You should not stay in an abusive relationship. DBing is not intended for that. There definitely are situations where divorce is necessary (my father was an abusive alcoholic so divorce was necessary, but that doesn't mean it didn't hurt me or have profound impact on my life). On another note, don't look for happiness in the OP (don't expect any person to be responsible for your happiness because most likely there will be plenty of times of unhappiness). Happiness is something you find in yourself.
Jokerman,
Wrong book title!!!! I must have seen that other one recently while scanning through books.
The one I'm referring to is "The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce," by Wallerstein. Here's a link to it on amazon and the first review with paraphrases parts of it:
"Judith Wallerstein has been tracking children of divorce for over 25
years now, and she doesn't like what she sees. Nor should we. Despite
all the rhetoric and denial by the feminists and the detractors of
marriage, divorce hurts children, and it hurts them even when they
have long ago ceased being children.
Judith Wallerstein, from the
University of California in Berkeley, first wrote of the effects on
children of divorce in her 1980 Surviving the Breakup. Then in 1989
she authored Second Chances. In that book she documented how children
still suffer, ten to fifteen years after parental divorce. In this
book she covers a full 25 years of the children's lives. Now, as
adults, the harmful effects of divorce are still clearly
discernible. Indeed, "the whole trajectory of an individual's life
is profoundly altered by the divorce experience".
Judith
Wallerstein began her study in 1971 with 131 children going through
parental divorce. She has managed to keep in contact with this group,
along with a control group, for a quarter of a century, thus making
her research conclusions difficult to dislodge. And the main
conclusion reached by this study is that the effects of divorce are
long-term.
Says Wallerstein, "From the viewpoint of the children,
and counter to what happens to their parents, divorce is a cumulative
experience. Its impact over time rises to a crescendo in adulthood. At
each developmental stage divorce is experienced anew in different
ways. In adulthood it affects personality, the ability to trust,
expectations about relationships, and ability to cope with
change."
She continues, "But its in adulthood that children of
divorce suffer the most. The impact of divorce hits them most cruelly
as they go in search of love, sexual intimacy, and commitment. Their
lack of inner images of a man and a woman in a stable relationship and
their memories of their parents' failure to sustain the marriage badly
hobbles their search, leading them to heartbreak and even
despair."
This book features seven of the original 131 children,
offering poignant glimpses into their troubled and traumatic lives as
adult children of divorce.These stories make it clear that parental
divorce is one of the worst things that adults can inflict upon a
child. While Wallerstein acknowledges that some marriages cannot be
salvaged, especially where much domestic violence is involved, most
marriages have simply been abandoned too easily and carelessly, with
little or no thought given for how the child will be impacted.
But
as many observers of contemporary culture have noted, the rights of
adults have become the greatest good, with the interests of children
and the social good largely ignored. As Wallerstein asks, "What
about the children? In our rush to improve the lives of adults, we
assumed that their lives would improve as well. We made radical social
changes in the family without realizing how it would change the
experience of growing up. We embarked on a gigantic social experiment
without any idea about how the next generation would be
affected".
Well, now we know. History and common sense should
have already told us, but now solid social science evidence can also
be presented. Divorce hurts kids, and it hurts them for a very long
time. The social policy implications of this lie outside of the scope
of this book, but clearly we need to somehow turn around the divorce
culture and return to a culture of marriage. Reading this book,
passing it on to a friend, and getting it into the hands of our
political leaders would be a good place to start."
Last edited by runningoutoftime; 07/31/0602:12 AM.
There is no arriving, ever. It is all a continual becoming.
