Gain insight about divorce for kids’ sake

Hi, Carolyn: I’ve been divorced three years, not by my choice. I’ve always felt the only power I had was to make things as smooth and easy as I could for my two sons, now 11 and 13, which has meant huge emotional sacrifice, but in the long run I believe it will be worth it. On a recent camping trip I was caught off-guard when my youngest asked why their mother and I got a divorce. I’ve tried to never do or say anything to undermine their relationship with their mother. We’ve had discussions about the divorce before, but that direct question has never come up. My answer was that it had nothing to do with them and that they need to understand that the people around them love them very much. I really feel like I wasn’t honest and that I skirted the issue, but the truth of what their mother did may be hurtful to them. In this case is honesty really the best policy? – Struggling in Maine

When the kids are 11 and 13 and when the truth is “Your mother ruined everything,” then, no, I don’t think honesty is the best policy.

When the kids get older and their identities are less heavily reliant on their parents’, then I think more of the truth will be appropriate – but not if it’s still “Your mother ruined everything.” That doesn’t serve you well, much less them.

I doubt it even serves truth well. I don’t doubt that you still wanted her or that she hurt you, but those two truths rarely form a whole. There’s also the truth of your wife’s state of mind before she did whatever she did. There’s the truth of where that state of mind would have brought you had you stayed married. There’s the truth of your mutual decency toward each other in divorce (since your kids obviously haven’t been turned against you). There’s the truth that even the worst things can be for the best.

But only, only, if you let them be. And while preserving their mother’s image is a great service to your children, it would be that much more effective if you were to, if not restore, then at least update her image in your own mind.

Yes, she wronged you and left (or vice-versa). But if this is always how you see her then this is always how you will see yourself: as the guy whose only choice was to suffer gracefully. It’s also how your kids will see you respond to adversity.

By the time your youngest is 18, you’ll have had 10 years to gain the kind of insight that can explain your ex-wife without trashing your kids’ mother. For your own sake, try to get there in four.

Hi Carolyn: What do you think is the proper amount of time of dating before a couple can determine if they are compatible for the long term? – Nashville

Long enough for any facades, courtship rituals and illusions of eternal butterflies to have fallen away in exhaustion, but not so long that your next letter begins, “My girlfriend of eight years and I …” The rest is a judgment call.