![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Last year, my parents told me they were getting a divorce after over 25 years of marriage. My mother was filing; my dad still wanted to work things out. I, myself, had just married the month before, and my wife is close with my parents. Their divorce was devastating news for us both at a time that was supposed to be joyful.
My mother is, by nature, a private person. Aside from “It just didn’t work out” and “It was a mistake,” she offered few details.
Naturally, I’ve questioned my mother at length about her reasons for the divorce. In total, I’ve probably spent more than 12 hours asking her questions. While I’ve gotten a few concrete answers about how she felt in the marriage, for most of my questions she either wouldn’t answer or would give some ambiguous response. Or she would blame my father for things that happened 20 years ago. Other answers I received: “That’s between your dad and me,” “That’s not something you need to know” and, my favorite, “That’s not really your business.” I still don’t have a clear sense of why my mother wanted a divorce in the first place. On the other hand, my father has been very open about his mistakes throughout their marriage and what he wishes he had done differently.
Is my parents’ divorce really none of my business? I’m close with both of them and lived in the family home through the five-month divorce process while my wife and I were preparing to move across the country for my job. We had a front-row seat to what was happening. Divorce can be a traumatic event for children, no matter how old they are, and being kept in the dark certainly doesn’t help. Name Withheld
Your mother is, as you say, a private person. Although the questions you have are perfectly understandable, you are not entitled to answers. It’s for her to decide what to share. Your father, by contrast, has been quite forthcoming. And yet, despite all he’s told you, you still feel in the dark. Maybe the issue isn’t so much understanding what happened as it is accepting it. That’s something you can work on without extracting more from your mother. This starts by acknowledging that even if you think the divorce was a mistake — as you plainly do — the mistake was hers to make.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/01/magazine/donation-ethics.html
My mother is, by nature, a private person. Aside from “It just didn’t work out” and “It was a mistake,” she offered few details.
Naturally, I’ve questioned my mother at length about her reasons for the divorce. In total, I’ve probably spent more than 12 hours asking her questions. While I’ve gotten a few concrete answers about how she felt in the marriage, for most of my questions she either wouldn’t answer or would give some ambiguous response. Or she would blame my father for things that happened 20 years ago. Other answers I received: “That’s between your dad and me,” “That’s not something you need to know” and, my favorite, “That’s not really your business.” I still don’t have a clear sense of why my mother wanted a divorce in the first place. On the other hand, my father has been very open about his mistakes throughout their marriage and what he wishes he had done differently.
Is my parents’ divorce really none of my business? I’m close with both of them and lived in the family home through the five-month divorce process while my wife and I were preparing to move across the country for my job. We had a front-row seat to what was happening. Divorce can be a traumatic event for children, no matter how old they are, and being kept in the dark certainly doesn’t help. Name Withheld
Your mother is, as you say, a private person. Although the questions you have are perfectly understandable, you are not entitled to answers. It’s for her to decide what to share. Your father, by contrast, has been quite forthcoming. And yet, despite all he’s told you, you still feel in the dark. Maybe the issue isn’t so much understanding what happened as it is accepting it. That’s something you can work on without extracting more from your mother. This starts by acknowledging that even if you think the divorce was a mistake — as you plainly do — the mistake was hers to make.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/01/magazine/donation-ethics.html
no subject