
I have been mulling divorce for years. Years.
Last year, I finally told my husband that I didn’t feel "that way" for him anymore. How do you tell your spouse, "it’s not you, it’s me" when your brain is thinking, "it’s 75 per cent you at least."
In all my years of imagining divorced life, I assumed I’d have the kids most of the time. My husband worked anywhere from one to three hours away, depending on traffic. He could never pick them up from school, help with homework, make them dinner, give them baths, and put them to sleep.
Side note: Here's the horoscopes homeschooling their kids. Post continues below.
I was already living the single mum life for years.
I never questioned my lack of time with the kids. Until mother effing COVID infiltrated the globe.
Suddenly, a spouse that I barely saw for a decade was now around me all the time. All the time. Do you know how much time that is? Too much. That’s how much time.
Having help should have brought us closer. I no longer had to deal with homework and baths on my own. But it wasn’t enough.
Quarantine life didn’t bring us together or renew my love for him despite our efforts with marriage counseling.
My only reason for staying this long was because of the kids. Let me address the comments about divorce I’m going to receive:
- Kids are resilient: Sure, but it’s still a trauma. I don’t want to be the cause of the trauma. I’d rather not add a point to their resilience score. I was a warrior as a kid and it messed me up as an adult. Just because someone can tolerate the pain doesn’t mean it’s acceptable to inflict it on them.
- It’s not healthy for the kids to be around arguing: I agree. Get the heck out if your kids are around fighting or violence. But we no longer argued. We were barely talking. We were pleasant and happy around the kids but as soon as they went to bed, we rarely spoke.
- Kids pick up on things: I could bleed out my eyeballs and my kids wouldn’t notice. Our behaviour hasn’t changed since they were born. This is their norm.
- Kids do better when their parents are happy: This is debatable. Kids care about their worlds. Just because Mum is now happy doesn’t mean the kids are happy being carted between two homes and having their world destroyed. They don’t benefit because Mum is finally getting laid.
- Rip the bandaid off and do it now: My kids’ lives turned upside down in 2020. No friends, no outings, no trips, no school, all nuked. I’m not going to be an asshole who adds divorce while they’re struggling with getting an education via a Zoom session.
- I divorced and my kids are fine: I once ate pizza that was under my bed for a week in highschool and I was fine. Still, that’s probably not something I would recommend.
There’s no way around it. No matter how amicable you are, a divorce is a bomb on their universe.
The best time to split is when your children are quite young (they won’t remember a life with both parents together) or when they’re teenagers because not only do they have higher emotional intelligence, but they’re already self-absorbed into their teen world anyway.
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