Divorce is evil. The end.
Now you can make all sorts of arguments for divorcing due to infidelities, abuse, and so on but I am not going into that here. I am not going to debate the ethics of specific situations in this post. I am going to talk about what it does the married couple and moreso the children should there be any.
I am a divorced and happily re-married man who has custody of the two children produced from the first marriage. I have an ex-wife who hasn’t paid child supprt in eight years which I am forgiving as soon as we get the step-parent adoption set up and which I have never tried to collect. I am a man who sends his children, on a plane, thousands of miles away to visit their mother and misses them horribly while they are gone. I am a man who refused to file for divorce until my wife got pregnant by another man and who wore his wedding ring until the day the divorce was final even though I hated the woman to which I was married.
Recently Oldest Daughter has been asking questions about S-E-X. She is all of ten years old, homeschooled, and as innocent as a girl her age should be. She is asking about these things because her friends are learning about them at school and they tell her things. It would appear that no matter how much you want to control the information your children get, based on their age and your morals, you will be subverted by the public school system, but that’s another topic for another time. She, at ten, knew about the birds and the bees and basic mechanics of making babies and was, rightfully, disgusted by the whole process. However she is now a ten year old who know about birth control because we had to tell her about it and that is where the whole divorce thing comes into play.
Oldest daughter is in Tennessee right now with her mother and they have been talking about S-E-X. My ex-wife calls me up in a bit of a tizzy because Oldest Daughter (yes I am still trying to figure out what to call the horde without using their given names) has intimated to her that birth control pills kill babies. I assured her that it was likely a misunderstanding and I would look into it. And I did.
You see my wife has been fielding questions from Oldest Daughter about S-E-X and related topics and has been trying to give un-biased information. I disagree with giving un-biased information as we are all biased people and if we desire to teach our children our values we must impart to them our biases, but I digress. The wife gave her the factual information about chemical birth control and its secondary and tertiary methods. We are not Catholic nor are we Orthodox and we do not believe that birth control is sinful. We do however believe that life begins as conception and as such that taking the chance of killing a baby by using chemical birth contol is wrong. I also feel that giving a ten year old the secondary and tertiary methods of a birth control product is a little too much information. This left me in the position of telling my loving wife to give much more basic information and letting my ex-wife know the circumstances under which Oldest Daughter was given this information. Not a comfortable position to be in on either side of the conversation.
My ex-wife is not a Christian and has different values from mine. This will present problems for as long as we live, and possibly beyond our deaths, for our children. She has, much to her credit, tried to not contradict the wife and me on moral issues but this time felt she had to say something since she takes birth control pills. I told her that she needn’t worry about contradicting us as I believe my morals and values are right and if four to either weeks a year is enough to erase them then they weren’t very good morals and values to begin with. This was not something she expected to hear but I do expect it made her life easier. However it does not make Oldest Daughter’s life any easier. It will be confusing and strange for her for a long time.
This is one simple example of why divorce is wrong. Why God tells us not do it save for a single single reason. It is not fair to the children. It puts the two people who were once married and are now likely one flesh with two other people in contact forever, never able to truly move on always reminded of their failure. Of course that is only true when children are involved but it doesn’t change the facts. Divorce is an evil thing and the reason of irreconciable differences is crap. No fault divorce should not be legal in any state and I say this as a man who filed and was granted a no fault divorce.
I could go on and on about the reasons people get divorced. I could tear down each and every one of them logically and morally. But I won’t. I will leave you with this: Once children are involved you owe it to your offspring to make marriage work. If you do not you have not only failed yourself but you have failed your children in a manner that will cripple them for the rest of thier lives and only through strength will they overcome your own damn laziness.
Do I regret my divorce? Sometimes I do but not because of any feelings I have for my ex-wife but because looking into your childs eyes and having to answer the question “Daddy, why did mommy lie and say she would buy us plane tickets?” is something no parent should have to deal with and no child should be put through.
