Do you ever wish your parents would just get divorced?

Perhaps tell them their fighting is affecting you.

My parents went silent when I told them “I wish you guys could just love each other.”

There definitely does seem to be a bit of a contradictory nature surrounding divorce; parents want to stay together “for the kids”, but they don’t realize that by staying together and fighting all the time, they’re doing just as much (if not more) damage.

Yes. My parents are also very unhappy together. In fact, your description matches them quite well.

It’s not that they think divorce is wrong, though. He’s actually my step-father and they’ve been together for 19 years. My mother has changed drastically over the past few years (the result of her declining mental and physical health and supporting an adult child with a narcotics addiction) and is now very hard to get along with. They sleep separately, spend little time together, and refuse to part for some reason.

I’m 23 and married now, so I’ve learned to separate myself from them quite a bit. I still see them weekly, but I’ve separated myself emotionally. I’ve accepted the fact that there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s their lives and their choice. Now I just focus on making sure my marriage never becomes what theirs has.

I find it extremely sad when people stick at a relationship where both people are unhappy because of beliefs or pride.
My mum and dad were awful together too, and apparently when I was seven years old, I said to my mum: “dad is a bachelor boy”.
I remember wanting them to be divorced, and thank goodness they separated when I was sixteen or seventeen.
Some people just don’t work together. My parents are both now happy with other people.

Consider buying them each a copy of Harville Hnedrix’s Getting the Love You Want. It may save their marriage. It will certainly help with communication.

They already did #carefulwhatyouwishfor.

My parents were married for 35 years when my father died. I only remember them arguing a few times.
I was lucky. Most of my friends parents were divorced.
Now that I think on it, I only have 2 friends who still have both parents living, and those parents are still married. That may show the value of a happy marriage.

When my dad was still alive, of course I wished they would divorce. He was abusive and didn’t deserve my mother doting on him. I knew she passed on the love of her life for him, because she already had kids by then. I didn’t have a good relationship with him and wanted to be away from him. Anyway, colon cancer ftw.

Some folks simply cannot afford to divorce. The cost of doing it… and the greater expenses afterward for a downgraded living arrangement. It’s just not worth losing what you have.

When I was younger I did. Now, I feel like it is there life, there choice. If they did divorce the burden on me would be too demanding I think, so selfishly let them stay together. My parents are in their 60’s now, I can’t imagine them divorcing anyway. A lifetime together is difficult to split apart no matter how annoying the relationship can be. Many couple do get better tgether as time marches on. Things calm down when kids are out of the house, and as long as one of them is not abusive, sometimes it is not horrible to stay together, even if many years had been very difficult.

I do know a lot of people who hope a particular parent dies first, so the other one will have some years free from the more difficult of the two people.

The longer people stay married, the less likelihood that they’ll divorce. Couples become vested in familiar and comfortable, but not necessarily happy, relationships. It’s extremely difficult to start over again, and the unknown can be frightening.

If a couple’s been married for, say, 40 years, there’s a long, shared history. The partners may have children and grandchildren. They’re co-owners of a house that neither person wants to leave. Their finances are complicated and intermingled. They may have mutual friends and like their in-laws.