Staying Together for the Kids Doesn’t Mean What You Think it Does

December 27, 2012 was the most painful day of my life. That was the day that my ex husband and I sat our kids down, told them we were separating, and that their dad was moving out. Looking into the faces of the two tiny humans I love more than anything, and seeing their hearts break in front of my eyes, cut my soul to shreds. I had fought for months to avoid being here. This was the outcome I had dreaded above all else. Despite this, had I walked away from divorce and stayed together for the sake of the kids, it would’ve been an incredibly selfish act. Unless you’re still doing the work to save your marriage, you are not staying together for the kids. You are staying together for yourself.

To be clear. If you know that, were it not for having kids, you would walk away but choose to keep working to save the relationship because of them; good for you. That is absolutely admirable. It is the morally correct thing to do in most cases. That’s the role of a parent, to keep on doing the hard and unpleasant work that will make your kids’ lives better when all you really want to do is lie down. You get up and drive them to soccer practice early Saturday morning when you want to sleep in. You spend your money on school supplies and dance lessons when you want a new computer. If you are unsure you would put in the work of marriage counseling, healthy communication, learning attachment styles, and trying new things in the bedroom if it were only your happiness on the line but do it all anyway because of the kids, I applaud and celebrate you. Keep it up and I hope it works.

But if you think staying together for the kids means emotionally checking out of the relationship, closing yourself off from your partner, and pretending that everything is totally fine until the youngest leaves for college, you’re dead wrong. That’s not staying together for the sake of the kids. That’s condemning your children to grow up in the corpse of a marriage while you pretend like it is still alive. It’s taking the easy way out. You avoid seeing the big heartbreak in your kids’ eyes by teaching them that splitting the bills with someone you can’t stand is what marriage should look like. Please don’t do that to your kids.

When I was deciding what to do about my marriage, I struggled to know if I should stay or not. I could not force myself to do any more work, especially when I was the only one doing it. But I knew I could stay if I chose to. I could take all the anger and bitterness I was feeling and eat it. Pretend it wasn’t there and let it burn and rot inside me. I couldn’t let it out or have it acknowledged but I could try to put it aside. I knew that nothing about the relationship would change except for my newfound knowledge that I wanted something better. So the question was, would it be the best thing for my kids if I did that? There was no abuse or addiction. No cheating. No get out of jail free cards. I was taught that those were the only acceptable reasons to leave a marriage. I left anyway.

I left because if I walked away from my happiness in order to keep my kids’ lives undisturbed, I would have taught them some very wrong lessons. I would have been teaching them to live to make other people happy or to expect others to do the same for you. They would have learned that the way a relationship should work is for one person to be sad, angry, and withdrawn while pretending they are not and walking on eggshells to avoid upsetting the other person. I would have been teaching them that marriage means never showing your true self, never being able to grow or change.

I also felt that, by sacrificing my chance at happiness for my kids, I risked tainting our relationship for life. Would they sense my unhappiness and feel that they were the reason? If I sacrificed that much and lived only for my kids, what would I do when they moved out and started a life of their own? Would I resent them for pursuing their own happiness when I’d walked away from mine? Would I keep trying to pull them back with guilt trips or manipulation? I couldn’t risk doing that to my kids. Even if you never tell your children that you’re staying in a dead relationship for their sake, they will sense it. It is a terrible burden to give your children.

My own parents do not have a perfect marriage. I know they had some very rough patches and I’m sure I don’t know all of it. I remember fighting; my dad being a jerk and my mom yelling. My dad has not always treated my mom how I would want to be treated. But I also remember them flirting with each other, dancing in the kitchen, hearing them talk and laugh after we went to bed. I don’t know if they ever felt that they were staying together because of us, but I know that they never gave up completely. They did the work and kept putting the love in. That’s the staying together for the kids that works.

We should never submit ourselves to something we would not want for our children. If you are choosing to stay together for the kids, you owe it to them to work day and night to make your relationship the kind you would want for them also. It’s more work than divorce and takes longer. It often pays off, and can teach your kids how to work to save a relationship. But if you do all the work and still hit a point where you have to give up, then you need to end it. Living in a dead relationship will never pay off. If it’s dead then it’s time for you to teach your kids how to demand better for yourself.