For those of us who have come to the point of divorce in our forties and beyond one of the biggest challenges can be dealt us not from the ex-wife but from our own adult children. Divorce is difficult for children of any age; it is after all the dissolution of their parents as a couple and the loss of the security inherent in a child’s parents being together. Often children are unaware of the problems in a marriage since many times one or both parents work to keep these hidden from the children. If that is the case then when the divorce finally does happen it comes as a huge and nasty surprise.
Like I mentioned above, these issues are true no matter what the age of the child but they can be especially applicable when the children are adults themselves. Why? Well for a variety of reasons. For one, young adults in their late teens and twenties don’t have the life experience to draw on that helps us as older adults deal with trauma in our lives. In these age groups young people are just naturally a bit more ego-centric and crises tend to take on monumental proportions simply because it is happening for the first time TO THEM. Directly related to this is their inability sometimes to perceive their parents as fully real people with their own needs, wants and foibles. Having these very human qualities brought to their attention in the framework of a divorce can be extremely difficult.
Young People also tend to be a bit more concrete in their thinking; they don’t deal well with some of the abstractions and subtleties that are often involved in a divorce. This causes them to sometimes assign blame in a very black and white manner or attempt to hold one or both parents to an impossibly high moral standard of conduct.
Finally individuals in their teens and twenties tend to be fairly impressionable and easily swayed by emotional appeals. This, of course, places advantage with your ex-wife. Speaking in general terms men tend to keep things to themselves a bit more than women and when they do share it’s more a relating of the facts than sharing our personal feelings. Thus while a man might explain a divorce as being due to financial disagreements the woman is talking about having her heart broken or feeling abandoned; guess who is going to be labeled the “bad guy”.
Being aware of these facets to a young adult’s make up won’t make their behaviors any less painful but it might make it a bit more understandable. Given time and the benefit of the maturity that, hopefully, comes with age your children may eventually reach a more complete understanding of the circumstances leading up to and following your divorce.
How to relate to them until that point will be the subject of my next post on Tuesday.
Bill
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