Meaning in Midlife

July 1, 2020

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Frankl published his famous book documenting his beliefs, thoughts and observations about his survival of the brutality and inhumanity of Nazi concentration camps to which many of his fellow prisoners succumbed when he was 41, just entering midlife.

More than any other theory or insight, it is Frankl’s that resonates with me most about our task at midlife. It is our responsibility to give our lives meaning, not the world’s chore. The external world will offer no such gift, though many will wait for that sign. Purpose won’t fall into our laps. Meaning won’t be created through timidity or accident. Lasting fulfillment will not be derived through vapidity, addiction, vacuous pleasure-seeking, avoidance, cautiousness or self-protection.

We must examine ourselves, take risks and be bold to create meaning, because, as Frankl concludes, that is what life expects from us. There is no one or nothing else to blame for those who come to this soul-crushing conclusion: “What’s the point?” Or this: “Life isn’t fair.” And: “Is this all there is?”

Those represent abdication of responsibility (and a license to shirk duties, sabotage relationships, indulge addictions, avoid self-reflection and stubbornly resist change, as if one’s thinking and behavior is intractable), for meaning is not bestowed on us, just because we are alive. It is cultivated through intention, commitment and effort, and often through suffering (as Frankl experienced), adversity, struggle, failure and disappointment. It is also a choice. It is up to each individual to believe his life matters.

These truths are hard to realize in our 20s and into our 30s, when we are letting go of youth, seeking a good time, chasing sex, courting love, coveting pleasure, repelling our frightening introduction to adult boredom, monotony and obligation, and sensing certain hopes and dreams dissolving. At the same time, we are discerning an occupation and career path, starting a family and finding our place in society. We may remain blissfully ignorant of, or willfully oblivious to, our blind spots concerning the ultimate questions life asks of us, as Frankl posits.

I’ve been a licensed professional counselor for nearly three years now. It has given me a window onto the vicissitudes of midlife. I’ve seen people in their 40s and 50s who literally say they don’t know who they are, their identities tied up in someone else or poorly developed through desperate attempt to flee from a past of deprivation; who were tormented so much in childhood they can’t imagine being deserving of pursuing goals or a dream; who feel anxious, aimless and alone amid the crumbling of marriages and launching of adult children; who want to find happiness but have no idea how to define it; who struggle to escape the grip of abusive relationships; and who lose jobs, status, and financial security due to addiction.

Meaning in midlife is like trudging through a bog; those who use resources and ingenuity to get to the water will feel a lighter sense of being, more buoyant; those who are avoidant, stubborn or resistant will sink further into the quagmire and will churn laboriously, feeling hopelessly stuck.

Meaning serves us best when it is developed from within, rather than from performing the largely futile mental gymnastics to determine how the universe will define it for us, concludes a 2019 study on meaningfulness. The University of California, San Diego School of Medicine study, published online in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, found the presence of meaning in life is associated with higher levels of happiness, better health, and possibly longevity, while the search for meaning in life may be associated with worse mental well-being and cognitive functioning.

“When you find more meaning in life, you become more contented, whereas if you don’t have purpose in life and are searching for it unsuccessfully, you will feel much more stressed out,” said the study’s senior author Dilip V. Jeste, MD, UC San Diego’s associate dean for the Center of Healthy Aging.

As for me, I’m trying my best to live with a sense of meaning. It is a constant challenge. I’m grateful I made a career change to counseling in midlife; working with people to help them improve their lives and create meaning has increased meaning for me. That – and trying to develop, maintain and enhance relationships, always an area of struggle for me and in which I have boundless opportunity for improvement – gives me a sense that my life matters.

In the eight years since I wrote the first post for the MidlifeDude blog that became this book (All That’s Gone and Still Remains: Reflections of a Man at Midlife), I’ve experienced many of the transitions typical of midlife, described herein, inevitably re-imagining myself and re-inventing my life, with all the fears, risks and doubts that brings.

In addition to changing careers, I’ve experienced a major physical health challenge; the death of my mother and gradual decline of my father; failure to reach a dream (winning political office); the evolution of my two kids from teens to independent adults (Rebecca is an English teacher in France; Daniel is a computer software engineer for a large investment firm); confrontation of difficult and life-altering choices; dread of stagnation; a divorce (again); a geographic move to essentially start over; unanticipated singlehood and dating (with equal parts hope and trepidation); struggles with loneliness; worries about finances and retirement (though I have little interest in retiring); my own slow but sure physical falloff; and, at 57,  the no longer deniable reality of mortality.

Without meaning in midlife, I don’t know where I would be (in an emotional, mental and spiritual sense), and I shudder to think about that prospect. My task now and forevermore is to hold onto it any way I can.

 

Becoming a Commodity: One Man’s Plunge into Online Dating

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

— Chinese philosopher

Lure a man to fish online, and he may starve to death.

At the risk of sounding positively Trumpian, Who knew dating in your 50s could be so difficult?

My two-year expedition in online dating has been more famine than feast. And several times when I thought I had caught a feast, they slipped through my net and swam away.

Half of my 18 online dates have been one-and-done short-timers. I’ve been ghosted, ditched and canceled upon last-minute. I’ve been berated and insulted by text when I told one woman whom I had dated three times that I had decided to exclusively date someone else. I’ve been rejected twice by the same woman in two separate episodes of dating several months apart. I had one girlfriend who kept insisting I was just going to “walk away” so why bother having expectations.

I’ve dated a free spirit from California who danced with a Hula-Hoop; a former exchange student from Denmark who I mistook for a Georgia Dawg southern gal; a world-ranked Masters’ age-group swimmer; a Hawaii Ironman triathlete and former dolphin trainer; a flight attendant; and four nurses.

I’ve experienced the thrills of a budding new relationship and the joys of connection and companionship; and the dysfunction, volatility and fickleness of dating gone awry amid an online environment of commoditization, easy escape and endless choices.

And I’ve met wonderful women, all, like me, with their own foibles and “baggage,” several of whom I stay in touch and friendly with even after dating relationships fell apart,

It Can’t Be This Hard

I didn’t think it would be this hard. I would be searching for mature, experienced, serious-minded women in their late 40s and 50s, who had their lives together and knew what they wanted. As a relatively stable, easy-going man with a solid, respected profession, physically fit, healthy and active, whose appearance is more youthful than his chronological age, and who does not have any obviously deal-breaking habits like drinking, I believed securing a long-term, committed relationship would only be a matter of time. It still may be, but I feel like I’m in the fourth overtime period of a game that should have been clinched. I wanted a sprint; I got an ultra-marathon.

The warnings were there, in research on this relatively new social phenomena: That online dating promotes a transactional, “marketplace” approach to relationship-forming, fostering assumptions that the perfect commodity exists if one just searches enough, that more options are ever available, that algorithmic compatibility necessarily translates to relationship success, and that if one encounters challenges, there’s an easy solution – discard and return to swiping.

I wasn’t looking to play the field, or for “hook-ups.” I was looking for quality, not volume; for lasting satisfaction, not instant gratification. I may not hit the jackpot immediately, I knew. It was a numbers game, and the numbers would not have to go too high, I thought. I have spun some cherries, and cashed in for periods of dating and relationship bliss, but have ultimately come up with lemons in my hunt for one long-term, meaningful relationship. And some bruises from dating TKOs.

A Crossroads

I did not want or intend to be dating again. But my life came to a midlife crossroads in 2017, when my marriage was at a standstill, lacking in some core ingredients to go the distance and suffering from inertia. I had just finished a graduate program in mental health counseling, and wanted to combine a start in a new career as a therapist with a move to a new place, after living in the Maryland suburbs for nearly 30 years. I wanted to make the change with my wife, but couldn’t get her onboard.

My desire to start anew intersected with marriage malaise. The result was a head-on collision, with the marriage on life support, and soon to be declared dead. My wife asked me to make a decision on moving without us necessarily deciding on the future of the marriage. I decided to accept a job in Charleston, SC, and moved in November 2017. By the time I returned to Maryland a month later to retrieve more stuff, the marriage was kaput.

Since arriving in Charleston, I have had dates with 20 different women, all but two from online sources. That’s prolific. Too bad being prolific is not my goal. I can’t believe that number myself, and that, as I write this, I’m single. A friend marvels at my relative success in getting dates, and inherently, my persistence and will not to give up out of frustration and disappointment. But what one might deem successful is another’s fool’s gold. To my chagrin, it’s become a never-ending process of sifting the silt, interspersed with gold nugget finds that have lost their luster prematurely.

A Marketplace Mindset

In “Online Dating: A Critical Analysis From the Perspective of Psychological Science,” published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, authors found that even though online dating expands opportunities, offers users an initial sense of compatibility through profile screening and  mathematical algorithms, and provides technological platforms for introductory communications prior to in-person meetings, “many aspects of online dating do not appear to improve romantic outcomes and might even undermine them.”

For example, researchers noted, the emphasis on profile sketches to identify potential matches often runs contrary to what a searcher actually would find attractive in a person once becoming acquainted in person.

Reviewing dozens of online profiles can create a “judgmental, assessment-oriented” outlook, and can overwhelm users’ thinking, which can “ultimately undermine romantic outcomes.”  Also, dating sites’ communications platforms can potentially diminish attraction if the flirty back-and-forth “yields unrealistic or overly particular expectations that will be disconfirmed upon a face-to-face meeting.”

Online dating may create a mindset of assessment rather than exploration, where people become commodities to peruse and test — a calculated cost-benefit analysis — rather than complex beings requiring openness, curiosity and patience to understand and adapt. This transactional approach can be “dehumanizing” and foster “shallow interactions,” the researchers determined.

Some online dating participants, under the influence of marketing messages from many online sites, buy into the idea that the goal of searching online is to find one’s “soulmate,” the researchers noted. People who subscribe to the soulmate philosophy – a black-and-white view that a relationship is “meant to be” or is doomed —are likely to leave a relationship when confronted with inevitable problems. Conversely, people who believe that relationships grow and evolve, and gain strength  by  overcoming challenges, are more likely to persist and progress when the going gets rough, they wrote.

“Soulmate beliefs may encourage daters to persist in their search for the perfect mate even when they have become involved in potentially rewarding (albeit imperfect) relationships,” the researchers found. “Almost all romantic relationships eventually encounter significant stresses and strains, which suggests that this mindset is likely to undermine relationship well-being over the long-run.”

The researchers highlighted a message from eHarmony’s founder urging his site’s users to determine the type of person they need to be “really happy,” and essentially to hold tight to their standards because “hard work” will not overcome a mismatch.  Thus, the researchers concluded that it is not surprising that a common refrain from online daters is that they would rather be alone than involved in any relationship where they are not “one hundred percent happy.”

The Online Rollercoaster

My online dating life started forebodingly. I agreed to meet my first date at Panera Bread at 8. I showed up to a nearly deserted restaurant after work, and looked all over for somebody resembling the online photos, finding nobody familiar. After wolfing down a lonely dinner, I left 45 minutes later just before closing time, thinking, I’m not going to survive this racket long if this is what it’s all about.

When I got home, I messaged my date to say I was at Panera and did not see her, asking if I possibly went to the wrong Panera. She replied incredulously that she was indeed at the Panera and had even asked an employee if anyone came in looking for her, and that I had stood her up, confirming it was the right place. I protested against the accusation, saying I even had a time-stamped receipt for my food that I could forward her. I was dumbfounded…what kind of twisted game? Then it dawned on me.

“Were you there at 8 in the morning?”

“Yes,” she responded. “I thought you knew.”

We patched up our misunderstanding and met the next morning at the same place. She was lovely. We agreed to meet again. But soon after, she said she had to go out of state to care for a “gravely ill” mother (a common online dating blow-off line or the real deal? I’ll never know.) I never saw her again.

I’ve had four pairings that I would call bona fide relationships, three of them from online dating sites, which have lasted between one and five months. It pains and embarrasses me to say it, but it’s the reality: Each time I’ve been the dumpee. And to me, the end each time has come like a stealth frying pan blow to the head – fast, hard, stinging and seemingly out of nowhere.

The first and longest-lasting girlfriend told me one morning at breakfast, just before leaving on a women’s weekend, “I want to talk to you about your mindset.” I was clueless about what that meant. Before I ever saw her again, she broke up with me over the phone.

Even so, several months later, she helped me pack when I moved, and I helped her put away Christmas decorations in her attic. It wasn’t until then that she expounded upon at least one aspect of her “mindset” comment. She was taking hormone injections to increase energy and libido. She referred to a time when she went to bed, and I chose to stay up and watch a movie, intimating she was disappointed in my pedestrian choice of activity.

A second girlfriend of three months became indignant when I texted her to say I had stopped on my way to her house and would be 30 minutes later than the appointed time for a casual get-together, later complaining that her ex-husband had ”disrespected” her time constantly during their marriage, lumping me in with the louse.

As I headed to her beachfront rental that fateful night, she texted me to say, “Sorry, I have made other plans.” Thinking she was joking, I texted back to say I would be there in 10 minutes, once traffic cleared on the bridge to the island. Response: “Again, I have made other plans. Have a good night.”

I went to her house anyway. She wasn’t kidding; she was gone, and declined to answer my phone calls. A week later, I showed up at her door unannounced to give her flowers and offer an in-person apology. For several weeks thereafter, I flapped in the wind while she proffered,  “I don’t know what I want,” and asked me to wait. Well, like the two characters in Beckett’s play who wait upon someone who never arrives, I was Waiting for Godot.

Several months later, she reached out to me and sought to rekindle the relationship. We saw each other several times, but neither of us could commit to anything consistent or meaningful. We’ve remained in touch and friendly.

My last online relationship started like gangbusters. We saw each other four weekends in a row, the last one an overnight trip, upon her initiative, in which I met her daughter and attended a concert. After I dropped her off at home, I didn’t hear from her again, save for a few terse responses to my texts. Now I have the ignominious knowledge of what being “ghosted” feels like – awful and bewildering. Six weeks later, out of the blue, she wished me a happy new year. We got back in touch, and she apologized, saying she had been suffering (more than I realized) from excessive job stress, exhaustion, lack of sleep and weight loss.

I accepted her apology. So…Go fish.

Online Dating Scorecard

One and done – 9

Two and through – 2

Three and free – 2

Close but no cigar (quasi-girlfriends, five dates or more) – 2

Bona fide girlfriends — 3

The Perfect Storm

I may plead to the heavens

Curse the human form

Look high and low for justice

But ain’t no way to beat

The Perfect Storm

 

I may look at the bright side

Find rays piercing the gloom

And think for a moment I’m warm

But ain’t no way to beat

The Perfect Storm

 

Walls too high to penetrate

Look up and it’s too late

For I wish I was warned

But ain’t no way to beat

The Perfect Storm

 

Well the skies have opened, feel I’m gonna drown

Getting hard to breathe, my heart starting to pound

Wanna get back to land, where I’m safe and sound

But even there, big cracks in the ground

Head under water, yes I’m going down

 

Sifting for grains of rice

In a bucket of mud

Hoping that will suffice

And plug the coming flood

But in the end I’m torn

And ain’t no way to stop

The Perfect Storm

 

Gotta take a little break

Gulp for some air

What’s it gonna take?

No, no life just ain’t fair

God, I hate to mourn

And ain’t no way to stop

The Perfect Storm

 

Wind tossing me asunder

Holding on for dear life

Bracing for the thunder

And the coming strife

But my life raft ain’t got no horn

And ain’t no way to stop

The Perfect Storm

 

Well the skies have opened, feel I’m gonna drown

Getting hard to breathe, my heart starting to pound

Wanna get back to land, where I’m safe and sound

But even there, big cracks in the ground

Head under water, yes I’m going down

 

Darkness covers me

No rescue in sight

God speaks to me

Says I will be alright

 

Yes I will be alright

I’m beginning to believe

As The Perfect Storm

Gathers to leave

 

As the clouds begin to dissipate

I step into the light

Something I didn’t anticipate

Yet now it is in sight

Yes, I will be alright

I will be alright

 

Couldn’t see it over the swelling waves

Tryin’ hard as I might

But with time I learn what saves

And it’s gonna be alright

Yes, everything will be alright

Midlife and Crisis: An Uneasy Relationship

This essay is the introduction to my new book, All That’s Gone and Still Remains: Reflections of a Man at Midlife, based on the Midlife Dude blog.

Midlife gets a bad rap. What else can be concluded when “midlife” is practically married to “crisis?” Two peas in a pod they are, “midlife” and “crisis.” But are they really well matched?

Canadian psychologist Elliott Jaques coined the term “midlife crisis” in 1965, concluding in a study that creative geniuses underwent changes of style or declines in productivity in their mid-to-late-30s. The term gained traction in popular culture by the 1970s, describing the time of life roughly between ages 40 and 65 when adults become attuned to their own mortality, concerned with leaving a mark before dying, and reflective about whether their first half of life has been meaningful.

But the term has snowballed from its origins documenting the imaginative processes of artists and poets in an obscure, dry journal of psychoanalysis to represent everything cataclysmic that seemingly afflicts the middle-aged trying desperately to ignore failed dreams and roll back the merciless tide of aging in a culture fixated on youth. Author Gail Sheehy cemented the gloomy view of midlife in her landmark 1976 bestselling book, Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life, referring to decades of life as the “Forlorn Forties” and “Resigned Fifties.”

Time to Ditch Wife for Bombshell?

“Midlife crisis” is more typically applied to males, at least when couched in a derogatory manner signifying an unofficial malady. “Midlife crisis” has come to denote the man who ditches his long-devoted, slightly wrinkling and graying wife for the platinum blonde bombshell 20 years his junior in his office; trades in his practical suburban family vehicle for the candy-apple red Porsche roadster; and transforms from dull and predictable to flamboyant and impulsive, fueled by a surge of drugging and boozing in a pathetic effort to recapture the carefree, raucous days of yore.

For women, the term “midlife crisis” generally carries an undertone that is more forgiving and socially validating, one tilted more toward liberation than debauchery. Sure, some midlife women succumb to vain attempts to recapture youth through medical and cosmetic procedures, or irresponsibly abandon a family to engage in self-indulgent, feel-good, self-destructive behaviors. The 40s decade certainly seems a marker of heightened vulnerability and confusion, as the beauty of youth wanes, marriages grow stale and risk of divorce increase, and children become more independent and leave, diminishing what many women regard as a primary raison d’etre.

Yet, midlife is characterized more as a time of renewal, rebirth and exploration for women. It is seen as an opportunity to shed an old self that may have been contorted to meet societal, cultural and parental expectations and transform into a more authentic, independent, self-accepting, self-confident being, and to reclaim aspects of personality and passions lost along the way. Midlife is viewed as a period of re-evaluation and adjustment, of increased wisdom, strengths, experience and vitality, when old dreams that no longer inspire are abandoned and more genuine desires and talents take hold, a process known as self-actualization, or becoming more fully oneself. Rather than a “crisis” producing angst, depression and dissatisfaction, psychotherapist and author Stephanie Marston declared that  the women she chronicled in her book, If Not Now, When? Reclaiming Ourselves at Midlife, characterized midlife as “one of the best times of their lives.”

What’s the Crisis?

Social science researchers have varied widely on whether any identifiable phenomenon that could be labeled as “midlife crisis” exists; numerous studies have shown midlife is not characterized by pervasive crises. Certainly, there are no commonly defined symptoms and nothing resembling a midlife disorder appears in the Bible of mental health, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Count renowned psychologist Daniel Levinson, author of the 1978 seminal book, Seasons of a Man’s Life, among the true believers. Following a group of working men for 10 years, Levinson developed a theory that delineated adulthood as a series of stages and transitions, each with a developmental task or crisis to resolve to advance to the next with a sense of well-being. Unlike some other researchers who rejected the concept of a “midlife crisis,” Levinson determined that 80 percent of the men he interviewed found the midlife transition a tumultuous struggle and psychologically painful. He bluntly described the existential predicament men face at midlife in Seasons: “Adults hope that life begins at 40 – but the great anxiety is that it ends there…It is terrifying to go through middle age in the shadow of death…and it is a self-defeating illusion to live it in the shadow of youth…”

I believe the stereotypical male version of a “midlife crisis” is overblown, hyperbole, a caricature. In reality, I contend a man’s “midlife crisis” more closely resembles the woman’s experience of re-evaluation, greater self-knowledge and wisdom – at least among those adults who aren’t withering in place – than the stereotypical jerk wearing shiny new bling glinting through an open shirt, cruising in an eye-popping Corvette convertible, ditzy blonde under his arm, toupee blowing in the wind.

Midlife Challenges

Midlife requires leaps of faith, acceptance and tolerance of uncertainty. We encounter the realization that our careers may have hit a ceiling, and re-evaluate whether the work at which we might have labored for decades provides meaning or nourishes our soul anymore, or ever did. We pause to question whether the race for success, advancement and achievement, as defined in young adulthood, is worth chasing anymore. If we haven’t already experienced job loss through no fault of our own, we are prime targets for downsizing and early retirement packages because of our age and salaries. We have to run ever faster to avoid becoming obsolete in the face of rapid societal and technological changes, the province of the young.

We grapple with the financial pressures of mortgages, college tuitions, accumulated debt, material acquisitions, increasing health care costs and looming retirement. We question whether our marriages are satisfying or have gone flat, whether the grass may be greener. We groom our children and ultimately set them free – except those suffering from Failure to Launch Syndrome — experiencing some sense of loss entering the childless phase. We may be sandwiched, caring for ailing parents while parenting our own kids. Mounting midlife challenges can be associated with high levels of stress, anxiety and sadness, which can lead to unhealthy lifestyles, deterioration of physical and mental health and acceleration of aging.

Through it all, we face choices, the biggest of which is whether we will transition at this crossroad toward reimagining and reinvigorating a life with new possibilities, purpose and contributions through continued growth and development, or whether we will hunker down, circle the wagons, kick like a mule, pull the covers tight, switch on autopilot and hang on mightily to the status quo, resigned to becoming a member of the walking dead until the nursing home comes calling.

Giving Back vs. Giving Up

Psychologist Erik Erickson captured this dichotomous phase of life in his preeminent Stages of Psychosocial Development theory, identifying midlife as the period of Generativity vs. Stagnation. Adults entering their second half of life would either help guide the next generation through socially valuable work, creativity, productivity and loving relationships, or would stagnate in a pool of self-centeredness and ineffectiveness. Those who do not associate change with growth but rather with loss, being passed by or failing are destined to weigh on Erickson’s Stagnation side of the scale.

I have dealt with many of midlife’s rites of passage. I have lost jobs multiple times; changed careers, requiring a return to school and sacrificing years of experience and money to start over in an occupation that stirred my soul; moved to experience a new environment and culture; divorced and remarried; faced the challenges of parenting teen-aged kids and watched them leave home for independent lives; cared for an ailing mother, and lost her; observed a colleague succumb to the ravages of alcohol and depression; experienced a major health setback and long rehabilitation; and strived for self-fulfilling goals involving creative expression. I believe I’m heading down Erickson’s path of Generativity; if I wasn’t, I imagine my life would be crushingly bland and I would be miserable.

These essays, compiled upon my entry into and over the course of a clinical mental health counseling graduate program from my late 40s to mid-50s, provide commentary from a personal perspective on these and other midlife issues, and seek to relate my experiences broadly to others going through similar midlife transitional phases and events. These writings reflect the opportunities and challenges, risks and rewards, hopes and fears, and triumphs and setbacks I’ve experienced and observed in midlife.

In tone, the essays are inspirational, triumphant, motivational, hopeful, wistful, prideful, contemplative,  inquisitive, wondrous, melancholic, depressing, upsetting, mournful, resigned, disappointed, critical, self-questioning – in short, the kaleidoscope that the midlife passage presents to our minds, hearts and souls.

Riding the Marry-Go-Round

I’m a two-timer. An encore performer.  A twin-biller. A mulligan-taker.  A repeat customer. A re-doer. A rider on the marry-go-round. I’m remarried.

I was remarried at 47, placing me among the 16 percent of U.S. men aged 40 to 49 who have been married twice, a figure that climbs to 21.6 percent at 50 to 59 and to 24.6 percent, or nearly 1 out of every 4 men, at 60 to 69, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2015 study, “Remarriage in the United States.” An even higher percentage of 40-to-49-year-old females, 18.2 percent, have been married twice.

My second wife has watched my two kids, who are now college-aged young adults, grow up since they were 9 and 7, and became their stepmother when they were 14 and 12, heading into the most challenging adolescent years. It requires bravery, patience, tolerance, acceptance, respect, understanding, flexibility, persistence, discipline, forgiveness and the capacity to love to become an effective and enduring stepparent.

Remarriage brings a whole new set of complications and negotiations for the new couple that cause stress: blended families; ex-spouses who may be intrusive; divided loyalties among children and extended family members; ambiguous stepparent roles and expectations; uncertain and evolving children’s reactions to changing family dynamics; financial complexities; practical and logistical decisions to reconcile often well-established, separate lives, lifestyles and cultures; trust issues and other emotional baggage; and legal agreements and bleed-over contentiousness from first marriages. Compared to the virtual blank slate of a first marriage, remarriage can appear an Etch A Sketch on steroids. My second marriage has not been immune from some of these challenges.

If raising kids is the toughest job you could ever have, imagine stepping in as a relief pitcher in the seventh inning, when kids are entering and navigating adolescence as mine were, with all the challenges that raging hormones, establishing independent identities, questioning authority and fitting in with peers presents. A stepparent who adopts an authoritarian approach risks creating an environment of constant tension and turmoil.

On the matter of step-parenting, The Gottman Institute, which researches marriage and relationships, explains the disappointment a stepparent encounters in desiring reciprocal love from stepchildren that may fall short of expectations, and outlines a realistic role: The “role of the stepparent is one of an adult friend, mentor, and supporter rather than a disciplinarian,” says the Gottman Institute blog. “There’s no such thing as instant love. When stepparents feel unappreciated or disrespected by their stepchildren, they will have difficulty bonding with them – causing stress for the stepfamily.”

When a biological parent of the same gender as the stepparent is firmly involved in the family picture and the children’s lives, even when not living with them full-time, it may be unrealistic to expect of the children to show equal respect, appreciation and love to each parental figure. A stepparent who keeps score in such ways is setting himself or herself up for disappointment, corrosive resentment and an emotional rollercoaster ride. Children of divorce do their best to cope with confusing and distressing situations and want nothing to do with choosing sides or participating in competitions for their attention and affection, even under the friendliest of circumstances.

Financial issues, which can be vexing in first marriages, can become even more complicated in second marriages. Sharing finances and deciding on financial priorities are aspects of marriage that can produce vulnerability and distrust. These feelings can be amplified in remarriage when one or both partners, often with decades of accumulated assets, debts and obligations, may have children for whom they are financially responsible, child support or alimony payment arrangements, pending college tuition and room and board costs, or property, equity and retirement investments.  My second wife married me at a time when I had years of kids’ college costs upcoming. In any remarriage, it would be fair to ask: What should be the new stepparent’s financial obligation toward the stepchildren’s college expenses, if any?

Remarriage is volatile. The odds of second marriages surviving are worse than first marriages. The National Stepfamily Resource Center cites a divorce rate among individuals who get remarried of 60 percent, while most measures of the divorce rate among first-timers hover around 50 percent.  Studies show those who have experienced divorce before are more likely to consider it again when marital struggles emerge.  Also, ex-spouse conflicts and new partners parachuting into often ill-defined parenting responsibilities add to the strain that pushes the remarriage divorce rate higher.

Yet those who have lost in love still want to take their mulligans, men more than women. A 2014 Pew Research Center study found that adults who have been previously married are more likely than not to remarry: 57 percent of previously married 35-to-44-year-olds; 63 percent of 45-to-54-year-olds; and 67 percent of 55-to-64-year-olds had remarried. A Pew survey found that only 30 percent of previously married men did not want to remarry, while 54 percent of previously married women indicated they would prefer to remain single, reflecting men’s greater needs for the social and emotional support that marriage provides.

Perhaps more than anything, the high rates of remarriage show resiliency of spirit, faith in the institution and the innate desire of humans to connect on a deeper level and share lives, longings that outweigh the challenges of remarriage for many. Apparently, remarriage stands as the poster child for the trite cliché: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

 

Listening

A follow up to my post on Facing the Music (from May 17, 2017, re-posted below), describing my invitation to have an authentic conversation with my young adult daughter Rebecca to hear her perspective on growing up in a family of divorce and the mistakes or oversights I may have made during those crucial years of development:

Time was running short, but I didn’t want to be a typical “all talk, no do” phony dad. I made my overture for an honest conversation just before I went to the beach for three months to teach tennis. Now I had less than two weeks back home until Rebecca traveled to France for a school year to teach English, and she was busy preparing and doing things with friends and family.

There seems never a good time to have difficult, uncomfortable and potentially distressing conversations. They’re easily avoided, and that’s what many people do, burying the hurt, anger, disappointment, sadness or other negative emotions until one day they boil over and surface in a torrent, providing release for the emotional-baggage carrier and a knockdown punch for the recipient of the pent-up emotions, unaware of the depth and intensity of feelings. I’ve been on both the unleashing and receiving ends of the bubbling emotional volcanos, and it’s never pretty.

A few days before Rebecca jetted off, we found ourselves together at home, and I broached the topic. Understandably, Rebecca was ambivalent about getting into an emotional conversation about past wounds and frustrations before embarking on an adventure of a lifetime. But she started talking, and I listened and asked questions.

I can’t reveal the content of what we discussed about our relationship and family life, and the complications and challenges Rebecca faced as a child, along with her younger brother, whose parents separated 12 years ago when she was 9 and ultimately divorced. It’s too private.

But I can say that at certain times I could have handled things better, that I was caught up in myself, that I made some mistakes, and that I was sometimes unaware of – or didn’t want to acknowledge – how much the kids observed, heard, knew or perceived, even at relatively young ages. Listening to Rebecca’s perspective and looking back, I can say how challenging it was for me to balance the needs, feelings, happiness, stability and security of my kids with my own needs, desires and emotions, and to try to lean toward selfless rather than selfish.

Divorce and eventual remarriage created some circumstances that ultimately were going to cause some distress for Rebecca individually and in our relationship, no matter what I did or said. The complexities of a marriage breakup and the constantly evolving aftermath can’t be fully grasped by a child, whose experience can be like that of a pinball ricocheting within a constrained environment. I experienced the pinball game as a child, and certainly didn’t understand everything that was going on with my divorced parents, and now so has Rebecca.

The beauty of our conversation was that Rebecca was able to tell me some things about what transpired from her perspective, what she experienced and how she felt honestly, and I was able to listen while squelching the default tendency to be defensive or critical.

We got through it with our relationship intact and expressions of love for each other. I’m hoping our conversation helps set a foundation for our future adult relationship, one in which we can be open and honest with each other without fear that we will be jeopardizing our relationship by revealing our feelings and with knowledge that we love each other unconditionally regardless of any conflicts, hurt feelings or differences that can be addressed and resolved.

So many relationships between fathers and adult children barely break the surface because of the dread of churning what lies beneath and what digging will uncover, or because of an inability, unwillingness or lack of desire to go deeper. Stoicism and emotional avoidance are drilled into males. I don’t want that type of relationship with my kids as they grow into adulthood. I want them to know and understand me, with all my attributes and faults, as I do them. I want us to be able to know and share our emotional selves. The only way to do that is to be emotionally available and vulnerable to them, and to show that I care about and want to know how they feel, and can handle it when they lay it on me.

One takeaway from our conversation is that whatever mistakes I made as Rebecca was growing up, I believe that she accepts my apologies, forgives my transgressions, acknowledges that I have tried to be a good and caring father and doesn’t expect me to be perfect. Our conversation was a good start toward setting the standard and expectation of our relationship for the future. I’m glad we each took the risk of having it instead of avoiding it.

Facing the Music (Midlife Dude Blog Post from May 17, 2017)

As my daughter Rebecca and I were discussing her sociology class on adolescence, she tangentially announced, “You and mom did a good job raising me.”

Surprised by an out-of-the-blue compliment, I asked, “What makes you say that?”

Rebecca explained that she does not view herself as materialistic, implying instead that she values experiences and relationships above things. We provided for her needs and many wants, but we didn’t overindulge, and didn’t replace our caring, attention and presence with materials, she was saying.

As a 21-year-old sociology major graduating from the University of Maryland in four days, she has learned about inequality, justice, race, poverty, privilege, human development and other similar topics, helping her become more insightful and introspective about her own life, and more astute about distinctions among individuals and communities.

I was happy to hear Rebecca praise our parenting, since her mom and I broke up when she was 9. My biggest fear about our divorce was that it would cause emotional and psychological problems for Rebecca and younger brother Daniel.

“So we did a lot of things right,” I said, fishing for more praise.

“Yeah, but not everything,” she said, adding the inevitable disclaimer.

“What didn’t we do so well?”

“There were things I haven’t talked to you about.”

We were headed to an Easter celebration, so there wasn’t time, and it wasn’t the right time, to get below the surface. But I kept the conversation in my memory, committed to return to it.

I did that last weekend, inviting Rebecca to have an open discussion with me as a young adult, reflecting on her experiences as a pre-teen and teenager, the positive and the negative, the gratifying and the disappointing, the supportive and the hurtful.

That conversation, I recognize, will require certain things of me, to be constructive rather than destructive or dismissive:  I’ll want to approach it as a listener, not a talker, and with an open-minded, non-judgmental, non-defensive attitude. Because I know my temptation, like any parent told in retrospect they weren’t as magnificent as they believed, will be to explain or justify or rationalize or correct the record, which would only serve to shut down Rebecca, diminish openness, trust and honesty and invalidate her experiences and feelings. My current training in counseling should help me control such urges.

I would like to give Rebecca the chance to have an open forum with me without fear of reprisal or disengagement. I believe it’s important to transition into our adult relationship with everything in the open, past issues revealed and understood, nothing left unsaid, as the foundation for our future interactions and communications.  It’s the key to an emotionally healthy, genuine father-daughter relationship.

I don’t know what she will say to me. I don’t know if I’ll be surprised. I don’t know what emotions it will trigger. But I want to hear it. I know I had good intentions throughout her childhood, and did my best as a father. But I also know I made mistakes. And I know the fact of divorce created situations and triggered emotions that were difficult, or perhaps impossible, to manage without having an impact on the kids. 

Facing the music about my role and impact as a divorced (and remarried) father in my daughter’s life will increase my awareness and, I hope, strengthen my ability to relate to Rebecca. It’s worth whatever discomfort or ego deflation it may cause me.

A Love (Turned Divorce) Story

I never saw it coming. Twice.

Maybe I was oblivious or in denial, or both. But when my ex-wife first announced that she wasn’t happy and didn’t know if she wanted to stay married, I was dumbfounded. We had two kids under 5 at the time after less than seven years of marriage, and my world was turned upside down in an instant.

I was among the 50 percent of married people who entered marriage thinking divorce was only for other people who marry the wrong person, have poor character or morals, or can’t figure out how to make a marriage work, only to end up immersed in the previously unthinkable, bewildered by how such a good thing could have turned so unpleasant.

I didn’t want a divorce. When my ex-wife first raised the specter, I struggled to hold on, to determine what the problems were and how to fix them, and to convince my ex-wife to stay in the marriage and work things out. My emotions were raw and unstable. I became depressed. I lost my appetite and energy, had difficulty sleeping, and experienced trouble concentrating at work. I went to a therapist, desperate to have someone objective with whom I could unload and discuss my predicament.

At the same time, I visited a divorce lawyer, because I knew my ex-wife already had. I dreaded the meeting. I dreaded the prospect of being a part-time father and exposing my young children to the perils of divorce.

We went to couples counseling. I vacillated between feeling hopeful and frustrated that my ex-wife seemed entrenched in her position that she was uncertain whether she wanted to remain married and non-committal toward working to save the marriage. We co-existed for several months in an awkward netherworld of fragile uncertainty. I slept in the basement. I tried to find religion, going to Jewish services, partly in search of peace and community and partly just to escape the tension of being home.

And then, gradually, things got better. We seemed to turn a corner toward reconciliation. We made efforts to be more thoughtful of each other and communicate better. We seemed to be committed to making the marriage work. But perhaps something had been broken irretrievably – or perhaps something was broken all along.

Less than four years later, after a blowup over a happenstance, comedy-of-errors incident that provoked anger, hurt feelings and resentment, my ex-wife announced she was done. Again, I was staggered. I knew things weren’t great, but I also believed they weren’t bad either, at least not divorce-worthy. We weren’t blissful, but things seemed relatively smooth, two typically busy parents of an 8- and 6-year-old, juggling parenthood, careers, finances and social lives. Two successive job layoffs I had suffered added stress, but I didn’t think they were something the marriage could not handle.

This time, my ex-wife was firm in her resolve. I tried, perhaps foolishly, to hold my ground and influence her to work things out. It didn’t work. There was no more trying — only a long march toward a slow death. During the previous divorce threat, I felt befuddled, depressed and physically sick. This time, I was more prone to outbursts of anger, which I knew were ugly and abhorrent but had trouble controlling. I was so easily set off.

I went through the stages of grief for my marriage – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally, acceptance. We lived together for seven months in a state of confrontation, avoidance, resignation and disdain. It was miserable, living with day-to-day tension and knowing what was coming and the eventuality of involving our kids in a breakup. We went to mediation sessions, which I saw as a last ray of hope, but the well was dry. We worked to figure out how to separate amicably.

Finally, we made the arrangement to separate. I stubbornly, and perhaps ill-advisedly, refused to leave the married home. I just didn’t want to be the one to leave, to raise the white flag, to say goodbye and give the appearance of walking out on the kids. I also worried that leaving would create disadvantages for me in future legal negotiations.

During our seven-month Cold War, my ex-wife frequently recited the times I had disappointed her, made mistakes or bad decisions or seemed uncaring and unsupportive, adding up to being a less-than-stellar husband. Those incidents couldn’t be redeemed; they were etched into the narrative of our marriage. The more I railed against or disputed her accounts, the more despondent I felt and the deeper the hole I dug.

Like most marriages, it wasn’t all bad – far from it. We had had a delightful love story, or so I believed. We were senior year college sweethearts. We camped out for several days in Provincetown, MA before graduation, and I had never felt happier. We survived a year of long-distance romance, Upstate New York to Florida, before drifting apart because of impracticalities. Six years later, we rekindled the romance after I discovered my ex-wife had ended a long-term relationship and was interested in seeing me. We endured another long-distance relationship, this time more manageable, Maryland to New York, before getting engaged and finally settling in the same place, my ex-wife moving to Maryland. We loved each other – at least, I know I loved her.

As our marriage came crashing down, so did my beliefs about what I thought I understood about our relationship. Was it revisionist history, or the truth from one partner’s perspective? My ex-wife said perhaps we should have never married, it was all a mistake, maybe she never really loved me. Perhaps I wasn’t the person she thought I was – didn’t have the character she was seeking, not good husband material. At the time we married, I was a Baltimore Sun reporter, which sounds prestigious. By the time we separated, I had been severed from The Sun during a ruthless round of downsizing, laid off from two other jobs, unemployed, and about to start an uncertain venture as a Baltimore City teacher. Perhaps she grew weary of such instability and lack of focus and contentment. I was searching. Perhaps she gave up too much in leaving her established New York life behind, including a graduate school program, to be with me.

The separation was not without challenges and recurring hurtful feelings, but it was a great relief. However, I felt a sense of failure, shame and embarrassment to be heading toward a divorce. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t make my wife happy and keep a marriage strong? The simplest answer, as I have come to realize and accept over the years, is that love – to whatever degree there was that, and I believe there was – just withered, and without it, there just wasn’t enough worth salvaging to bind two people together for eternity.

The finiteness of love is the train that I never saw coming through the tunnel. And here’s where it seems entirely appropriate to quote Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love, his song about an amusement park ride serving as a metaphor for the dark side of a love relationship, my first marriage:

…There’s a room of shadows that gets so dark brother
It’s easy for two people to lose each other in this tunnel of love

Well, it ought to be easy ought to be simple enough, yeah
Man meets woman and they fall in love
But the house is haunted and the ride gets rough
And you’ve got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above
If you want to ride on down, down in through this tunnel of love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4K7XZGeHTE

Facing the Music

As my daughter Rebecca and I were discussing her sociology class on adolescence, she tangentially announced, “You and mom did a good job raising me.”

Surprised by an out-of-the-blue compliment, I asked, “What makes you say that?”

Rebecca explained that she does not view herself as materialistic, implying instead that she values experiences and relationships above things. We provided for her needs and many wants, but we didn’t overindulge, and didn’t replace our caring, attention and presence with materials, she was saying.

As a 21-year-old sociology major graduating from the University of Maryland in four days, she has learned about inequality, justice, race, poverty, privilege, human development and other similar topics, helping her become more insightful and introspective about her own life, and more astute about distinctions among individuals and communities.

I was happy to hear Rebecca praise our parenting, since her mom and I broke up when she was 9. My biggest fear about our divorce was that it would cause emotional and psychological problems for Rebecca and younger brother Daniel.

“So we did a lot of things right,” I said, fishing for more praise.

“Yeah, but not everything,” she said, adding the inevitable disclaimer.

“What didn’t we do so well?”

“There were things I haven’t talked to you about.”

We were headed to an Easter celebration, so there wasn’t time, and it wasn’t the right time, to get below the surface. But I kept the conversation in my memory, committed to return to it.

I did that last weekend, inviting Rebecca to have an open discussion with me as a young adult, reflecting on her experiences as a pre-teen and teenager, the positive and the negative, the gratifying and the disappointing, the supportive and the hurtful.

That conversation, I recognize, will require certain things of me, to be constructive rather than destructive or dismissive: I’ll want to approach it as a listener, not a talker, and with an open-minded, non-judgmental, non-defensive attitude. Because I know my temptation, like any parent told in retrospect they weren’t as magnificent as they believed, will be to explain or justify or rationalize or correct the record, which would only serve to shut down Rebecca, diminish openness, trust and honesty and invalidate her experiences and feelings. My current training in counseling should help me control such urges.

I would like to give Rebecca the chance to have an open forum with me without fear of reprisal or disengagement. I believe it’s important to transition into our adult relationship with everything in the open, past issues revealed and understood, nothing left unsaid, as the foundation for our future interactions and communications. It’s the key to an emotionally healthy, genuine father-daughter relationship.

I don’t know what she will say to me. I don’t know if I’ll be surprised. I don’t know what emotions it will trigger. But I want to hear it. I know I had good intentions throughout her childhood, and did my best as a father. But I also know I made mistakes. And I know the fact of divorce created situations and triggered emotions that were difficult, or perhaps impossible, to manage without having an impact on the kids.

Facing the music about my role and impact as a divorced (and remarried) father in my daughter’s life will increase my awareness and, I hope, strengthen my ability to relate to Rebecca. It’s worth whatever discomfort or ego deflation it may cause me.

Midlife Men and Divorce: Risky Business

For the capstone class – the 22^nd! – of my 5 ½-year master’s degree program in clinical mental health counseling, I had to choose a narrow “clinical population” for a research project. Somewhat shamelessly, self-servingly and unimaginatively, I essentially chose myself: a midlife man who has experienced divorce.

The findings were not pretty for the divorced midlife’s male’s future, though I acknowledge I intentionally selected research that highlighted why this population would be candidates for mental health treatment.

Research has come to varying and sometimes contrasting conclusions on divorce and midlife men (roughly age 35 to 60), and mitigating factors are difficult to account for. However, numerous studies have shown that midlife men who have experienced marital breakdown have had greater propensity to become depressed, anxious or develop other psychiatric disorders; abuse alcohol or drugs; suffer from higher rates of illness, earlier death and suicide; harbor anger; live with loneliness and social phobia; qualify for work disability; and experience lower levels of physical health, mental and emotional well-being, and happiness and self-esteem.

And the majority of time, men aren’t the ones pulling the trigger on divorce, which studies show is one of the most psychologically distressing events in life. Research indicates that wives frustrated by an inability to improve their troubled marriages may be more likely to end them, with one study concluding that husbands initiate only a quarter to a third of marital separations.

These are research-based outcomes of divorce that pose challenges for the midlife man:

• Recently divorced men were more likely than other groups to receive psychiatric treatment and be prescribed medication for mental health disorders. One study concluded that major depression was nine times higher among men who had been separated or divorced compared to stably married and single men.
• Remarriage in midlife brings with it a whole new set of complications and negotiations that cause stress, indicating that marriage alone does not prevent mental and physical problems. One study found that remarriage was associated with an increased risk of depression compared with men who remained divorced.
• Men often rely on their wives for their social lives and support for their health and emotional well-being, as women generally have stronger social support networks. Without their marriage, men can become prone to social isolation and loneliness.
• A common dynamic of divorce is “non-acceptance” of marital dissolution. The ongoing feelings of attachment are associated with depression. The reality for some divorced fathers is continuing angry disagreements with and hostility toward their former wife a decade or more after breakup.
• Once divorced, men’s physical health can decline, as wives often assume a role for monitoring and influencing their partner’s health behaviors.
• While women experiencing divorce were at higher risk for mood and anxiety disorders, men were at higher risk for new substance abuse disorders. One study indicated that divorced 46-year-old men comprised a disproportionately higher share of binge and heavy drinkers compared to other groups of the same age.
• The mortality risk for inconsistently married men (those who had divorced and remarried) was more than 40 percent greater than for consistently married men, and men who were currently separated or divorced had a mortality risk 2.5 times greater than consistently married men.
• Men who had been divorced had a higher prevalence of work disability many years after the initial divorce.

As for me, I was the prototype of the midlife divorced male: separated at 42 and divorced at 45 in an action initiated by my ex-wife, with two pre-adolescent kids. I also have remarried, and while my wife Amy has been a wonderful social and emotional support, as the research indicated about wives, the second union has inevitably come with some stress due to new family dynamics and inter-relationships, financial complications and psychological adjustments.

I have avoided many of the pitfalls of the midlife divorced male, such as substance abuse or physical health decline, but did not escape divorce unscathed. When first threatened with divorce and teetering on the brink, I suffered from depression that affected my appetite, sleep, energy level and concentration. I struggled with non-acceptance when the reality of pending divorce flooded me like an unstoppable tidal wave. I lost a big chunk of my social connections and outlets. Worst of all, it was hard not to feel like a failure at something so important, and as a letdown to my kids.

Researchers have come to different conclusions over whether such a thing as a “midlife crisis” really exists, or whether it is a pop culture phenomenon, especially for men. But there’s no doubt that midlife is the time men walk through the landmines of marital upheaval, and when they are most prone to its potentially harmful and long-lasting mental health effects.

 

Overcoming Perils of Divorce

I’m a child of divorce who has wound up raising two children of divorce of my own.

Children of divorce face many more challenges in their development as kids and in adjustments to adult life and adult relationships than children from intact families, as found in Judith Wallerstein’s landmark 25-year study, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce.

But so far, at least from what I can observe on the surface and by traditional markers of success, my kids Rebecca and Daniel are showing strong signs of overcoming the perils of divorce.

[Disclaimer: Father’s unabashed bragging on kids to follow.] Rebecca, 21, is set to graduate from the University of Maryland in May, with a 3.7 GPA and multiple honor roll appearances. She’s run marathons. She’s ventured into the world, spending a semester in France and traveling extensively throughout Europe. She has loads of friends, and has formed and maintained an intimate relationship, dating a solid young man for four years. She has an internship with the French Embassy and is planning to teach English in France after graduation.

Daniel, 18, earned straight As in his first semester at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC), taking advanced courses in computer science, biology and math that would have pummeled me as a freshman. He earned multiple Advanced Placement (AP) college credits while in high school, setting him up to graduate college within three years. He has maintained and thrived in a job while attending college and just celebrated six months in a relationship with a lovely girlfriend.

Psychological, social or emotional problems connected to growing up in a divorced family could surface as they advance into young adulthood, progress deeper into their own relationships and reflect more on their childhood experiences. But to this point, I’m thrilled and grateful for their demonstrated resilience and ability to adapt, thrive and make good decisions.

I will also take some credit for their positive adjustments, and give a good deal to their mother Theresa (not the Mother Theresa), for making a commitment to positive, caring and mutually respectful and cooperative parenting, despite the challenges we each faced due to the dissolution of our marriage. Both step-parents, Amy and Bernard, also deserve credit for being consistent, stable and positive influences, in roles often fraught with conflict that can become destructive and divisive.

For half or more of their childhoods, the kids split their time – week on and week off – with each parent. There was unavoidable upheaval – my ex-wife and I each moved twice and sold the kids’ primary childhood home. But we never lived more than 10 minutes apart (until last year when Theresa moved to Texas), and the kids were able to continue attending school in their same district without disruption.

As parents, we cooperated in financial matters, and though we were weaker financially as separate entities, the kids weren’t deprived of things they wanted to do and didn’t suffer materially. We were each committed to continue saving for the kids’ college educations despite the split, and now that is paying off big-time.

I’m sure I said things I shouldn’t have and made mistakes, especially early in the breakup. Challenges arose throughout our co-parenting in relation to family gatherings, which became emotional and tense. We weathered them, though it may have left a mark on the kids. Overall, however, I strived to be respectful and positive about Theresa, and not pollute the kids’ minds or attempt to influence them negatively or turn them against their mother with whatever hard feelings I might have had. And for good reason, because I knew Theresa was a good mother, and the kids knew the same, and anything I did to tear her down would reflect badly upon me and prompt the kids to resent me. To my knowledge, Theresa behaved the same toward me, and I’m grateful for that.

I believe these efforts, which had to be conscious, thoughtful, consistent and enduring, have helped ameliorate the effects of divorce for Rebecca and Daniel. And those potential effects, according to Wallerstein’s 25-year study, are considerable and lasting:

• A harder, unhappier and diminished childhood, including adjustments in contact with each parent, relocations, losses of friendships and activities, decreased influence of parenting, higher anxiety, and worry about one or both parents
• More acting out and less protection during adolescence, a result largely of inconsistent and unenforced rules and standards, and assuming greater responsibilities for themselves
• Higher chances of sexual promiscuity among female adolescents
• A belief that personal relationships are unreliable, and even the closest family relationships can’t be expected to last
• Observations of second parental marriages that typically proved less stable and enduring than the first
• Feelings of loneliness, bewilderment and anger at parents
• Scarring memories of witnessing violence during the breakup and aftermath, and repercussions of abandonment
• Less planning for and lower chances of college enrollment, and inadequate financial support from parents once enrolled
• Diminished capacity to love and to be loved within a lasting, committed relationship in adulthood, a fear of failure and feelings of pessimism based on their childhood experiences, and a desire to avoid the emotional pain

Though impacts are inevitable, I am hopeful that my kids will avoid or minimize these impacts through their own strengths and abilities to deal with their childhood divorce experience in healthy ways, and through the knowledge that their parents – all four of us now – care about them greatly and always will be there to support them. So far, it looks like that’s the track they are traveling, and I am confident that they have the tools and fortitude to stay that course. Hopefully, they will break the familial pattern both my ex-wife and I experienced as kids, and bestowed on our own.