Why Unhappily Married Couples Stay Together For Adult Kids
Most grown kids would rather see their parents happy and separate than together and miserable.
JackF | Canva Sometimes, I get clients who are in an unhappy marriage but stay together because of the kids … except the kids are adults. Parents have many reasons for staying together, which often can seem illogical to external observers but very logical to them. What goes into the decision to stay together for adult children’s sake? Is this the best way to think about the rest of your life?
I’ve written about people who find a partner who is a good parent but who they don’t click with, meaning they never felt true love during the entirety of their marriage, but their value of creating a solid family unit trumped their desire for romantic love. This is one subset of older adults who choose to remain in an unhappy marriage for the sake of their adult kids.
They are so used to sacrificing their happiness for their kids that it doesn’t seem different to stay in an unhappy marriage even when the kids are grown.
People in this situation are accustomed to shelving their own needs and wants, to the point that they may not even know what these needs or wants are. The idea of making a decision that could upset their kids to any degree because of their wants is alien and even repulsive to them, and completely at odds with their conceptualization of what a “good parent” would do.
Another type of person who stays married for adult kids lives mostly for their involvement in the kids’ and grandkids’ lives.
The idea of having to split holidays (even more than they already do with their kids’ in-laws) is horrifying and upsetting to them. They have waited out a long adulthood of unhappiness to get to the sweet spot of grandparenthood, and they do not intend to have one second of this time taken from them because it needs to be shared with an ex-spouse.
These two types of people often overlap, and share characteristics with people in what I call The Depressed Marriage. These people have been so unhappy for so long with one another and saw a similar dynamic in their families of origin, that they don’t even know what it would be like to be happily married.
The conflict and/or detachment endemic to their marriage seems like the only way to live, and they can’t conceive of a world where they feel happy or even companionate with a partner. Therefore, losing any time with and/or upsetting their adult children seems like a terrible sacrifice with no guaranteed upside.
Other couples that stay together for adult children are using that as their excuse.
They consciously believe that a divorce would deeply and irrevocably harm their adult kids, but the true reason they are staying together is that they are deeply codependent. In situations where there is open conflict, they are both addicted to the drama, although they would deny this vehemently.
In situations where one is a narcissist and the other races around trying to appease them, this enabler role is so familiar that the person cannot imagine who they would be without it.
These are situations where the adult children beg the “victim” parent to leave the other, but the parent consistently responds that divorce would be terrible for them, for the grandkids, for the other parent, for their finances, and for any other reason they can invent when cornered.
They often are unaware of how dependent they are on the “difficult” partner for identity and validation (e.g., the validation they get from friends/family from how hard their life is, or the self-validation from being a martyr).
I have never seen a situation where healthy adult children are harmed by their parent’s divorce in a way that they cannot bounce back from. Many adult children are deeply relieved by their parents’ decision, if they have seen one or both as unhappy.
Holidays can generally be split without much rancor or stress. However, this is only the case when parents do not blame and vilify one another for the split, and adult kids are not called upon to ally with one parent against the other. Still, most adult children can stand their ground and maintain relationships with both parents if they want to.
No value system is “better” than another, and if your holidays with the grandkids are more important than your happiness day to day, that is a personal choice. However, keep in mind that your kids cannot be the sole source of your happiness and reason to live, because that is a huge and unfair burden on them.
Adult children who feel they could never move away or even decide to travel for holidays because “Mom would get too upset” are exactly the sort of people who come into therapy with anxiety and stress issues. If your children decided to move away for a job or went to their inlaws more than to you for Thanksgiving, would you regret your decision to stay in an unhappy marriage?
Other people think they would never be able to remarry.
This is untrue and stems from a childhood where you always felt “not good enough.” Especially in the internet age, almost everyone can find a partner, and for many, a group of friends and living alone is far superior to living in constant sadness and stress.
If there is no affection and hasn’t been for years, many people think they could not find this with anyone else, but this is incorrect. Physical affection is something anyone can find if they think they are worthy of it.
Therapy can help if you are someone struggling with the decision of whether to leave your unhappy marriage or stay together for the adult kids or grandkids. Often, seeing a parent who is finally happy after years of seeing them unhappy is transformative for adult children. They feel a sense of relief because they no longer have to be the parent’s emotional support system. This happens very frequently when a parent is unhappy, even if the parent is not aware of it.
Everyone deserves to live their best life, and while for some, this may be keeping the status quo and focusing on kids and grandkids, for others it may be liberating to decide to focus on themselves in the only life they will ever get.
Working with a therapist can help you have realistic expectations about how much and in what ways a divorce might impact grown kids; it is often much easier on them than you are catastrophizing. If this post resonates with you, think deeply about it and share it with your therapist.
Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten, aka Dr. Psych Mom, is a clinical psychologist in private practice and the founder of DrPsychMom. She works with adults and couples in her group practice Best Life Behavioral Health.