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My Divorce Didn’t Ruin My Daughter
The guilt I carried was immense and unnecessary.
I grew up the daughter of a generation that stuck together. Nearly all of my friend’s parents had been married for decades. They waited out the hard times and celebrated the good. It’s didn’t mean they were happy people.
I loved my husband and he is a good man. One of the best I know. Kind and occasionally pretty damn funny. But I got married for all of the wrong reasons.
He was my best friend. All of my friends were getting married. I wanted a family of my own. I hated dating, even in my 20s. I got married young because I thought that was what we were supposed to do. I had left high school to the great microcosm of college and then went right back to high school as a teacher.
I did very little living of my own life. No exploration. In the summers between school years, I never traveled. I had no great adventures.
At 25-years-old, I knew absolutely nothing about myself. I had no business committing myself to life to someone. Still, I did it.
My husband and I had started to fight and things were breaking down. My daughter was only two when we got divorced. Leaving my marriage would mean that my…
