Can I talk about divorce on a wedding blog? Is that even allowed?
It’s just that we celebrated my step-father’s 80th birthday at the weekend. As I watched guests mingle in the garden between showers and caught up with people I hadn’t seen since our wedding six months ago, I found myself thinking about the complexities of my family.
My parents separated a little after my 9th birthday. My sister was just 5 at the time and she has no memory of our Dad ever living with us, a fact I’ve always found rather sad.
I remember coming downstairs the morning after my parents had broken the news to us. My Father was just waking up. He’d spent the night on the sofa in a blue sleeping bag. Despite my youth I understood the significance of him having been ejected from the marital bed. That moment bought the realisation that things weren’t ever going to be the same again for my little family.
Being a child of divorced {and subsequently remarried} parents gave me a lot to consider on my wedding day. My Mother, a second generation divorcee whose parents split when she was in her late teens, had long regaled me with horror stories from her own wedding in the late 1970s. It was a tale of tension and worry, of disgruntled step-siblings, and parents who couldn’t {or wouldn’t} sit with one another.
I’ve experienced the awkwardness of family gatherings after divorce numerous times. There was the Christmas performance of Handel’s Messiah where my parents and their respective partners sat at opposite ends of the church. As I stood with the choir at the front, resplendent in my neatly pressed school uniform, I can remember not knowing which direction I should be smiling in as I peered over the top of my song book.
At other events I dreaded uncomfortable silences and sullen looks equally as much as heated confrontations, and often wondered why all involved couldn’t just behave like sensible adults.
In the run up to our wedding day, being part of a divorced family informed many of the details I agonised over the most.
Would my step-mother even come? Should I sit my step-siblings together, or force them to mingle with the biological side of my family? Would they be offended by their Father giving me away? Who gets to join in the formal photos? Would it be considered bad taste to include a picture of my parents on their wedding day among the family photos we planned to display with our guest book?
It’s all very well being guided by the belief that your wedding day is about pleasing yourself and your husband, but when there is a very real risk your actions could upset what may already be fragile and vulnerable relationships, it’s not quite as simple as that.
Although I would never deny the breakdown of my parent’s marriage was an incredibly traumatic experience, in the years that have passed since I have adopted a fairly philosophical view of the whole thing. For every painful scar left behind, and there are many, the huge transition my family went through almost 20 years ago has also exposed me to a number of amazing people and experiences which I might otherwise not have been.
As my parents both married for a second time, a new family developed around me, picking up where the old, broken one had left off. My Step-Father is Danish and over the years parts of his culture have become imprinted on mine. I’ve visited the country twice with my parents and am well versed in many of their traditions.
My children’s use of the Danish words ‘Mor Mor’ and ‘Mor Far’ to describe their grandparents not only illustrates the incorporation of his heritage into ours, but also provides an opportunity to look at the concept of family through the innocent gaze of childhood. My children’s unquestioning acceptance of our unconventional family constantly reminds me that it doesn’t need to be blood that defines who we are related to, who we consider our own.
My parent’s divorce, and the series of life events it set in motion, influenced and shaped me massively as a person. I may have a deep fear of abandonment that a therapist would simply love to discuss, but I also have a gamut of experiences under my belt that I think give me an interesting, open-minded view of family, love, relationships and marriage.
This leads me to the question of forever. That’s why we marry, right? Because we believe in, or at the very least hope for, forever. But divorce is the exact opposite of that. I’d be lying if I said it was easy for me to picture my marriage lasting indefinitely, not because I doubt my commitment to my husband {or indeed his to me}, but because it’s just not in my frame of reference. Which is kind of sad when you think about it.
While I cower at the prospect of learning from my parent’s mistakes {I’d rather we make our own and learn from them instead}, I know I have entered marriage with a realistic view of how much effort is needed for it to survive. I’ve heard my parent’s complaints, their criticisms of each other, and their admissions of guilt. I know what it is to embark on this journey in the wake of another’s failure.
But the entrepreneur Brad Feld suggests failure is an integral part of things. To deny its existence is akin to faking reality.
Which is kind of like saying ‘divorce is part of who I am, but it’s not all that I am’.
So there.
Have you experienced the breakdown of your parent’s marriage? Perhaps you have been through a divorce yourself and are now embarking on another marital journey?
How did you cope with the complexities of family relationships on your wedding day? Can you offer any advice for brides who might be facing the same sort of tensions?
Has divorce made you think differently about marriage? Do you believe in ‘forever’?
Franky
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