Hi Chris
How's your mum, given you dad's announcement of wanting to divorce? Is she kind of relieved or highly stressed or perhaps a bit of both?
Can remember going to marriage counseling some years ago. One of the most impacting pieces of advice the counselor gave me is - Marriage is made up of 3 tiers. The bottom tier, the foundation, is you and your partner, the tier that came first. The middle involves your kids. The top is the overall family unit, a combination of the 2. The most significant one is the foundation one. Without a strong partnership established through a genuine sense of love (which withstands anything) and solid honest open communication which facilitates the evolution of the partnership, all 3 tiers are impacted. All 3 hold the potential to crumble. So, it doesn't necessarily matter what our kids do, what their challenges are (that test us as parents), if the foundation is solid, the marriage stays strong. Your dad can blame you for the divorce all he wants but this doesn't change the fact their marriage is not strong enough to withstand the challenges they face. While the challenges you give to your parents may be great, the question remains whether your dad is flexible in the way he evolves through them with your mum.
I swear, I married someone so similar to my father. Both my father and my husband are rather inflexible people to various degrees. My father more so. How my mum tolerated being the only flexible parent, through her kids' significantly life changing challenges, while my father's mantra was largely 'Turn away from all stress', I do not know. She's rather amazing. By the way, they've been separated for just over 20 years. It tests a marriage when one partner tries to constantly re-adapt to life through various challenges and the other prefers things stay the same on their terms. It can actually be quite depressing at times. I say this from experience.
As a mum, it's also my experience that your kids condition you into becoming flexible and open minded. From adapting to sleepless nights when they're infants, through to the administrative tasks associated with them going to school, through to the real life changing moments, both mum and child stay close and they bend and flex together through life's challenges and changes. The parent who remains on the sidelines, rigid in their own beliefs, will experience a sense of separateness and resentment. Of course, this is not the fault of the child.
🙂
