There’s a Reason the Phrase “Adult Child of Divorce” Exists
There’s a reason the phrase “adult child of divorce” exists. It’s an odd pairing of words, “adult” and “child,” but as one, I can say they are more accurate than I would like to believe. My parents divorced when I was 20 years old. Perhaps “young adult” is better suited to describe me, but a child of divorce I am nonetheless. At 20, maybe you would think I’d read the signs, seen it coming, known my parents’ marriage was failing. I was not that kind of kid.
My mom lovingly described me as someone who preferred her “rose-colored glasses,” who saw the world how she wanted to see it, not how it actually was.
I wanted my family of six to be perfect, and that’s how I packaged and sold it to those around me. Many of my friends and even some of my teachers from high school were shocked when my family eventually unraveled. One even told me, “I always saw your family as happy, with four perfect daughters…”
The signs were always there; I just refused to believe them.
On my sister’s eleventh birthday, as I was getting ready for school, my mom came into the kitchen, visibly upset. She folded the tops of my cereal box (I’d never leave the box out again, as if that could deter her from giving me earth-shattering news), and said, “I don’t know if your dad and I are going to stay married.” This was on the heels of nights of fighting, of my sister climbing into my bed because she was scared, of hearing my mom’s hysterical screaming, “I WILL RUN AWAY. I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE.” She dropped me off at school, and my parents stayed married. I was thirteen.
When Jon and Kate Plus 8 had an episode where the couple renewed their wedding vows, promising their children they would be married forever, my mom said, “You should never promise that. You never know what could happen. It’s hard to love someone forever.” I was seventeen.
It was my youngest sister’s tenth birthday, and I was sitting on the couch as our family gathered outside, celebrating on the deck in their all-American July picnic-type way. Maybe I was reading a book, maybe I was trying to cool off from that Midwest heat. My mom walked in, and seemingly off the cuff announced that her and my father were not going to stay together much longer. Maybe they’ll stay together until my baby sister graduates high school; maybe she can last that long. I was nineteen.
This isn’t real, I think. This isn’t happening.
I was home for the summer after my freshman year of college; working at a local food market and hating every second of being away from school. My parents’ marriage had deteriorated in the time I’d been away and I knew this, I could finally recognize that the threats were getting more real every time my mother uttered them. I could feel the tension every morning when I woke up, thick and stifling and permeating through the house like dust. I got a text as I closed up for the night from my sister; I don’t remember what it said after all this time, but the end result was that after all the yelling, the fighting, the threats and the lies, my parents were done. They were getting divorced. I held back tears as I swept the floor, punched out, and sat in my car. I couldn’t drive home. If I didn’t drive home, they wouldn’t get divorced. I was twenty years old.
I don’t pretend to speak for everyone who has divorced parents; I know that many marriages end in divorce, some much uglier than my parents’ ever was, with custody battles and fighting all around. In that regard, we were lucky. Of course, I was away at college for the worst of it; my sister still has the emotional scars from some nasty psychological warfare my parents tried to inflict on her. This is simply my experience of watching two people you grew up thinking were soulmates fall away from each other. I’ve learned more details as I’ve gotten older; I realize that there was damage done on both sides. The rose colored glasses are off, or at least they’re now tinted a very, very light pink.
No matter how old you are, they are still your parents, and you believe that they are meant to be together.
I sold that unattainable, unrealistic idea of a beautiful family with four daughters to not only those around me, but to myself. Even now, four years later, I still mourn the loss of that family. To me, that defines “adult child of divorce,” and why it isn’t any easier to accept divorce as you grow older. You’re old enough to know all the dirty secrets, and worse, you understand how two people could come to that point, to end a marriage, a family, a way of life.
