The effects of divorce on children can last a lifetime.

I was seven years old, climbing a jungle gym, when I heard two mothers talking. One said, “Kids with divorced parents are kicked back and forth like a football.”

The image grabbed me. I’d never heard anyone talk of divorce, though my own parents separated when I was two and divorced within a year. Visiting my father later, I mentioned that I was kicked like a football between him and my mother. He told me, sternly, that the image didn’t apply to me, only to kids whose parents didn’t love them.

I still see that football, and I’m still asking the question that as a girl I couldn’t put into words: If your parents love you and get along fairly well, why is their divorce still so painful?

Everything Changes

I was born in 1970. My first memories are of the two people I loved most (and on whom my own identity was built) living completely separate lives a six-hour drive apart in what’s become known as a “good divorce”.

The idea of the good divorce has great appeal. To some parents, it suggests steps they can take to protect their children if they must end a very bad marriage (and divorce is a vital option in such a marriage). To others, it suggests they can end a marriage that may be OK but not totally satisfying and still do right by their kids.

A good divorce is better than a bad one, but it still isn’t good. No matter how much love and caring divorced parents devote to a child, that can’t ease the radical restructuring of the child’s world.

To probe the effects of that restructuring, I launched a study of young adults from divorced families. Working with University of Texas at Austin sociologist Norval Glenn, we surveyed 1500 randomly selected young men and women between 18 and 35. Half experienced their parents’ divorce before age 14; the rest grew up in intact families. Those from divorced families continued to see both parents.
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This is a very good article. Read it.
Those who are still single like me may learn something from here….
Those who are already married may take it as a guideline to improve your marriage….

DID YOU MARRY THE RIGHT PERSON?

During one of our seminars, a woman asked a common question.
She said, “How do I know if I married the right person?”
I noticed that there was a large man sitting next to her so I said,
“It depends. Is that your husband?” In all seriousness, she answered
“How do you know?”

Let me answer this question because the chances are good that it’s weighing on your mind.

Here’s the answer.
EVERY relationship has a cycle. In the beginning, you fell in love with your spouse. You anticipated their call, wanted their touch, and liked their idiosyncrasies.

Falling in love with your spouse wasn’t hard. In fact, it was a completely natural and spontaneous experience. You didn’t have to DO anything. That’s why it’s called “falling” in love…

Because it’s happening TO YOU.

People in love sometimes say, “I was swept of my feet.” Think about the imagery of that __expression. It implies that you were just standing there; doing nothing, and then something came along and happened TO YOU.

Falling is love is easy. It’s a passive and spontaneous experience.
But after a few years of marriage, the euphoria of love fades.

It’s the natural cycle of EVERY relationship.

Slowly but surely, phone calls become a bother (if they come at all), touch is not always welcome (when it happens), and your spouse’s idiosyncrasies, instead of being cute, drive you nuts.
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