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Coping With Your Parents’ Divorce

In my short life, I’ve weathered not one, but two divorces within my family. My sophomore year of high school, my mom and dad sat me down in the kitchen and as soon as they said, “Kelly, we have something to tell you,” I knew they were splitting up. My father remarried my sophomore year of college. It was another devastating blow when he and my stepmom divorced two years after I graduated. I’m an only child. On the one hand, I didn’t have the support of a sibling who could understand my feelings completely, so I felt alone in the grieving process. On the other, I wasn’t carrying the weight of taking care of someone else—I know that the oldest sibling can sometimes feel a lot of responsibility to take care of their younger brothers or sisters. The news that my parents were splitting up immediately brought on feelings of grief, fear, and anger. I cried a lot, yelled a lot, and lost a lot of sleep. I think all those feelings were inevitable. But while you can’t avoid the pain associated with a parent’s divorce, I do have some hard-won coping strategies to offer:

1. Don’t predict the future. I was full of panic when my parents broke the news. I started spinning out on a bunch of nightmarish hypotheticals: What if my dad moves out of New York and I only see him twice a year? What if my mom gets a boyfriend? I’m not going to see both my parents on Christmas? My birthday? Stay in the moment. You don’t yet know how things are going to unfold. Take it one step at a time. Futurizing makes the whole thing so much worse. Cross all those bridges when you come to them.

2. Talk to your parents openly and honestly. Hiding your feelings from your parents can breed resentment on your part (it did for me, at least). Try not to go on the attack. They’re still your parents, and chances are, they want to provide you with emotional support. They can also quell some anxiety about the future by keeping you in the loop.

3. Be fair. Don’t take sides. Let your parents deal with their feelings themselves, even if they’re persuading you to declare allegiances. They’re adults. It’s okay to upset them if it means taking care of yourself. It’s not fair—or rational—of them to ask you to reject one parent in favor of the other. Ask your parents not to bad-mouth one another. The less stress you have to deal with, the better. If your parent can’t stop the angry tirades, calmly excuse yourself when one of these rants begins.

4. Don’t parent your parent. Your parents absolutely need support during this extremely painful time in their lives, but you’re not the person to counsel them. Your serenity has to be your main priority. It’s not helpful—and can be quite damaging—for you to know all the details about why your parents’ marriage stopped working.

5. Stay in touch with a parent if physical distance comes between you. It was so hard for me to alternate time between my parents’ homes. Phone calls, emails, Snapchat—keep the connection going.

6. The most important thing to keep in mind is that your parents’ divorce is not your fault. Their divorce has nothing to do with you. The conflict lies between your two parents, end of story. I remember wondering what I could have done to avoid disaster. The answer was, of course, nothing.

Please share what helped you along during your parents’ divorce. Hang in there. In the long run, you parents are actually moving into a happier, healthier place in their lives, and that’s a good thing.