So sorry to hear the courts are not supporting you. Unfortunately, I think this is very common. If you are on facebook, there are some very helpful support communities. https://www.facebook.com/pages/One-Moms-Battle/275190549199889, https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442…visits these sites…you will see that many are in your situation.

Don’t give up in your fight for your children’s emotional and physical safety!
Sending hugs and strength your way!
Anna

Thank you for your post. I am a child of divorced parents who is also a divorced parent as well. My parents divorced when I was three, had an amicable divorce and the first case of joint custody in our county. As an adult I too wanted to avoid the “broken home”, however had to leave my son’s father while pregnant because of physical and emotional abuse. Now the courts are forcing a shared custody situation that is both hard on my son and creates an impossible co-parenting situation with someone who cannot put his child first and takes any opportunity to continue abusing. I feel very strongly that forced shared custody in abusive situations allows the abuser to continue abusing often through the children and does not prioritize the children’s wellbeing. I am completely in agreement and supportive of your view that divorce is the only solution to domestic violence situations. If only the custody laws would also support the right to live abuse free after the divorce.

Ashly

Of course honesty is a good thing, rather than having to toe the party line and sweep the consequences of divorce under the rug so that certain people can feel more comfortable at the expense of others, and I applaud that sentiment.

But intellectual honesty is also important, and I’m glad that Laura, JBillie, et al have pointed out the sleight of hand that went on in this piece. Of course, maybe that’s bound to happen when you go to only one source for your talking heads in a piece like this – both experts whose opinions were included are from the conservative Institute for American Values, which promotes narrow views of family, parenting, and gender roles based on the Christian tradition.

Like Laura, my mental health deteriorated dangerously while I was with my daughter’s father, who suffered from addiction as well as other issues and was ambivalent at best about our relationship. I fall on the more precarious side of the mental health continuum anyway (whether because of genetic inheritance or due to early life trauma, who can say) so ultimately it came down to: was my daughter better off with one parent who could more or less hold it together alone, or two parents who were completely dysfunctional? And I’m not sure what Ms. Marquardt is trying to say with her self-contradictory statement in support(?) of “loveless marriages” but when I imagine my daughter being treated the way I was in my marriage, I would sooner see the Earth crash into the sun than have her normalize my experience and grow up to emulate it.

I tried for 5 agonizing years to make our partnership work and although loyalty is a core personality trait of mine, as well as a value I hold dearly, I think I showed her the best example I could by divorcing her father while doing my best with the help of Al-Anon and therapy to support her in developing the healthiest relationship possible with him. Now she has a stable place to live, a mother who has more time and energy for her than before, and peace in our home. And she sees that even when people with problems make mistakes, we don’t have to demonize them and we can enjoy the good things we get from having them in our life, but with limits that protect our safety and our dignity. To me, this IS loyalty and this IS love and this IS sacrifice. But it is also having love and respect for yourself and not staying trapped in a situation that traumatizes and degrades you. For myself, emotionally, I cannot conceive of ever being involved in a romantic relationship ever ever again under any circumstances, and why anyone would choose to remarry for that purpose is a mystery to me. But intellectually I know that we aren’t all the same, and what makes sense to me in parenting my daughter is to be open about what mental health and illness, addiction, and relationship trauma are; how common they are and how we will all have to deal with these issues in some way in ourselves, our families, our friends, neighbors, coworkers etc. – and how we do have the tools to hold ourselves and others accountable for what we do with all the baggage we inherit.

Finally, I have to say that I think there is a larger issue here than marriage and divorce. The issue is healthy or unhealthy people and heathy or unhealthy relationships – intimate relationships and parenting relationships. If you look at it from a certain angle, you could say that marriage and divorce are just pieces of paper – the commitment or lack thereof are in your heart and mind, whether your union or relation is officially recognized or not. In places and times when people can’t get divorced, they can still leave each other, stay together in name but abuse and cheat on each other, or have marriage be based on financial or political alliances rather than an intimate relationship. In places and times when people can’t get married, they still form commitments and families (eg, enslaved people in the pre-civil war US, same-sex couples throughout time). Go figure! In any case, children imitate what they see, and there’s a lot we could all do to create a better world for them to grow up in.

Having just had a baby I am now facing divorce myself. Although it is hugely disappointing personally, I do feel that I am equipped to help my son through this process. I also keep reminding myself that both Bill Clinton and Burak Obama were raised by single mothers and in my opinion are good people doing great things.