Fragile ties

A friend sent me an email announcing her impending divorce. After 12 years, it was finally enough.

A colleague recently revealed that he has been separated from his wife for a couple of years and the divorce was finalising in a few weeks. She has custody of the kids and he is devastated to lose them. All those times we saw them together as a couple socially? All for show. To preserve a sense of normalcy and family for his children.

Someone else I know has filed separation papers and is suspecting his wife of having an affair. They have three teenaged children.

Another guy I know comes home from a trip and catches his wife in their bed with another man. He files for divorce. She gets the kids. People think its his fault.

My daughter comes home and tells me that her friend is sad - her daddy does not want her mommy anymore and has moved out. Her daddy loves another woman.

An old friend has taken a long-term lover, remaining married in name to his wife only. The woman is an independent, self-sufficient businesswoman, she is a companion he takes comfort in. He says he has nothing in common with his wife anymore.

Another daughter comes home and tells me of her classmates, twin girls who care for each other now that their mother is ill in hospital with cancer. Their father has walked out on their family. They come home to an empty house, fix their own meals, and attend parent-teacher meetings on their own - no parent in sight. I know, I saw this myself. It tore at my heart to see the girls come in, sit before the teacher, knowing that every other of their classmates in the same room was acccompanied by one or both parents. I heard snatches of the teacher's monologue - "...work hard and make your mother proud... do it for her..."

It is hard to hear these stories. Heartrendingly painful. I feel at a loss - what to say to my friend, to my colleague, to my children. There are no words. I am always tongue-tied and I feel incredibly stupid and helpless.

Hearing all these stories just makes me sad because none of these couples or these families were formed with this sad end in mind. No one gets married knowing they will one day be divorced. Or wanting to be divorced. Everyone starts out madly in love, believing this will last forever. My old friend who has taken a lover used to write about his wife in the early days of their relationship - I still have those letters. Reading them now, I wonder what he would have said then if he knew that 10 years after marriage he would find another companion and lover? He, who thought the sun rose and set on her everyday.

When does the rot set in? What is the first sign of rot? Why does it set in? Is this something that every marriage has to go through? Does every couple have to be tested in some way? Do all relationships have to go through a make-or-break patch?

These days I see wedding couples taking their wedding pictures and I shake my head cynically. The frills and furbelows and posh wedding, the $100,000 renovation for the marital home - all well and good, if it lasts. The divorce rate is going up. Marriage is more a game of musical chairs where we swop spouses when we get divorced. People see no permanency in the institution anymore.

And then, there are the children.

When adults split up in a marriage, I used to think the kids suffer badly. Today, I still believe this, but with a slight difference. The kids still suffer, but I believe a self-confident, self-assured child who is matured enough to see and understand the reasons behind the split, will not take it as hard. It is children who do not understand, who do not receive compassionate loving explanations, who are not nurtured before during and after the split, who are so bewildered by the change, who fare the worst emotionally.

Is there ever a 'right age' for kids then? When do you leave a flagging relationship - when the children are really young - so that their memories are limited and the resultant gap not so painful? Or wait until the kids are all grown up, as adults, before you slash the ties? After all, the rates of divorces among the silver-haired generation is rising - more and more couples splitting up when the kids are grown up.

To me, I don't think age matters. I think kids will be hurt no matter how old they are. Far more important to handle this well from the beginning - with honesty, truth, compassion and lots of love and communication.

I think what makes me sad about this is the knowledge that a divorce shifts the very foundation of childhood. Children of divorce grow up a lot faster. Perhaps they realise, a lot sooner, that the world can be a nasty place sometimes. Or perhaps they, like my daughter's twin classmates, due to circumstances are forced to be independent from a very young age.

Sad though I am about divorce, I also believe that it may not be the wisest thing to stay in a bad relationship "for the sake of the children". What do you model when you do so? Sacrifice? Fortitude? Is that the best you can do for your children? Or is it better to acknowledge to the children that one has made a mistake, it is not their fault, but having made a mistake, one has to rectify this and cut ties, painful though it may be now. But better the hurt now than a simmering long-term resentment and bitterness that seeps into and corrodes life, takes away every ounce of hope, optimism and joy that one has. Life is so short. Why shorten it even further?

By all means, I guess we have to try to work things out, go for counselling, try everything we have to save the marriage. But if it comes to a point when it is dead, then its dead. No point flogging a dead horse.

And for my friends, well, I don't judge their actions. I can only listen when they want to talk. As for all those children, in particular the twins, I just want to mother them all. Particularly the twins.

Its been preying on the edges of my mind for sometime, about doing something for the twins, but I am not sure what. I don't want to come across as a busy-body or to be intrusive. But ever since I saw them at the parent-teacher meeting, I think no young girls should be left like this. I think I will ask the form teacher and sleep on this a bit more. Perhaps a network of mothers can be formed to give them some support.