The divorce rate may be declining as couples marry later and later, but children of divorced parents are still a dime a dozen. Many children of said divorces may find their parents? splits inconsequential to their own dating lives, but research shows that they usually aren?t.
Subconsciously, the feelings from the divorce may manifest, and even adult children of divorce who were once diehard believers in the power of a great love can suddenly lose faith in the idea altogether.
This past Saturday my boyfriend?s mother, a Wyoming native, married her long-term live-in boyfriend in Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyo. And she wasn?t the only one. My own mother married her second husband in July.
My boyfriend and my mothers both chose to take another plunge with second husbands, but the looming bitterness and tension I felt from my parents? divorce made me skeptical about being able to make it work with my first.
And even though my boyfriends? parents divorced when he was a young child and mine split when I was an adult, the effects those broken nuptials can have on both of us are generally the same. Here, age really is just a number.
In their book ?Adult Children of Divorce,? psychologists Elizabeth S. Thayer and Jeffrey Zimmerman examine the effects on children, regardless of age, whose parents? relationships end in ?I don?t.?
Thayer and Zimmerman explain in their work that children of divorced parents tend to develop a fear of commitment, bad judgment about sex or emotional intimacy, a subconscious desire to sabotage their own relationships to retain a sense of control and more.
When these potential issues combine, they can create a skewed sense of sex, love and relationships that destroys faith in something genuine and successful. These lingering effects may last forever, or they just may be temporary like they were with me.
But either way, it?s important not to ditch a potential partner because of it. Often when people meet and one learns that the other?s parents are divorced, it might send him packing in fear that that not only would that relationship have a similar fate, but that the other person in question is damaged goods as a whole.
Children of divorced parents shouldn?t be treated as charity case because it can add insult to injury. But they also shouldn?t be considered unsuitable because of their parents? relationship. What matters is how they personally handle their own affairs, which isn?t necessarily a completely lost cause if their parents have separated.
Their parents? relationship is broken. They aren?t.
When my boyfriend?s mother announced her decision to marry her now husband in the aftermath of my parents? divorce, it felt like a glimmer of hope for the future of my relationship with her son. Our mothers being remarried might have an influence on our relationship. Or maybe it won?t.
But in the end dating is what we make it. It will work out, or it won?t.
Either way, though, the future of a relationship depends on several factors. Our parents? nuptials is only one.
Rachel Keith is graduate student in education from Wichita. Follow her on Twitter @Rachel_UDKeith.
Source: http://kansan.com/opinion/2012/09/24/keith-divorce-is-not-hereditary/
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