My parents divorced when I was 8, but my mom had already been married before. That was a weird day, being like five and hearing “first husband.” I remember thinking, “What? Who are you talking about? Dad is first!”

Then when my parents divorced, they ended up marrying another couple who had been married to each other (this was the 70′s, in California….) so that was ultra-weird on top of everything else.

The other couple was a horror so my brother and I got gypped twice over. My dad stayed married 10 years and my mom 30 until she finally got a divorce last year. So now she’s 72 and single.

I’m always amazed when people love their step-parents or were raised by them and love them as a parent. I just can’t imagine that. I’m also super envious when someone I know has really terrific parents, but I got what I got.

My best revenge is marrying a TERRIFIC guy at 37. That’s the best I could have ever hoped for.

My mother often says that when she was growing up, she thought her parents would or maybe should get divorced, because they argued a lot. She married someone very different from her father as a direct result. Meanwhile, my grandparents continued to argue a lot, but also made it to their diamond wedding anniversary and never did split up.

I sometimes wonder (especially if one of my friends has just broken up with a partner) what it would take for me to leave my marriage, and have come to the conclusion that nothing would. Really. I don’t think I’d ever stop wanting to give it a go. Not that this helps if it’s the other person who wants out…

It was no surprise that mom left dad. She’d left him when I was in 2nd grade (my sister was not yet in kindergarten), and they were apart for 3 months but then got back together. Part of me wishes they’d just stayed apart & gotten divorced then. My childhood was not horrible, but not great either. Dad drank frequently & was depressed & moody a lot. Mom was resentful, lived her own life apart from him. They fought a lot. We never went on vacation–one time we went to Chicago & Wisconsin to visit family, and one time we went to Cincinnati to King’s Island, but that’s it. (Looking back, I think this was more because of $ than anything else–it was the late 70s, early 80s & lots of people were broke then.) I was a good kid so they didn’t pay much attention to what I did with my time. They were too wrapped up in their own troubles to bother with me (they were also very young–my mom was my age, 38, when I was 20).

I won’t even go into the 2 husbands my mom has had since my dad (thankfully, hopefully, #2 is a keeper & is a good guy). And my dad’s 2nd wife is a nightmare that none of us will even speak with & he won’t leave her because she’s threatened to kill herself (nice, huh?).

Anyway, you’re sure not alone. Being an adult child of divorced parents sucks. It makes me want to work hard for my marriage & cultivate a relationship with my husband so that when the kids move out, we’ll stick together. Oh yeah, and also so I’ll have a happy life instead of being miserable & feeling trapped like my mom did.

Gee whiz, I’m ready for a drink now. :)

My father is re-married, both my parents are very happy in their present lives, and now I wouldn’t have it any other way. Time can heal many wounds or at least give us a better perspective on things.

Actually, they split up for a few months when I was five and got back together until I fourteen, when they split up for a year and then were dating for about a year, and then weren’t for two years, and then got back together for another ten years. Then they split up, and dated other people for four months, then were sort of getting back together for two months, and then everything exploded and they haven’t spoken since.

There are reasons I’m screwed up.

And after, I think my mom was surprised at how hard it was being single.

My dad remarried faster than I ever would have dreamed, and even 15 years after that, it’s weird and awkward having a stepmother and step-siblings.

I’ve been married 17 years myself, but part of me questions whether I really know what a healthy marriage looks like, if “absence of fighting” and “raising relatively normal children in harmony” isn’t it.