Should I stay in this abusive relationship for the sake of the children?
How often do you look at your children?
I bet its several times a day especially when they do something new that they’ve never done before. Do you remember the first time when you held them in your arms? All that hard work had been worth it. I always remember my mother saying it was the most painful experience but as soon as you held your baby you forgot about what you’d just been through. You’d looked after yourself for 9 months making sure that you hadn’t eaten or drunk anything that could affect the health of your baby, to give it its best fighting chance. And then it arrived. The last thought on your mind was about the effects of divorce on children.
Did you bond straight away or was it a delayed reaction because of your hormones?
There is so much pressure put on a new mum. The experience is different from what you were expecting however many books you’d read. Nothing could totally prepare you for the responsibility of taking this tiny being home and looking after it. Even bathing it was a scary experience in case it fell out of your hands because the soap had made its skin so slippy. You never even considered that you may suffer from divorce depression one day.
How do you feel when you look at your sleeping child?
They are so vulnerable and innocent with their eyes closed, breathing gently whilst they are in that far away land of dreams. However naughty they may have been during the day your heart fills with love looking at them and you know that you have to protect them against all odds as they are too small to do this for themselves. Not only do they not have the strength but they don’t have the mental capabilities. You decide to stay in your abusive relationship so that they have some sort of family life and you don’t want them to suffer any divorce effects.
What if your partner becomes abusive towards the children?
He won’t, is your immediate reaction. Question your reasons for staying in a relationship where you fear hearing his key in the lock in case he ‘s been drinking or had another bad day. You know if this is the case he will use you as his punch bag. Not only is this terrible for you but it means the children will grow up in fear and anger, wanting to protect you but also thinking this is the normal way to behave. These are reasons for divorce. Maybe he always apologises the next day and you believe him when he says it won’t happen again, but it always does.
Are your children living in fear of your husband/partner?
In recent months there have been many cases of child abuse reported in the papers. The people who do this to a child are not balanced, happy loving human beings. There is something inside them which is badly damaged and they need professional help and guidance. Even though you may have loved them once the love and protection you feel for your children is so strong that it is in yours and their best interests for you to end the relationship and get divorce help. I explain more about this in my free bonus eBook How to Lessen the Effects of Divorce on Children.
Will being divorce kids affect the rest of their lives?
Not if the situation is handled sensitively and with love. If however you stay and your partner does abuse them then this can have a detrimental lifetime effect on your children. Abuse comes in many different forms – it can be mental as well as physical, undermining their confidence and making them feel like victims. You will recognise this though because you are already suffering from these effects. In my eBook 3 Easy Steps to End Divorce Pain I give you divorce support to help you to recover from what has happened to you by showing you a completely different way of looking at yourself and your life.
Divorce advice for women
Is my relationship beyond repair?
This is a question that you need to ask yourself in the cold light of day – not when you’re feeling emotionally upset and unbalanced. If you’ve had too much to drink to numb your pain this will make you unstable and incapable of answering this question honestly. Also there is not a lot to be gained by relying on other people to answer this question for you as they may have their own agenda in that they don’t like your partner or that they never thought it would work out. If you choose to leave, it must be because of your reasons for divorce, not anyone elses.
Should I stay with him?
You have to be brutally honest with yourself when you answer this question. In fact the question that you should be asking is ‘Is it in my best interests to stay with him?’. It’s always so difficult to make decisions when you are in the middle of all the turmoil and hurt. When you are standing outside and being objective it is easy to say what that person should do but when its you its a different matter. This is your life and you have to deal with the consequences if you stay or the divorce emotions if you leave.
Will things change if I stay?
In your heart you know whether they will or not. The problem with us women is that when we marry someone we are so much in love that we overlook any little irritations or faults that we are aware of and think that we can change them anyway. But then as the euphoria wears off and these irritations become more obvious we then realise that actually we can’t change him. In fact the only person that we can change is ourselves. So thats one of the things you have to consider – he won’t change but can you change yourself so that the issues that are causing the problems are resolved? 
Is life without him more scary than staying with him?
A lot of women stay with their partners because they are fearful of the life that they will have on their own, especially if there are children involved. In many cases the children are the main reason that they stay. If however you know in your heart that everything about the relationship is wrong then you are better off leaving, spending some time on your own experiencing personal growth and creating the opportunity for the right relationship to come into your life.
But will I survive on my own?
Yes you will. I’m not saying that it will be easy for you but you will survive. Our survival instinct is older than time and especially if you have children to care for you will make sure that you ‘hang on in there’ for their sake. You will be surprised as well at all the help and support you will be offered by friends and family and even people that you haven’t yet met. It is the end of something but you have to have an end so that there can be a beginning. You will be given plenty of divorce help and divorce support and you will find plenty of advice on divorce for women in my eBook 3 Easy Steps to End Divorce Pain.
Our children will be affected by my decision.
Of course they will because he is their father, or father figure, as you are their mother. For you, you are not just considering getting advice on divorce for women but you are also looking for divorce advice for mothers. If your divorce is handled with sensitivity and the emotions and needs of your children are taken into account then a child can be more content living in a happy, peaceful atmosphere with just one parent than in a bitter, argumentative home situation with both parents.
How can I make sure that the children aren’t emotionally scarred by this experience?
There are many different factors to take into account here such as your children’s age and gender. And of course the way that you and your partner treat them is of paramount importance. It will be a challenging time for you all because emotions will be running very high and you may suffer with divorce grief and divorce depression. However in my eBook How to Lessen the Effects of Divorce on Children I show you how to deal with this situation to cause as minimal amount of emotional upset to the children as possible.
If I leave will we all be able to move on with our lives?
Yes you will. It will take a bit of time as everyone adjusts to the new situation, the new home, the access arrangements but we, as human beings, are amazingly resilient, and it doesn’t take us too long to adapt to what is our new ‘norm’. Once some distance in time has been put between you leaving and today and emotions have calmed down, you may even find that you and your partner get on much better than when you were living together. There have also been some instances where the space caused by you leaving makes you both look at your relationship in a different light and even decide to give it another go.
Reasons for Divorce
How many reasons are there for divorce?
This question can be looked at in different ways. There are the divorce grounds as stated in the courts such as
- cruelty
- adultery
- irretrievable breakdown
- desertion
- lengthy prison sentence
- bigamy
However there are also the emotional reasons as to why 2 people feel they can no longer live together and so need to end their relationship in divorce.
Why do people choose to divorce?
When 2 people meet and there is a mutual attraction our biological built in responses kick in. We experience a chemical change and fall in love with the other person feeling that we just can’t live without them. As a result of this, we generally either end up marrying them or co-habiting with them. You cannot possibly know the other person before you live with them. After all how often do you surprise yourself and you’ve always been there? So after a time one of you starts to realise that the person they married is not who they thought they were and decides that they no longer want to live with someone who has become a stranger to them.
Is this always the reason?
In very broad terms yes. However as everyone is unique so is everyone’s story and reasons. When people are living apart they are
able to conceal certain parts of their character which are not so attractive to another person. But when they are living together these different aspects reveal themselves even if the other person has made a decision to keep these darker parts of him or herself secret as it is impossible to hide them all the time despite their intent.
Is getting married when you are very young a reason for a marriage to fail?
Not always. It depends on the circumstances and the people involved. When individuals who are very young get married they have not finished maturing and turning into the adult that they will become. As they grow older and evolve into the special individual that is them they sometimes find that they have grown away from their partner. This is because they are changing in different ways and no longer have the same common interests that they used to share. These differences then provide the divorce grounds.
What if I decide to stay?
The choice is always yours and you have to live with the consequences. You can however suffer with divorce effects without the divorce. Loneliness within a marriage or relationship is worse than the loneliness you feel when you are on your own. So you may still experience divorce depression, divorce grief and divorce emotions without the benefit of divorce support. It can be a very challenging time especially if you are not sharing your problems with anyone.
So are you saying that I have no future if I stay?
No thats not what I mean. If you decide to stay then you must commit yourself wholeheartedly to the relationship and go and get help if you need it either together or individually from counsellors and/or therapists. But it isn’t just about your relationship with your partner it’s also about the relationship which you have with yourself. I set out various strategies in my eBook 3 Easy Steps to End Divorce Pain to help you to improve your life and these work just as effectively whether you are staying in your relationship or whether you are looking for divorce advice and divorce help.
What do you mean about the relationship with myself?
Whether you decide to stay with your husband or partner or leave, the one constant in your life is YOU. You are there for yourself 24/7 and much of the time you are not being very supportive. There is this nagging voice inside you who criticises you 
regularly and affects your self esteem and feelings of self worth. So because you cannot escape from yourself it makes sense to do whatever you can to improve your relationship with you. You can have as many reasons for divorce from yourself as you can from another person and I get to the real understanding of what you can do to help yourself in my eBook.
So actually the best thing that I can do to help my relationship is to look at myself?
Yes thats absolutely right. You cannot change your partner. You can look at divorce options, divorce statistics and ask yourself why divorce? But at the end of the line the only person you can change is yourself. The upshot of this is that by changing yourself you may make your relationship work or you might decide that it really is in your and your partner’s best interests to get help on divorce. But by this stage because of the work that you have been doing on yourself, you will survive and be able to move on to a great new life because you will have changed your attitude towards yourself and what you feel you deserve.