TThe day my parents officially announced that they were divorcing, I was 30 years old. It was, if I am completely honest, a relief. They had already been separated for approximately two years at this point, a long process and acrimony that grew even more caustic after my mother moved from our family home. Before the ink dried in its divorce papers, I cried.
Things were different for Ellie Coverdale, whose parents divorce shook their world when he turned 23. Now 36, Coverdale can still remember the precise moment they told him. “It was about a video call,” she says. “I was on my floor, I was working late. He felt surreal, as the ground changed under me. I remember that I was completely quiet, I didn't know what to say. It took me some time to accept it as a fact.”
Our experiences may differ, but what we have in common is that we were both completely incipient adults when our parents separated. It is an aspect of divorce that is often overlooked: after all, adult children will have already flown the nest, they can be establishing in their own relationships and careers, and they can even have their own children. But there is a growing number of us due to the increase in “silver divisors”, a term coined to describe the couples that divorces in later life.
The figures of the Office of National Statistics (ONS) show that divorces between people 65 years of age or older have constantly increased during the last two decades. In 2021, one in four divorces took place after 50 years. Some of the reasons behind “silver divisions” are celebration reasons. For example, it is undoubtedly a positive development that more women are becoming financial enough to leave an unhappy marriage, far from the days when women had few options to get things in misery. Divorce has also become a lot of social norm and, with the introduction of divorce without guilt in the United Kingdom in 2022, the path to less controversial separations has also made it clear.
But while there are many resources for families of young children and adolescents who navigate the choppy waters of divorce, adult children generally leave their own devices. “There is expectation that adult children surpass it if their parents divorce,” says Kate Daly, a specialist throughout divorce. “But it is not true: the impact on adult children is as great as it would have been if they had been children when their parents made this decision.”
Daly, who co -founded the friendly separation service, explains that some things remain the same regardless of how old the children have when their parents separate, such as how to navigate on birthdays, vacations, weddings and other events of life after the fact. Parents with younger children also feel more need to protect them from the most controversial aspects of divorce, while those with adult children feel that they should be able to handle the darkest side of things.
How divorce is handled is what damages children, not divorce itself
Mandy Saligari, therapist
The emotional sequelae of my parents's divorce left me staggering. At one point I was reassessing every relationship I had, wondering if my own marriage was convicted. The next time, I was trying to leave my feelings aside to concentrate on my work and establish goals for my future. My younger sister found the news especially difficult. I imagined myself as his buoy, keeping it afloat between the waves of agitation. The storm continued, and continued. It's only now, almost three years later, I feel that I am on the other side, and I can't help asking how other adult children do it.
Coverdale says that his parents' divorce raised many questions about his childhood, despite feeling “constant tension” between them while growing. “They were not openly unhappy,” she says, but recalls “a lot of silence, small arguments, misunderstandings, as if they were not on the same page. I felt they were more like fourth partners than a couple.”
“We listen to many people who question all their childhood when their parents announce a divorce,” says Daly. “Some even begin to question their own relationships, because they are no longer sure of how a happy relationship looks. If there are grandchildren involved, more questions arise: how do you tell them that grandfather and grandmother no longer live together?
My childhood until the age of 10 was, for the most part, happy. But after that, the cracks in my parents' marriage began to reveal themselves. They tried to threw them with religion, becoming active members of a local evangelical church, but the cracks became abysses that not even a divine miracle could heal. But instead of admitting that the relationship had ended, my parents stared together, believing that it would be better for me and my brothers if they endured.
The idea of ”staying together for children” has long been the source of unhappy but durable marriages. But Mandy Saligari therapist says that this approach can cause more damage than well. The tacit agreement here is this: if parents must sacrifice their happiness so that their children have a good childhood, it is better worth it, which is a totally unfair position to put them.
“Staying together for the benefit of children means that parents put their happiness because” they want their children to be happy, “which is a tremendous pressure to place their children if you are not modeling that behavior yourself,” he explains.
One of the reasons why some parents remain together when they do not want is the belief that traditional nuclear family unit is their best opportunity, to say it without surroundings, not spoil their children. But Saligari says that children collect much more than most parents think they do, even learning attachment styles between the ages of nothing to six that will shape their own future relationships.
“If mom and dad intend to be happy through tight teeth and go, 'no, nothing to do here,' his son is taught to distrust his instincts because they feel that something is wrong, but they are told that everything is fine,” explains Saligari. “This means that when they continue to form relationships, they are likely to have an anxious attachment or an anxious style to avoid because they will not trust their instinct.” I like this guy, it seems that we are happy, but are we? “
Fortunately, modern developments in the divorce process, as well as more access to support for families, means that parents have less reasons to maintain a relationship for the good of children. My parents and other silver divisors were part of a generation that saw divorce as a great failure and felt pressure to make things work even when they were desperately unhappy. At the end of the day, everyone suffered. I can't help looking at friends whose parents separated when they were between 13 and 15 years old, and wishing mine would have done the same. While there is no “good weather” for parents to divorce, there are ways to ensure that it does as much damage to all involved, says Saligari.
“How divorce is handled is what damages children, not the divorce itself,” he explains. “Then, if parents get involved in guilt and ask children to take sides, it is when divorce becomes toxic. If their children are genuinely their priority, then put their ego aside and listen to each other, and try, as adults, that they reach some type of decision. Or work through what is happening, with or without help, or make a peaceful decision that the relationship ends.
“Children, no matter how old they are, only need clarity. They need to know that mom and dad are as happy as they can be, since 'happy' is a relative term. Then they can assume that responsibility for themselves and decide on their parents.”
I often wonder how my life would have seemed if my parents left it when I was younger. I am not alone either.
“Sometimes I wish they had done it before,” Coverdale tells me, with a sigh. “Maybe we could all have been happier before.”
