"Child" of divorce

When I was in third grade, my best friend's parents got divorced. I remember struggling to comprehend what that would be like. My parents fought constantly, but I felt confident that they would stay together. For a long time, they did.

The summer before I turned 17, my father retired from the Navy. The drive to his retirement ceremony was about an hour and a half away, and I rode with him and his sister while my mom, sister, and grandparents shared another car. On the way there, my father told me he was thinking about divorcing my mom and asked me what I thought. He was asking me for advice.

For the next four years, things between my parents got worse, but I don't remember hearing any talk of divorce. I certainly didn't say anything to my mom; I felt what my father had told me was a secret I had to keep.

But, one day, when I was 21, my father asked for a family meeting. My sister, mother, and I sat in the living room while he announced that he had bought a house downtown. None of us had had any idea, including my mom. She was extremely upset, not so much for the fact that my father had bought another place to live, but because she was told the news with my sister and I sitting right there.

A huge fight erupted, and my father moved into his house not long afterward. I found out later that my parents had wanted to get another house so that they could have some physical space, but it was supposed to have been a joint venture. The fact that my father had bought a house without telling anyone turned 'moving in' into 'moving out.' I think that, for my mom, it changed everything.

Although the divorce wasn't finalized until the next year, my parents were as good as divorced from that moment on. I can't really say at what point divorce became an option for my parents, although it seems, looking back, that they were headed for divorce not long after I was born. Maybe my father had been thinking of divorce long before he mentioned it to me, and maybe my mother had thought of it, too. I don't know.

I know that divorce is always hard for everyone involved. I know that it is hard on the children, no matter what their ages are. I was an adult when my parents divorced, but I don't think it makes things any easier. I think back to my childhood friend, and I know her parents' divorce was difficult. Yet, I also know that she had the opportunity to develop new relationships with her parents while still a child. My own sister was fourteen when my parents got divorced, and I think her relationships with my parents are better than they would have been had they stayed together and fought--and, certainly, better than mine are or were. When I was a teenager, my parents argued so much that they did not have time for me. My sister has the chance to have quality time with them that I never had.

I do not know how to be the adult child of parents who are divorced. I don't know how to develop new relationships with them at this point. I am torn between wanting to have the childhood affection that they were too preoccupied to give and wanting to just put it all behind me and move on.