Dealing with parent's divorce

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emmarie58

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Hello all,

I’m new to the site and terribly glad I found it. I would really appreciate some faith-based advise (and PRAYERS) from you all.

I’m 22 and just moved to a new town (and new parish) less than a week ago to be closer to my family and my fiancee’s family. Yesterday, my mom and dad asked my brother and I to come home so that we could all talk. They then informed us that they were getting divorced after 25 years of marriage. And to add to that, my mom told my brother and I that she was moving directly in with another man, who she has been working with for years, and that she has left the Church.

I have never felt so hurt and angry. And I feel terrible for being so angry. My mom has always been my rock, and my inspiration for my faith life. We taught Confirmation together after I was confirmed. And now, to find out that she is leaving my father and 11 year old sister to move in with another (also married and leaving his wife) man… I don’t even know what to think. I feel so lost.

She even asked me to help her move her things. I feel terrible, but I just don’t think I am ready for that. And then she started apologizing for this happening while I’m planning my own wedding, and started talking about how marriage needs to be nurtured, etc. My brain was screaming “WHAT RIGHT DO YOU HAVE?!”, but all I could do was cry.

I have been up almost all night. My fiancee has been great, and just silently sat with me while I cried for hours. I know there is nothing he could say to make it better, and I appreciate him being here. I’m just waiting, waiting, waiting for it to be Mass time. I need it more than anything right now. Just hope I don’t cry through the entire Mass my first time at this church.

I guess my request is this: Please pray for my family… and for me so that I might be able to forgive my mom.

Thank you all.
 
I will pray for you and your family. This must be so hard to go through and it seems it was a real shock.
( I won’t say some things I want to say that would be judging). But I know all of you are very precious in God’s eyes. He loves all of you. So prayers are coming right now. I am glad you have someone in your life now.
 
I will pray for you and your family. It’s very telling that your mom said she is leaving your dad AND the Church.
 
Your family is in my prayers. All you can do is give witness to what marriage should be, by your own. Don’t worry about helping her move her things. While you are under an obligation to honor your parents, that doesn’t mean you have to help one of them do something that’s wrong.
Please keep in mind that, as hard as this is for you, it must be even harder for your little sister. Her home is breaking up. She will need you.
 
My heart aches for you and your family. I will definitely keep you all in my prayers.

As another poster mentioned, your little sister needs you now more than ever. Even though you are probably busy with marriage prep and wedding details, please try to make “sister time” – time to listen, to to be silly, time to just be sisters, maybe even time to help her escape from the drama of your home life for a few hours.

Cleave to Christ.

God bless you, dear one.

Gertie
 
I went through something similar when I was 11 so believe me I know how you feel. My parents were married for 25 years when my dad suddenly decided to quit his job and divorce my mum so he could live “freely” and become a buddhist. I subsequently lost all contact with him and his side of my family though I can’t say I was exactly unhappy about it as he had always been very unpredictable and violent (now I actually think he might have had menal health problems). But I’m by no means implying this will happen to you! It’s a terrible shock at first but I promise things will get better 🙂 I’m praying for you and your family.
 
Divorce usually affects the children in the home more so than your parents. Your sister will need your support. Just try and help her through the turmoil in both of your lives and do not concentrate on your loss, but be strong.
 
As others have said, you need to be there for your sister. She will no longer have the influence of a mother in her home the way you did. My wife did something very similar after 21 years of marriage and it was truly devastating to my younger daughter. Not have Mom there when she needed her, not having that example in her home with her.

She will need someone to talk to, in some ways her family has shrunk from parents and kids to just the kids. This is far different for the children than the parents and much harder for a parent to truly understand the impact if they weren’t children of divorce themselves. My kids became much closer after she left, there are things they wouldn’t want to talk to either of us about. It will take her a while to figure out how to deal with each parent, who she can trust, you need to be the sounding board for her.

Unfortunately, in this case she may blame herself since Mom didn’t just leave Dad, she left your sister as well. (Kids in divorce often look to themselves first as a cause.) From the sound of it, Mom isn’t asking for joint custody. So your sister is left in a position where she knows Mom could have left Dad and made a home with your sister if it was just about Mom/Dad. She didn’t? Why?

If Mom keeps distancing herself, you’ll need to watch your sister for destructive habits, things she may do to get Mom’s attention. It won’t. It will just screw up your sister’s life even more- and you need to be able to tell her that. She may be jealous that you had a family through your whole childhood, you’ll need to let her vent about that. She may even ponder that Mom waited until you were being married to do this. That is, somehow she’ll link your Mom waiting to do this until the older daughter seemed set-- thinking Mom cares more for you and only stuck around for you. She’s only 11 and it is going to mess with her head. Be patient, be kind, pray for your whole family-- but be there for your sister.

As for your Dad, tell him to pray a lot. Tell him to take care of himself, work out, focus on helping his younger daughter. Get counseling if for no other reason than for assistance in dealing with and helping his younger daughter through this.

He may have to do what I did. Allow visitation between mom/younger daughter to occur in the younger daughter’s (his) home. My daughter and son were very quickly made to feel unwelcome in my ex’s (marriage was recently declared null) new home. I allow her to visit them in our home, I leave while she’s here to enable them to have alone time with her. It is difficult but necessary.

ETA: You feel angry because you’re human and it is the natural emotion to feel. Don’t blame yourself for what is a reasonable thing to feel. You will need to deal with it and not let your emotions sway you into saying or doing something now that you will regret later.

Forgiving your Mom will be difficult. Read the parable of the prodigal son and realize Christ is always anxious for us to return to Him. He said that heaven will rejoice far more over the return of a sinner than a just person staying the course. Consider your mother as a child of God, realize that He wants her to do the right thing and pray for her soul. If not for her own sake, than because it is what God wants.

There are many threads on these boards about forgiveness-- forgiving your mother will be for your own good as much as, or even more so, than hers. It will allow you to keep the past from controlling the future. It is a way of putting this in your past- that is, not wait or expect your mother to realize or regret her wrongs before you move forward in life. That doesn’t mean you have to include your mother in your life as if she hadn’t done anything wrong. For example, your wedding.
 
I’ve lost a parent at 12 years old even while my dad struggled for his means. He loved the piano and I can never forget that even til today. My finance` plays his Steinway, Grand Piano for me at least once a week. As for our parents, I am truly sorry for that loss. Thank goodness, they’ve brought you into this world and there are so many things in life that can bring you happiness upon God’s persuasion. Just remember He loves you and would never let you fall.

Peace, Tranquility and Life,
Victoria:shrug:
 
I really feel for you in this horrible situation and I will pray for your family. My mom pulled one of these when I was six and I’ve never really been able to fully respect her again because of it. (Though recently she has expressed some remorse, not exactly for what she did but the way she did it.) I think you are perfectly within your right to be angry at your mother. Even drugged-up teenagers with no sense of any kind of spirituality, much less sexual morality, know that it is wrong to cheat on someone. This may be the one point of morality that all humans can agree on. (In the hypothetical sense of course because every cheater has a “special circumstance”.) I don’t know how dependent you are on your mom, but I think you are absolutely within your right to say that you do not support this decision. Tell her that you will not meet the man she is living with and you will not stay with her in his home. Frankly, if you are upset to the extent that you want to limit contact with her for the time being, I think you are within your right. If I was in your situation, I would make it clear from the start that “other men” are not the same thing as step-fathers, or even at the level of “mother’s boyfriend”. Step-fathers and boyfriends become members of the family through honest means. “Other men” certainly do not recieve invitations to weddings.

Depending on how you feel about the situation, I would draw a clear boundary on the subject of the “other man”. Sometimes women who do this sort of thing have weird expectations that their children should “be happy for them” and accept the “other man” into the family. I would make it clear that under no circumstance should I be put upon to even lay eyes on the creep. As adults, you and your brother have this right to be spared from such hurt and humiliation. Unfortunatly, in the case of your minor sister, this right will probably only be obtained with the help of your father’s attorney.

You should do what you can to support your little sister and give her constant affirmation and love. Even without this added loss of her mom walking out on the family, it can be hard on kids when an older sibling leaves the nest through marriage. Let her know that you aren’t going anywhere and that her family is strong and will always love her.
 
My parents divorce, although it seems like eons ago, was the point in my life where I lost my faith. I vehemently argued that if God was so great, why did he let my beautiful Catholic family fall apart?!

Truth be told, I should have clung closer to God, rather than argue with him. He made sure my siblings and I were raised by my deeply spiritual father, that we were never far from my HUGE Catholic family and a church that held my hand through it all. It has taken me 20+ years to come back to my Catholic faith after this ordeal. And all the same people that held my hand then, just held my hand again as I came back to the church recently.

Attach yourself to your faith more than ever, pray daily whether alone or with other people, ask people to pray for you and your family. But please always remember, God is with you and in you always. You are his daughter and the love of his life. And he will never give you more than you can handle, because he is always carrying you during the darkest times. Let him lift you to be carried. Let go and let God.
 
Thank you all for the prayers. I will be spending a lot of time with my sister. I told her to call me anytime she needed, and that she could stay with me anytime she liked. I also will be driving up to pick her up from school and spend time with her in the afternoons that I don’t work. I think the hardest part for her will be that she won’t be able to go to where her mom lives (she wasn’t told about the other man). My brother has said he will also be making extra trips home from college to visit her.

I also have decided to tell my mom that I will not be helping her move. I feel badly about this as she has a bad back, and I would not want her to hurt herself. I will suggest that her friends help her. I still feel too hurt and do not want to be around her right now so that I do not say anything I will regret in the future.

I will deal with the wedding thing later. I am certain that the other man will not be coming. I would never do that to my dad. But I am uncertain as to how involved my mom will be in wedding planning from here on out. It’s really not my top priority at this point.

Again, thank you for the prayers. I really appreciate it.

Emily
 
aubsreturning said:
**My parents divorce, although it seems like eons ago, was the point in my life where I lost my faith. I vehemently argued that if God was so great, why did he let my beautiful Catholic family fall apart?! **

Truth be told, I should have clung closer to God, rather than argue with him. He made sure my siblings and I were raised by my deeply spiritual father, that we were never far from my HUGE Catholic family and a church that held my hand through it all. It has taken me 20+ years to come back to my Catholic faith after this ordeal. And all the same people that held my hand then, just held my hand again as I came back to the church recently.

Attach yourself to your faith more than ever, pray daily whether alone or with other people, ask people to pray for you and your family. But please always remember, God is with you and in you always. You are his daughter and the love of his life. And he will never give you more than you can handle, because he is always carrying you during the darkest times. Let him lift you to be carried. Let go and let God.
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Same for my husband, only he went one step further and asked God to take HIM to Hell instead of his parents (divorce was automatic Hell in those days), once he recognized that they were still going to divorce in spite of his own prayers to God to stop his parents from divorcing. He’s still angry at God and has never returned to the Church with his heart although he fakes it for our sons’ sake. He was a very devout and spiritual little boy and his grandmother was a strong Catholic all her life, but he closed God out of his heart, mind and life at that point and thinks he has done everything on his own. It’s very sad.
 
emmarie58 said:
Thank you all for the prayers. I will be spending a lot of time with my sister. I told her to call me anytime she needed, and that she could stay with me anytime she liked. I also will be driving up to pick her up from school and spend time with her in the afternoons that I don’t work. I think the hardest part for her will be that she won’t be able to go to where her mom lives (she wasn’t told about the other man). My brother has said he will also be making extra trips home from college to visit her.

I also have decided to tell my mom that I will not be helping her move. I feel badly about this as she has a bad back, and I would not want her to hurt herself. I will suggest that her friends help her. I still feel too hurt and do not want to be around her right now so that I do not say anything I will regret in the future.

I will deal with the wedding thing later. I am certain that the other man will not be coming. I would never do that to my dad. But I am uncertain as to how involved my mom will be in wedding planning from here on out. It’s really not my top priority at this point.

Again, thank you for the prayers. I really appreciate it.

Emily
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I will add you to my prayers too. I am glad you and your brother are rallying around your little sister - she’s going to need all the positive influences she can get from now on. Don’t be surprised if she either becomes a very, very good little girl, or goes toward some very bad choices. Make sure your dad knows what to watch for too.

You’re a better person than I am. I am afraid that I would have a lot of things to say to my mom under these circumstances, and I would have to go straight to confession afterward. She actually expects YOU to help her move into her adulterous new home? And you on the verge of marriage? :eek::mad: Bad back or no, she’s on her own, tell her to call AAA Moving Co. and good luck with it. The thing is, she can’t expect to do what she’s doing and have all her relationships continue as they were. She just atom-bombed the entire family - life will never be the same for any of you. She doesn’t get to pretend that it’s no big deal.

I’d better stop before my fingers go too far. I will pray for you. These kinds of things really make me so angry. People destroy their kids’ lives and the damage goes on through GENERATIONS. I hate adultery! :mad:
 
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