Why Your Nasty Divorce May Be Hurting Your Child's Future
Clear steps to avoid hurting your kids' lives.
Ana Curcan | Unsplash, Sandro Crepulja | Canva How many of you have gone through a nasty divorce? How many of you are still in a custody battle that seems to be going on forever and ever?
How many of you are fighting over the kids like they're possessions instead of beautiful kindred spirits and souls? Raise your virtual hand.
Here's why your nasty divorce may be hurting your child's future:
1. Children are not possessions
Children need their parents, no matter how much of a super parent you are. Your kids still need the other parent, and even if they're not the best parent in the world, they still need an opportunity to grow into the role.
They'll become the parent they need because kids need a balanced parental influence. Young children need their parents. A friend of mine went through a custody battle, where his goal and sheer passion in life was to destroy his ex. He was very controlling, and he saw his ex as a possession.
2. You got married early
She was young, beautiful, and naive, as we all are when we get married in our early 20s. She was strikingly beautiful, and he was a handsome prince. But as goes for a lot of princes, the princess gets taken in by his charm. If you've watched the movie Frozen, Hans, the handsome prince, turned out to be a manipulative devil who got caught in his own game by the dumbfounded Christophe,
After a few years of marriage, she realized her prince was no prince. He was abusive and mean. So, she tried to save the marriage by having another kid.
Many of you have been through relationships and marriages where you feel like if you leave, you fail. The whole time, you fail by not being true, authentic, and honest with yourself. When you stay in these marriages that aren't nourishing to your soul, when you fight for a partner to love you the way you need to be loved and fight for attention, you're telling the universe you're not worthy of love. You're not worthy of a deep connection.
3. Not accepting the value of self-love
Practice self-love (love by itself) and meet people who will love you. Unfortunately, at times in our lives, due to our programming, we get into a marriage, and we hear "until death do us part." The problem is, we'd rather die than continue in that marriage.
So, what did our princess do? She stayed in that marriage and stayed, and stayed. She was a super mom all the way — home-schooling the kids and doing activities with them. He was a controller in all ways, shapes, and forms. Finally, the princess woke up and decided it had to end. So, the man set out to bring the princess down and control everything—the money, treating the kids like they were possessions. Everything. And the princess stood no chance.
She had to be separated from her kids. She had no choice because he did everything he could to make that happen. She had to run, she had to hide, and she had to rejuvenate her mind before she could fight him again. She had to go to another state to get back her soul because she knew she'd be in for a battle, a battle over the kids.
Photo: Pixel 4 Images via Shutterstock
4. Engaging in a battle over kids
It's sad. So many people battle over kids, but if you're a man and you take the kids away from their mother, you're doing them an injustice. You teach them to do without a mother's influence, nurturing, and support.
If you're a mother who doesn't allow the father to see the kids, you're showing them the same thing. The way you present your relationship with your significant other or ex-significant other does damage to children in the long run.
Kids are not possessions. What kids witness is the way they're going to have relationships in the future. You gave your kids no shot of having successful relationships because you gave them stories they're going to take into adulthood, stories of how relationships should be, and stories of how you should treat people.
5. Knowing what to expect
The father who shows his little girls that he treats women terribly — the kids are going to do what? Expect to be treated terribly in their relationships. The mother who bashes her ex-husband non-stop is going to teach the daughter how to treat her partner going forward. The damage we do to kids is from our own selfish, egotistical behavior when we get divorced from the wrong person. The anger we have is taken out on the kids.
The kids become possessions. So, if you're going through one of these battles, or if you have an ex like this, I strongly suggest you do some healing right away. Not for yourself, but for the sake of your kids' future. Otherwise, they'll be reading this in 15 years and trying to figure out why their relationships are such a mess. Don't let them blame mom and dad.
David Wygant is a dating coach who spent the past 20 years helping men and women transform their love lives. As a lead writer for Ask Men and Huffington Post, his advice has been offered across television, newspapers, and magazines, including MTV, The New York Times, MSNBC, Fox News, Cosmopolitan, Men's Health, E! Entertainment Television, and more.