Waiting until the kids are grown 

    My favorite joke: A couple in their nineties appears before a judge to petition for a divorce. The judge asks, why did you wait so long? They say, “we wanted to wait until the kids were dead.”

     So many people, women especially, stick it out in bad marriages because they're “waiting until the kids are grown.” The reality is that the kids are never grown. Kids in their thirties and forties can be devastated by a parental divorce.

I don't have any biological kids but I have a foster daughter, Tina, who is now 27. Even though she only lived with me and my husband for a few years she was devastated by our divorce a few years ago. She said, “You were the only happily married couple I ever knew. You were my model for a good marriage. Now I don't know anyone who stuck it out.” Little did she know that she was the reason we had a “good” marriage, at least as long as she lived with us. She gave us someone to focus on besides each other. When she left we were miserable again.

     Also, since our marriage broke up due to my husband's infidelity, she felt she had to take sides and she chose me. So now she feels that she's lost the only father she's ever known. I know so many young people who aren't speaking to one parent or the other after the divorce because of cheating. Divorce is hell on kids no matter how old they are.