Dear Bel,
My parents are getting divorced. Both had affairs so it’s ugly, bitter and full of blame — and I’ve somehow ended up stuck in the middle, trying to ‘support’ them while they throw emotional wreckage at each other.
Aged 24, I’m their unpaid therapist, their go-between, their sounding board for spite and guilt. And the worst part? No one has asked how I’m doing. I’m furious – but no one seems to notice, let alone care. Apparently, because I’m an adult, I should be fine. But I’m not. I’m angry, confused, heartbroken – and deeply disillusioned.
My parents were supposed to be the one steady thing in my life. I grew up thinking they had something solid, something I could believe in. Clearly, I was deluded. Now I look back and question everything: the birthdays, the family holidays, was any of it real?
I’m an only child, so I have no one to share this with. No one else who remembers the same family I do – and now that family is gone. I feel like the ground has been ripped out from under me. I’m grieving, but it’s not just the divorce – it’s the death of my childhood, the final proof that the people I looked up to are just flawed, selfish adults.
What makes it worse is how they treat me. They expect me to be the strong one, the neutral one, the mature one – while they act like teenagers in a break-up. I don’t get to scream or cry or fall apart. I’m just meant to carry on as if none of this matters.
But it does matter. It’s shaken my whole view of love, commitment – even hope. I used to think I might want a partner, a family. Now I think: why bother? If the people who raised me couldn’t make it work, why would I? I’ve started avoiding dating altogether. I don’t trust it. I don’t trust anyone.
I know life isn’t perfect and people make mistakes. But this feels like more than that. It feels like betrayal. And I’m left picking up the emotional pieces – not of their marriage, but of my belief in anything lasting. How do I move forward from this when all I feel is rage and disappointment?
Rosa
Divorce does not have to be poisonous. Parents do not have to treat each other as mortal enemies and slaughter their own children in the crossfire, writes Bel
Thank you for providing this page with such an important message: that the child within the adult remains acutely vulnerable, when secure foundations have disappeared.
Nobody should underestimate this. It’s common for outsiders to pity small children whose parents split up, even though they’re almost certainly more resilient (in time, anyway) than young adults like you. Yes, you are right to grieve, on more than one level.
This all hinges on memory. You have had 24 years to love and trust the man and woman who must have rejoiced to kiss their baby girl, and that secure love is embedded in your DNA. Now your accumulation of memory seems to have been called into question. Hence your anguished question: ‘Was any of it real?’
No wonder the child within you stamps her foot and cries. Your parents have let you down – and I don’t see why you shouldn’t shout that from the roof.
It’s easy to excuse their behaviour by shrugging, ‘Things go wrong in a marriage… people fall in love and have affairs like they have for centuries… children have no right to pass judgment, etc etc’. Such liberal rationalisations certainly contain truth, yet they don’t counter your profound hurt and disillusion.
The worst part of your story is your parents’ shocking selfishness. They have failed each other by betrayal, and people do that all the time. But the worst failure is their duty of care towards you.
Divorce does not have to be poisonous. Parents do not have to treat each other as mortal enemies and slaughter their own children in the crossfire. But they do. Oh yes, they do. ‘Flawed’ falls short of it. Shameful is better.
Years ago a male colleague told me that each time he picked up his little daughter for her court-ordered Saturday with Daddy, his ex-wife stood at the door and screamed abuse as he walked the child down the path.
Yes, his infidelity had ended the marriage. But that mother’s behaviour ended the likelihood of her own daughter growing up as a happy human being.
In the child’s mind the uncontrolled hate directed at the man holding her hand was directed at her, too.
Honestly, I tell anybody in the middle of a break-up, like your parents – for God’s sake, grow up and get a grip because your feelings matter far less than those of your children who did not ask to be born.
What can I tell you, Rosa, other than that you are quite right to be angry? But you must not allow that to define you. Your parents loved each other – until they didn’t. The family life you remember was ‘real’ – until it wasn’t. So do not let your parents’ current behaviour steal your memories.
Please flip your current feelings from hurt victimhood to strong defiance, so: ‘Even though the people who raised me couldn’t make it work, that’s all the more reason for me to prove it damn well can.’ Don’t collude in destruction, build for yourself.
Listen to me. You ‘move forward’ because it’s the only direction – and you take with you all you have learned, as rich, painful, inescapable truths about the human condition.
Will you let that knowledge include forgiveness and thus help you to grow and thrive? Or will you cling to bitterness and become diminished? In the end, that’s your grown-up choice.
My son is 41 – but he’s still a misfit
Dear Bel,
I have two children, one girl, 36, and a boy, 41. My daughter has had problems, mainly with alcohol, but now seems to be in a better place. My son has never fitted in, never had friends and was in trouble at school for inappropriate behaviour.
He went to university and found it hard, but gained a 2:2 degree. He has never used his education, working as a waiter. Each time we think he’s settled he gets asked to leave.
Four weeks ago, he got a job in a hotel and seemed happy but last night he was suspended. At a staff party in his previous job he was accused of sexually molesting another male member of staff. His new employer was told, hence the suspension.
He needs help with how to interact with people. We had psychologists when he was at school and university but now we cannot make him get medical help.
He doesn’t talk to us, just sits blubbering and won’t tell us what’s going on. We lose our tempers (me more than his father) because we cannot get a reaction.
How can we help him? Our doctors are not sympathetic. What can we do?
Lucy
Any parent will understand why you are so desperately worried. A man of 41 is considered to be in charge of his own life and so you can’t make him see sense and act, no matter how much you despair of his inertia.
When he was younger you could take charge, but now you sum the problem up when you realise you cannot get him to seek medical help. You say your doctors are ‘not sympathetic’, but I suspect they have told you they can’t advise or treat an adult at one remove by means of his parents.
Your description of your son’s inability to ‘fit in,’ socialise and form healthy relationships with other people suggests he could well be on the autistic spectrum. But it is not for me to make any sort of diagnosis through the page, and in any case there is little that could be done at his age.
Yet understanding the complexity of personality is key. There’s something ‘wrong’ here, and you are living with a desperately unhappy man.
But I must be frank – for you to sum up his evident distress as ‘blubbering’ is sad and wrong. Yes, I understand the frustration. But if you are to help him find a way forward into a stable life it is vital for you to learn how to control your responses. Shouting will make him withdraw even more, so I beg you to start taking deep, controlled breaths to help control that temper.
You need to start having proper conversations with your son. I know that’s easier to say than to do, nevertheless what’s the alternative?
If he won’t go to the doctor, he certainly won’t go to counselling, so I suggest you and your husband try to learn more about what may be behind his problems. A good place to start might be a page on the website of the national Autistic Society: autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance. It has many headings to click on and read. I suggest that as a learning ‘project’ for you and your husband, in the hope that it might seem relevant and helpful to the whole family.
If your son is gay and hasn’t acknowledged this to himself, let alone to you, this is obviously going to make him very confused and unhappy, given recent history. He needs somebody to talk to, but it sounds as if your family is pretty short on communication.
Does he have a good relationship with his sister? Might she be more open to talking frankly to him about sexuality? Honestly, somebody needs to.
I feel very sorry for him because those tears are a cry for help. Do you think you could try to hear your son – by reading, thinking and vowing to control your own mood?
