lot of work-being in shape in every way, shedding baggage, being willing to endure the dating process. It would have been a lot easier to just stay where I was.</p>
<p>But it was a personal decision to expend the energy. It’s been a rewarding personal journey is so many ways other than finding a man. I like myself a lot better now. I also feel like a much better role model for my kids-they know a way happier and fulfilled mom than the one who was just hanging in for years.</p>
<p>im just an observer and a immature college student but it seems that when your kids grow up and leave it really takes something out of your marriage. I hope that doesn’t happen to my parent’s marriage after me and my brother leave. Does this happen because all the effort of raising kids takes time away from developing a husband-wife relationship? Instead of spending time with each other, the focus on the kids leaves one not knowing who they’re married to after they leave? Would it help maybe if while raising kids you continued to “date” your spouse once a week continually and spend time together apart from the kids?</p>
<p>I’m just curious because one day I’d like to be married and have kids as well so I’m just wondering.</p>
<p>Pierre, dating, taking little trips together, maintaining a “we” as a couple are definitely good things to do to prepare for the empty nest period of life. Every time a kid leaves home, it changes the dynamic in the house. When the last kid leaves, it is a profound change, even for the happiest of couples. You spend 20 or 30 years with a huge job and you are finally “laid off” in a sense. It reflects on your sense of purpose in your own life, among other things and is a reminder that you are getting older and that certain chapters of your life have come to a close. Also, if you are lucky enough (as we are) to truly enjoy your children and the teenage years, it’s a big loss when they go. We love having a house full of our kids’ friends. We will miss all of that. Yes, we talk to and see our kids, but on a day-to-day basis, it changes. Any big change, any major transition, any significant loss impacts a marriage and can draw together or pull apart the two people in the marriage. Kids leaving home represent all of those things and more.</p>
<p>Pierre, I think your post is very perceptive and that you are right – its hard sometimes for parents to make the transition to being a couple after having raised a family, especially when they are no longer the same couple – and may not enjoy or have the health for the same shared interests that bonded them when they were young and first dating or newly married. And I do think you are right – more couple time over the years would be nice, but its not just the impact of raising kids – work and careers also tend to steal away time and eat away at the relationship. </p>
<p>I think NSM really lost something she shared with her husband when his academic department would not give her tenure. I know that my ex really seemed to lose interest in maintaining our relationship when I stopped practicing law – it was our shared interests and lawyer-goals that had brought us together in the beginning, but my 2nd career was pretty much the last straw for him. He simply didn’t seem to value me as a person any more because he didn’t understand or respect my new career interest.</p>
<p>So any kind of transition can be hard on a couple. I can see that my son and his wife are having a tough time as they are shifting from young, wildly amorous couple mode to exhausted parents attending to continual needs of newborn baby mode – there’s a lot of sniping at one another going on. But I had a chat with my son and he was very perceptive about the anxiety his wife was feeling shifting from the role of independent career woman to 24-hour on-call mommy. The reason children have such a big impact on the relationship is that they are too darn demanding – and also tend to be really, really, cute – so parents really do get sucked into that all-consuming role much deeper and farther than they ever would have thought possible.</p>
<p>Pierre, all sort of things happen. My advice? Don’t marry until you’re past 30 and have had plenty of relationships.</p>
<p>pierre - I don’t really know what to make of you. You post on CC so much - why are you not out having fun? But, you asked a thoughtful question, so I’m going to give you my answer.</p>
<p>I do think that parents sometimes put too much time and energy into their kids, at the expense of their marriage. I also think that couples disagree over parenting issues and financial issues (often kid-related) and these disagreements put strain on marriages. However, the breakdown of a marriage is certainly never the child’s fault. Adults need to communicate with each other - that’s where the breakdown begins.</p>
<p>I think that when you have teenagers - so much of your energy goes into high school issues and the college process, that when they have “left the nest” - there is a void. Some couples use this time to discover new hobbies, travel, etc. But for some couples, the joint project of the kids was all that was keeping them together, and when the kids are gone - they find that they have nothing in common and nothing to talk about.</p>
<p>You are correct that married couples need to continue to “date” and see themselves as a couple - not just as parents. But trust me, it’s one thing to know this and another to live it.</p>
<p>^haha rockvillemom, I’m not on CC as much now a days and I go out and enjoy the free time I get between work and classes haha :)</p>
<p>but anyways thanks for the answers! sorry for detouring this thread.</p>