Unhappily Married: What’s Best for the Kids – Together or Apart?

Unhappy Marriage: What's Best for the Kids - Together or Apart?

Deciding whether to stay in an unhappy marriage or leave is possibly one of the hardest decisions a parent could make.

Sometimes despite the greatest ‘happily-ever-after’ intentions, a relationship can become a tense, unhappy, conflicted union. If this is the case there’ll be no hiding it from the kids – they’ll know and according to a growing body of research, they’ll wear the impact.

A number of studies have pointed to the negative impact of divorce on children but there is compelling research suggesting that many of these problems have their roots in the conflict and tension that preceded the breakup. It is widely accepted that parental conflict does damage, particularly when it is any of the following:

  • frequent;
  • heated (verbal insults and raised voices);
  • physically aggressive;
  • unresolved (in the child’s eyes);
  • about the child;
  • brings on the silent treatment between parents.

Parents will do anything for their children and this may fuel the decision to stay together in an unhappy marriage. Conflict though, might do more harm to children than divorce:

  1. Harm to the parent-child bond.

    In an unhappy marriage, where tension and conflict is the norm, parent-child interactions also seem to show signs of strain. As explained by researcher and psychologist Chrystyna Kouros, ‘…if mom and dad are fighting, it will show up initially – and in some cases on the second day – in a poorer quality relationship with their kids.’  The exact reasons for this are unclear but there are a number of likely explanations. Conflict drains the resources of a relationship and in doing so, can give way to ineffective or inconsistent parenting. Parental energy is also strained, leaving less to invest in the children.

  2. The trigger for psychological and behavioural problems.

    Marital conflict is associated with a range of internalising (such as depression, anxiety, withdrawal) and externalizing (such as aggression, non-compliance) outcomes in children.

  3. Poorer academic performance.

    Children who report higher levels of hostile, intense or unresolved conflict between their parents show poorer academic performance. 

  4. Poorer interpersonal skills.

    When there is ongoing tension and unresolved conflict between parents, there is likely to be minimal modelling of effective ways to resolve conflict. Disagreements are a part of life and the first place children learn how to handle them is in the home, by watching their parents. If there is limited modelling of successful conflict resolution, there will be limited learning of successful relationship skills.

  5. Trouble with their own future romantic relationships.

    Children who are exposed to frequent marital conflict are more likely to have trouble with their own romantic relationships in adolescence and through to adulthood. For children from high conflict homes, their experience with romantic relationships and is a negative one, effectively limiting their knowledge on how successful relationships work.

  6. Leads to emotional insecurity.

    Research has found that when parents are in an unhappy marriage, the conflict compromises the social and emotional well-being of children by threatening their sense of security in the family. This in turn predicts the onset of problems during adolescence, including depression and anxiety.  

  7. Causes cardiac stress and an increase in cortisol (the stress hormone).

    Tension or conflict between parents causes a physiological response in children. According to research, when children see conflict between their parents, they experience cardiac stress and a significant increase in the level of cortisol in their body. This physical response can harm their stress response systems and interfere with their mental and intellectual development.

  8. Non-verbal and verbal conflict cause similar responses.

    In a study conducted at the University of Notre Dame, it was found that children responded similarly to both verbal and nonverbal forms of conflict between their parents. Yelling, name-calling and verbal spite induces the same stress response in children as eye-rolling, heavy sighs, silent treatment and non-verbal intimidation such as finger pointing or glaring.

  9. Increases the likelihood of adult children divorcing.

    Research has found the highest rates of divorce occur for adult children whose parents divorced after a high conflict marriage. The second highest rate was for those whose parents stayed together but had a high conflict relationship. 

How to Disagree Well – Even if it’s an Unhappy Marriage

Disagreements are a fact of life. Disagree well, and you’ll provide your kids with the opportunity to learn some valuable life skills that will hold them well throughout their lives. Here’s how:

  1. Don’t fight dirty.

    Reduce the hostility and don’t fight dirty. No name-calling, yelling, personal attacks, eye-rolling, glaring or silent treatment. If a dirty fight is all you have in you, just keep it away from the kids.

  2. Resolve the argument and let the kids know you’ve made up (they’ll be able to tell if you’re faking).

    Make sure you let the children know that the argument has been resolved. Research has shown that conflict is particularly damaging to kids if they believe it to be unresolved. Let them know that you and your spouse forgive each other and have made up. It’s important to do this respectfully and warmly. Children are sharper than we often give them credit for and if you’re faking the make-up, they’ll know it straight away.

  3. Keep the effects of the clash separate from the kids.

    Be deliberate in keeping the effects of a marital clash on you separate to your relationships with your kids. Conflict takes its toll on even the strongest person. An unhappy marriage will drain your energy but its important to stay patient, sensitive and consistent with your kids. Do whatever you can to make sure your children feel that you still have enough energy for them. 

  4. Be alive the possibility that the kids may blame themselves.

    Let them know that grown-ups sometimes get cranky with each other and that it has absolutely nothing to do with them. Let them know they are actually the biggest reason you love each other or care about each other and that no matter what, they’ll never be the reason for the fight. They might blame themselves whether the argument is over them or not – it’s just the way it is. If you are arguing over something to do with them, do everything you can to keep it away from them or at the very least, do whatever you can to shut it down.

Not all marital conflict is unhealthy. It’s important for children to learn how to effectively manage conflict and one of the best ways for this to happen is for them to see their parents doing exactly that – loving each other through the bumps. Conflict that is resolved respectfully and with warmth and empathy will have a positive effect on kids and equip them with valuable tools for their own lives.

 Children of divorced parents can flourish and be as successful as children from families where the marriage is intact.

Nobody but you can decide whether it’s best to stay together or separate but what we know from the research is that if you stay together, it’s critical to minimise conflict, especially in front of the kids. Constant tension and arguing can harm them more than divorce. 

I’ve never met a parent who went to divorce as anything but the last option – but it is an option and perhaps a sound one if the marriage is one of tension or high conflict. 

Showing respect to your relationship doesn’t always mean staying. If you’ve fought to keep it intact and it continues to fall apart, respecting it might mean ending it rather than sending it to a slow cold death. Only the couple involved can make the decision and it’s not for anyone else to judge.

Every family is different but there are common reasons that relationships fall apart. If you have more fight left in you, see here for the 6 most common reasons relationships come undone and ways you might be able to get them back on track.

There’s a big difference between giving up and knowing when to walk away. Deciding to divorce in no way means you have failed or that the relationship wasn’t important, right or wonderful in its prime. What it means is that it has run its course and has little more to offer either of you. Think carefully before you decide to stay together for the kids, they may be the reason you need to make the heartbreaking and brave decision to walk away.

How children deal with divorce depends heavily on how the parents deal with it. See here for ways to help  children safely and soundly through to the other side of divorce.

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We don’t need to protect kids from the discomfort of anxiety.

We’ll want to, but as long as they’re safe (including in their bodies with sensory and physiological needs met), we don’t need to - any more than we need to protect them from the discomfort of seatbelts, bike helmets, boundaries, brushing their teeth.

Courage isn’t an absence of anxiety. It’s the anxiety that makes something brave. Courage is about handling the discomfort of anxiety.

When we hold them back from anxiety, we hold them back - from growth, from discovery, and from building their bravery muscles.

The distress and discomfort that come with anxiety won’t hurt them. What hurts them is the same thing that hurts all of us - feeling alone in distress. So this is what we will protect them from - not the anxiety, but feeling alone in it.

To do this, speak to the anxiety AND the courage. 

This will also help them feel safer with their anxiety. It puts a story of brave to it rather than a story of deficiency (‘I feel like this because there’s something wrong with me,’) or a story of disaster (‘I feel like this because something bad is about to happen.’).

Normalise, see them, and let them feel you with them. This might sound something like:

‘This feels big doesn’t it. Of course you feel anxious. You’re doing something big/ brave/ important, and that’s how brave feels. It feels scary, stressful, big. It feels like anxiety. It feels like you feel right now. I know you can handle this. We’ll handle it together.’

It doesn’t matter how well they handle it and it doesn’t matter how big the brave thing is. The edges are where the edges are, and anxiety means they are expanding those edges.

We don’t get strong by lifting toothpicks. We get strong by lifting as much as we can, and then a little bit more for a little bit longer. And we do this again and again, until that feels okay. Then we go a little bit further. Brave builds the same way - one brave step after another.

It doesn’t matter how long it takes and it doesn’t matter how big the steps are. If they’ve handled the discomfort of anxiety for a teeny while today, then they’ve been brave today. And tomorrow we’ll go again again.♥️
Feeling seen, safe, and cared for is a biological need. It’s not a choice and it’s not pandering. It’s a biological need.

Children - all of us - will prioritise relational safety over everything. 

When children feel seen, safe, and a sense of belonging they will spend less resources in fight, flight, or withdrawal, and will be free to divert those resources into learning, making thoughtful choices, engaging in ways that can grow them.

They will also be more likely to spend resources seeking out those people (their trusted adults at school) or places (school) that make them feel good about themselves, rather than avoiding the people of spaces that make them feel rubbish or inadequate.

Behaviour support and learning support is about felt safety support first. 

The schools and educators who know this and practice it are making a profound difference, not just for young people but for all of us. They are actively engaging in crime prevention, mental illness prevention, and nurturing strong, beautiful little people into strong, beautiful big ones.♥️
Emotion is e-motion. Energy in motion.

When emotions happen, we have two options: express or depress. That’s it. They’re the options.

When your young person (or you) is being swamped by big feelings, let the feelings come.

Hold the boundary around behaviour - keep them physically safe and let them feel their relationship with you is safe, but you don’t need to fix their feelings.

They aren’t a sign of breakage. They’re a sign your child is catalysing the energy. Our job over the next many years is to help them do this respectfully.

When emotional energy is shut down, it doesn’t disappear. It gets held in the body and will come out sideways in response to seemingly benign things, or it will drive distraction behaviours (such as addiction, numbness).

Sometimes there’ll be a need for them to control that energy so they can do what they need to do - go to school, take the sports field, do the exam - but the more we can make way for expression either in the moment or later, the safer and softer they’ll feel in their minds and bodies.

Expression is the most important part of moving through any feeling. This might look like talking, moving, crying, writing, yelling.

This is why you might see big feelings after school. It’s often a sign that they’ve been controlling themselves all day - through the feelings that come with learning new things, being quiet and still, trying to get along with everyone, not having the power and influence they need (that we all need). When they get into the car at pickup, finally those feelings they’ve been holding on to have a safe place to show up and move through them and out of them.

It can be so messy! It takes time to learn how to lasso feelings and words into something unmessy.

In the meantime, our job is to hold a tender, strong, safe place for that emotional energy to move out of them.

Hold the boundary around behaviour where you can, add warmth where you can, and when they are calm talk about what happened and how they might do things differently next time. And be patient. Just because someone tells us how to swing a racket, doesn’t mean we’ll win Wimbledon tomorrow. Good things take time, and loads of practice.♥️
Thank you Adelaide! Thank you for your stories, your warmth, for laughing with me, spaghetti bodying with me (when you know, you know), for letting me scribble on your books, and most of all, for letting me be a part of your world today.

So proud to share the stage with Steve Biddulph, @matt.runnalls ,
@michellemitchell.author, and @nathandubsywant. To @sharonwittauthor - thank you for creating this beautiful, brave space for families to come together and grow stronger.

And to the parents, carers, grandparents - you are extraordinary and it’s a privilege to share the space with you. 

Parenting is big work. Tender, gritty, beautiful, hard. It asks everything of us - our strength, our softness, our growth. We’re raising beautiful little people into beautiful big people, and at the same time, we’re growing ourselves. 

Sometimes that growth feels impatient and demanding - like we’re being wrenched forward before we’re ready, before our feet have found the ground. 

But that’s the nature of growth isn’t it. It rarely waits for permission. It asks only that we keep moving.

And that’s okay. 

There’s no rush. You have time. We have time.

In the meantime they will keep growing us, these little humans of ours. Quietly, daily, deeply. They will grow us in the most profound ways if we let them. And we must let them - for their sake, for our own, and for the ancestral threads that tie us to the generations that came before us, and those that will come because of us. We will grow for them and because of them.♥️
Their words might be messy, angry, sad. They might sound bigger than the issue, or as though they aren’t about the issue at all. 

The words are the warning lights on the dashboard. They’re the signal that something is wrong, but they won’t always tell us exactly what that ‘something’ is. Responding only to the words is like noticing the light without noticing the problem.

Our job isn’t to respond to their words, but to respond to the feelings and the need behind the words.

First though, we need to understand what the words are signalling. This won’t always be obvious and it certainly won’t always be easy. 

At first the signal might be blurry, or too bright, or too loud, or not obvious.

Unless we really understand the problem behind signal - the why behind words - we might inadvertently respond to what we think the problem is, not what the problem actually is. 

Words can be hard and messy, and when they are fuelled by big feelings that can jet from us with full force. It is this way for all of us. 

Talking helps catalyse the emotion, and (eventually) bring the problem into a clearer view.

But someone needs to listen to the talking. You won’t always be able to do this - you’re human too - but when you can, it will be one of the most powerful ways to love them through their storms.

If the words are disrespectful, try:

‘I want to hear you but I love you too much to let you think it’s okay to speak like that. Do you want to try it a different way?’ 

Expectations, with support. Leadership, with warmth. Then, let them talk.

Our job isn’t to fix them - they aren’t broken. Our job is to understand them so we can help them feel seen, safe, and supported through the big of it all. When we do this, we give them what they need to find their way through.♥️

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