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When I tell people that I come from divorced parents, they often say things like, “You must never want to get married” or “That must have made you a little cynical about love.” And I don’t blame them for thinking those things. The fact is that a lot of other children of divorce I know are a bit pessimistic about the whole idea of matrimony and devoting their lives to one person. It’s a common side effect of having your home torn apart. But to be honest, I’m thankful for what happened to my parents. I wouldn’t wish that type of pain and turmoil on anyone, but ultimately, it made all of us learn a lot about ourselves, and made us all stronger. The older I get, the more I realize that everything happened exactly as it was supposed to. Here is why having divorced parents didn’t make me cynical.
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Their story was riddled with red flags
When people worry about divorce, they imagine some scenario in which a marriage is perfectly happy and loving one day and spontaneously combusts the next. But that’s not really what happens. My parent’s origin story, for example, was riddled with red flags. They were both with other people when they began dating. They were long distance and had spent a total of maybe one month together before getting engaged. I don’t know why they didn’t see the red flags, but I do. If you ask many divorced couples about how they got together, you might realize, “Oooooh. Yeah. This thing was headed for disaster from the beginning.
