Why do many married couples split after the death of a child?

[Tony T]

I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer so the answer to this may be quite obvious...for please forgive me in advance for my ignorance.

 

Many marriages go sour after the death of a child, especially an only child. It would seem to me that this would be a time when couples would become closer and more bonded. But it seems to work the opposite.

 

What exactly happens in the minds of couples, or at least one member of it, that makes them want to split? I'm sure in some cases it's a blame game but for most the death is not the fault of either. But they go their separate ways anyway. I don't understand.

[Fedup&givingup]

I'm speculating, because it's never happened to me or anyone I know.

 

When you have a child, suddenly they are the central focus and glue of everything. Children become the focal point. You are no longer a married couple, but a family.

 

Having a child almost creates the reason why you are married, although it may not be the reason you got married in the first place. It just changes everything that much.

 

The child creates an enormous bond between a couple, and the loss of it just causes the relationship to sort of crumble. Once you've had that intensity added to the relationship and it's been taken away due to the loss of that child, the relationship has much less grounds to stand on. Going back to the way things used to be before having a child is just about impossible.

[Arabess]

Perhaps due to it being such an 'unfair' situation, people have the need to BLAME someone. In the blaming process....maybe there are prone to focus their complete frustration on the other parent....even if unwarranted. Much in the same way they do when there are financial problems or other catatrophies.

 

They become more like siblings than lovers and react accordingly????

[2SidestoStories]

originally posted by Fedup&givingup

Having a child almost creates the reason why you are married, although it may not be the reason you got married in the first place. It just changes everything that much.

 

With this, I must disagree. There was a study published recently in Psychology Today (I think that was the one, pardon my lack of link/direct reference...I'm being reactionary here...) that indicated that having a child can actually cause more strife in a marriage than any sort of bonding.

 

Also, in my personal experience, unless the marriage was founded on absolutely terrific premises to begin with (i.e. mutual love, respect, positive sexual attitudes, ability and willingness to communicate, especially in arenas that are uncomfortable, et cetera; sorry for getting perhaps a bit more personal than general there) bringing a child into the "mix" only complicates matters further. THIS IN NO WAY IS THE FAULT OF THE CHILD!

 

originally posted by Tony

It would seem to me that this would be a time when couples would become closer and more bonded. But it seems to work the opposite.

 

Each person deals with tragedy in their own ways, and while it seems logical that people would become closer due to the shared nature of the tragedy, logic and emotions (as you're well aware, Tony dear) do not go hand in hand. Factors such as closeness with the child, closeness between the couple, emotionality outside the tragedy, ability or lack thereof to cope with loss...all of these play a role. I would suggest that there are couples who do get closer to one another immediately following such a loss, but that over time, due to the changes that people go through independently, the decline of a relationship may be imminent. I would also suggest that there are couples out there who have learned to weather storms together, and that they do in fact become closer to one another in this case.

 

Loss of any human being a person is close to is incredibly difficult. Loss of a parent is absolutely heinous for many. Loss of a child goes against "norms" for those of us lucky enough to live in Western culture. There are many places in the world where a child is not recognized as a viable person for weeks, months, or even years due to the high mortality rate among youngsters. While this seems like so far-fetched a notion to us in our relatively cushy existences in the U.S., there are many little ones in, for example, Nicaragua, who die before they reach the age of 5, due to dehydration.

 

Oh crud, I feel a rant coming on. I think I ought to cut this off before it goes extremely off-topic!

[meanon]

Loss of a child is the most difficult thing in life to bear for many. I don't think it's blame as such. At first the shared loss tends to bring couples together but eventually one needs to let go and move on with life and the other can't. Or the whole relationship is simply a reminder of an unbearable memory which can never go away but is more painful in the presence of the other. They can not forget but they wish to. That's the way it's been described to me.

[HokeyReligions]

I can't speak for everyone, and I would be writing forever if I tried to even touch on all the different aspects, but in our case the reasoning is that we have tied ourselves so much into our children that without them the tie to each other broke or is breaking. Imagine two people standang apart and each holding the end of the same rope. They are tied together. Imagine a child now, in the middle of that rope. As the child grows the rope weakens in the middle and eventually the child is the one holding an end of the rope in each hand - one leads to mom, one leads to dad. The rope may be thin and stretched or it may have broken completely. The child becomes part of, or all of, the tie that binds.

 

When we get married we give up part of our individuality and abosorb part of our partners individuality and we become a couple. Two halves of a whole. When we have children our individuality changes yet again. One day we realize that we are not the person we used to be. Sometimes the children take over our lives and we lose the connection to our partner because we have changed -- lots get divorced. We should be parents first and spouses second and individuals third. Sometimes being a spouse takes third place -- that is what happens in a lot of cases and that is what happened with us.

 

With the children gone our lives are torn apart. It is undescribable. We can never be whole again. We can't be the people we used to be--the ones who fell in love in the first place. Sometimes the love is strong enough to rebuild a NEW marriage, but we can't go back because we are not the same. We know that we have to put one foot in front of the other and go on each day, but we don't know why anymore.

 

We held each other a lot at first, but sometimes holding on to someone just makes more tears and we realize that we must stand up ourselves or risk codependency. The reminder is too strong - to see the face that helped make your child - to hear your childs voice coming from your husband (or wife) because they sounded alike can be devastating in itself. In order to move on we sometimes need to take ourselves out of familiar places and situations. We need to be somewhere where the children weren't. That is why sometimes people throw themselves into their work - their children were not at work so they don't see or hear them there.

 

Instead of drawing closer we sometimes know that healing will only come with distance. It's part of the grieving process and in my case it is very difficult because of all the problems my husband and I had with ourselves - the symptom was no sex for so long, the problem goes deeper. The children held us together. Without them we would have divorced many years ago. It wasn't a conscious decision at the time--"lets stay together for the children"--but in retrospect I can see how they kept us together.

 

In a way my husband and I love each other more now then ever before, but we realize that we cannot exist with the problems we have had. A divorce is helping us to reestablish ourselves and to 'find ourselves' again and once we do that, then we can maybe work on being a couple again.

[Arabess]

I tend to agree with you Meanon. I hadn't thought of the relationship as a whole as being a constant reminder of the loss. I always thought perhaps they blamed one another in some subconscious way.

[quankanne]

interesting question to have raised here ... a woman I spoke with recently talked about having lost two of her children. One was a miscarriage when she was about halfway through her pregnancy, the other was an adolescent boy who died of massive brain hemmorhaging. The loss of both boys in a period of 2-3 years was pretty hard on them. But, she said, they agreed early on to not blame each other if one of them wanted to laugh or be happy, or even be sad -- that it was okay to have feelings and that those feelings didn't necessarily mean they were disregarding the other person's feelings.

 

However, I think their weathering these rough times had a lot more to do with being a strong, unified couple throughout their marriage more than anything else.

[HokeyReligions]

Originally posted by quankanne

interesting question to have raised here ... a woman I spoke with recently talked about having lost two of her children. One was a miscarriage when she was about halfway through her pregnancy, the other was an adolescent boy who died of massive brain hemmorhaging. The loss of both boys in a period of 2-3 years was pretty hard on them. But, she said, they agreed early on to not blame each other if one of them wanted to laugh or be happy, or even be sad -- that it was okay to have feelings and that those feelings didn't necessarily mean they were disregarding the other person's feelings.

 

Good point. When we went through grief counseling after our daughter died in 1999 one of the most important things we discussed was to allow us to have whatever feelings we needed and not to blame each other. My husband was laughing like normal later that same day and talking with his friends on the phone. It was like he wanted to tell about something new he saw or heard, then dismissed it and moved on to other topics and was laughing. Having done some grief counseling myself in the past I knew that it did not mean that he placed any less value on her or her death than I did, and that he was grieving too, just in a different way. I could not let go of her in my mind. I cried for weeks and every second of every day and night I spent talking about her. Except with my son, I let him lead in the discussions and I talked about his school and friends and his needs, but with anyone else all I could talke about was my daughter. My husband knew that was how I was grieving. A couple who does not understand that can be destroyed pretty quickly. Thankfully, we never blamed each other and we did and do console each other on a regular basis. We still talk about them every day and we keep things positive and if one of us does slip, the other reassures.

[Tony T]

Thank you all. This has been very enlightening to me. I've learned some new and important things and the day is not nearly over.

[ladyangel]

My husband and I actually became closer after the death of his son (my stepson). He has said that if I hadn't been there for him he doesn't know what he would have done. It was a very trying time for both of us and for his remaining son and mine. But we pulled together as a family and I think it made our bond much stronger. Our marriage is still as strong as ever. But maybe we're not the typical couple, who knows. I think it can go either way.

 

The effect that it did have, however, is that my husband went into counseling and was put on anti-depressants. Even though we were close as a family and couple, he became less interested in sex. I didn't blame him and understood, though it wasn't easy for me. Over time, things have gotten better and I'm confident we will someday be back to a semblance of "normal" in our relationship in every way.

 

The loss of a child is not something that you ever "get over," though some people think you should. Until you've gone through it yourself, there is no way you can understand. What you do is create a new "normal" for yourselves and learn to live with it.

[quankanne]

We still talk about them every day and we keep things positive and if one of us does slip, the other reassures

 

I think that's another important part of the grieving process that people sometimes don't want to confront: the need to talk and remember the person who died, especially if it's a child they've lost. My brother was killed in a car accident when he was 35. As she mourned him, my mother talked about him a lot, and in a way, that helped her through the grieving process. My dad, on the other hand, never would really talk about my brother to us kids, which was hard in a way, because we didn't know if it was okay to mention Edward's name or not -- I know he missed him as much as my mom did, but it was just plain awkward. I know I've heard people say that they didn't like not saying their child's name because it was like they were purposely were being made to forget him/her. I guess if that's the case between the child's parents, it makes it harder on their relationship because everyone's walking on eggshells ...

[moimeme]

The loss of a child is not something that you ever "get over," though some people think you should

 

One of my good friends, who has three kids, quotes this to me (her version is much better) 'to have children is to live with your heart outside your body'. Dr. Phil says 'you are only ever as happy as your unhappiest child'. It's a brave thing to have children.

[Wolvesbaned]

What exactly happens in the minds of couples, or at least one member of it, that makes them want to split?

 

I'm only guessing here but I think when 2 people are grieving at the same time, it makes an already sensitive issue into a highly complicated one. We all grieve differently and amidst the grieving we usually turn to our spouses for support, its not easy when they're grieving too (and in their own way). An added perception of "no support" from a spouse can bring about lack of love and lack of care issues, which can easily lead to resentment.

 

Once resentment kicks in, it's easy to just bundle your spouse as a reminder of the painful event. Then it's like hopes, dreams and aspirations are shattered all in one. By then it's hard to make ends of how exactly it came to an end. Once it's ended, who can make out the details in the exhaustion?