The Just Thought I'd Share Thread

[Zombie]

Originally Posted by daniellaaarisen

My dad may be taking a job opportunity 8 hours away in San Diego. My mom may or may not be coming with us. I actually think this would be really good for us-- I feel like a bad person for wanting my parents to separate. It's about time, though...

Both GypsyBlueEyes & Silver Springs are right - don't feel bad. Whether they're together or not, if it's better...then it's better, you know? I know that parents separating is usually really hard on kids (and the parents, too), but if you already KNOW they're not really doing that well together, then you're already a step ahead in that department. Probably doesn't make it easier in the short term for anyone, but long term...you see what I mean.

< anecdata - your mileage may vary, of course >
As you know, I have two small jackals of my own. I often advise friends that are in very unhappy relationships but wanting to stick it out "for the kids" that doing that is perhaps not the ideal way to go in the long run. My kids' father was a wonderful guy, but we just did NOT work in a romantic sense - we tried forcing it "for the kids" for a (too) long while, but it was just awful.

Neither of us was happy, and we fought constantly and furiously over spectacularly dumb crap. Finally, we decided to just quit it, and we went back to being best friends. It was a hard decision to make, but we put on our big kid pants and did it.

And then about a year later, he passed away.

So even though I firmly believe that it would have been the best decision we could have made for our family in any case, I will always be so damned grateful that we did it when we did. It gave us a year of being able to hang out and have fun together before he had to go, and that's all the kids remember now - that we were fun, that we all loved each other, that we were doing well.

He died 6 years ago last Thursday and I still miss him more than I have words for, but as weird as it sounds, if there's anything good in that situation, us breaking up was it. < /anecdata >