Hi, Matt, glad to hear you had a great day with your girls! And that W seems to be less of a blankety-blank lately. You deserve a break from the anger, for sure.

Regarding your daughters and their thoughts on your marriage, I remember when my own parents D, I was 18. My mother asked me my thoughts before filing... And I told her I wanted her to file. I love them both, equally. My dad had some demons he battled with alcohol. He was never mean, never cheated, never fought... But he was irresponsible, depressed, lost his job, and we were losing our house....my mom was in terrible pain. All I knew at the time was I wanted her to stop hurting.

Almost the same "bandaid" theory of the ow or om, the only focus for her was on making the pain stop. D seemed logical because in her mind, dad was the reason for her unhappiness. But even at 18, there was NO WAY I knew what that would look like in real life.

The men my mother dated after the D were weirdos. She did eventually remarry. But I regretted telling her to D for years and years. Not that she made the decision based solely on my answer, but I still felt bad for encouraging it after I saw that it didn't fix everything as I thought it would.

It is very uncomfortable watching one's own mother acting like a teenager. Teens don't want to stand out negatively, they want to be like everybody else.....and everybody else's moms are not acting this way, so it's embarrassing. It's also difficult to see their mother hurting you, behaving irrationally, and clearly, not be the stable person she should be as a parent.

IMHO, your D wants you to be happy. When she's with you, she imagines you with someone who treats you like the special man you are. Because she wants that for you. All she knows now, is that the situation is hurtful and difficult. And she loves you.

So, back to the question, I do believe it's often natural for teens to not encourage parents to get back together. In that moment. But they don't know yet how it will change things for them going forward.

It's a whole new set of obstacles. Hypothetically, if you remarried, she may not like the person you choose as her new step-parent. She may not like how it feels to actually have to share her daddy-time with a new person. She may not like step siblings if there were any....she can't see this stuff now. She has a beautiful image of all things happy and good for you. That says a lot about you.

But I wouldn't put too much weight on her opinion regarding M or D. Take the beautiful picture she paints in her mind, of you remarried to the most perfect imaginary person alive, as a sign of how much she loves you.