Daughters of Divorce: Overcome the Legacy of Your Parents' Breakup and Enjoy a Happy, Long-Lasting Relationship

LICSW

Preface

FROM ONE DAUGHTER OF DIVORCE TO ANOTHER

(A NOTE FROM TRACY CLIFFORD)

Though we often prize it as the ultimate goal, love is a rare happening among human beings and by far the most intimate experience any of us will ever go through. This is why when love is lost, it’s also one of the most crushing experiences you can endure, even if you are just witnessing those you love going through a breakup. When a woman is raised by divorced parents, her view of marriage is necessarily shaped by her parents’ divorce. Witnessing their breakup has the potential to wound deeply, but it can also transform a woman’s life in ways she couldn’t possibly foresee.

For children of divorce, a breakup can set in motion an unending chain of consequences they will continue to experience as adults. As a young woman venturing forth into the world, trying to establish intimate, loving relationships, you may find yourself held back, paralyzed with anxiety or a fear of breaking up. Or you may find yourself committed to partners who are totally wrong for you. You might be in awe of people who stay together, because you’re constantly plagued by the fear that people can change their minds at any time. More than anything, you want love. You crave commitment, devotion, and security. But living through divorce taught you never to expect it. In fact, you feel terrified of attaining it and losing it. After all, your parents’ divorce taught you early on to be skeptical of relationships and leery of love.

Young women who have experienced parental divorce suffer from a unique set of challenges, especially low self-esteem. It’s not that these daughters of divorce can’t be outwardly successful. Many go to good colleges, enjoy thriving careers, and have plenty of friends. Many appear to have it all. But inside, a nagging feeling persists: I am not good enough.

Like many children of divorce, you may have been told over and over again that your parents’ breakup was not your fault. But no matter how competently or incompetently their split was handled, for many girls pain is unavoidable. No matter how good you were, you were not good enough to keep your family together. And you probably didn’t grow up with a healthy template for how couples achieve intimacy and resolve conflict. And so skepticism of long-lasting love colors your actions, making you mistrust your own judgment or others’ intentions. Your family, the core support that was supposed to prepare you for going out into the world, has been shattered. If you can’t rely on that, then what can you rely on?

As a woman taking your first tentative steps in adulthood, your parents’ divorce indelibly shapes your feelings about yourself and relationships. Even if your parents’ divorce is years behind you, you may lack confidence in your ability to create lasting romantic relationships of your own. Fear of loss, fear of reencountering the dreaded fate you endured as a child, stays with you. This is the focus of our work and of this book.

The inspiration for our study was sparked when it became clear to us in our own lives that we suffer from unique challenges that most women raised in intact homes just don’t face. Much research has been done about the fallout of parental divorce on children. But very little is devoted to young women who are particularly vulnerable, since being a daughter of divorce more than doubles your risk of getting a divorce, compared to counterparts from intact homes. So we sought to answer these questions: How does the experience of parental divorce impact us now that we are adults trying to create relationships of our own? And how can we help ourselves and other women overcome the problems of the past and forge a brighter future?

My mother, Terry Gaspard, and I set out to write this book together because we are both daughters of divorce. We know firsthand how broken promises and fractured families have forever changed us. But instead of resigning ourselves to feeling pessimistic about lasting love, we have embarked on a process of healing. We have set out not only to identify the many challenges faced by daughters of divorce, but also to provide ways to overcome these challenges. We interviewed hundreds of women and incorporated both their and our own experiences into these pages. The stories and advice that follow are for all of us, the daughters of divorce. Within them, we hope you will recognize yourself and find the strategies and encouragement you need to restore your faith in love. Although there is undoubtedly pain and loss in any divorce experience, there can also be strength and hope, and our goal is to help you find that. We may be daughters of divorce, but the uncharted path ahead is ours to create.

—Tracy Clifford

Introduction

BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO—EVEN IF YOU’RE JUST A BYSTANDER!

TERRY’S STORY

No one goes through a breakup or divorce for fun. It’s messy, it’s complicated, it can be scary, and it is incredibly painful. And for those of us who have witnessed our parents’ divorce—whether after five years or twenty-five years of marriage—that pain can have a far greater impact than we could ever imagine on our own relationships down the line.

But daughters who have endured their parents’ breakup face more serious emotional challenges when it comes to forming successful relationships than sons do (for reasons we’ll explore later on). What’s worse is that often many of these problems don’t surface until well into the teenage years or adulthood. If you’re reading this book, you’ve likely recognized that your parents’ divorce is hindering you from creating and/or maintaining successful, healthy relationships. We’re here to help.

Before we get further into the purpose of this book and what you can expect to gain from it, I first want to share my own personal experience with divorce, as it illustrates many of the unique emotional difficulties that daughters of divorce face. They’re common ones—you may recognize some (or all) of these in yourself as well. But they can be very tricky to identify, let alone overcome. That’s what this book is for.

My parents divorced when I was seven years old, precipitated by my mother leaving our family abruptly during the first week of school. By all accounts, I was a shy, easygoing child who went through my second grade year without speaking much—let alone telling anyone about my parents’ breakup. When my mother returned seven months later and was determined to gain custody of me and my older sister, my father decided not to put up much of a fight. After all, he had been struggling to raise four daughters on his own—quite unusual in the early 1960s before the divorce epidemic hit the United States. One day I was living in a lovely home in an affluent seaside community, and the next day I was swept away to a two-bedroom apartment in a Los Angeles suburb. For the most part, I lost contact with my friends and had to start from scratch in a new school with unfamiliar faces.

A gradual realization came over the next several years that contact with my dad would be limited due to his subsequent remarriage and lasting tension between my parents. In those days, joint custody was rarely considered a viable option. So over time, my relationship with my dad went from a reality to a fantasy. Always a daddy’s girl, I developed an intense craving for the love and affection of my father, as our interactions became fewer and farther between. As I struggled to deal with the aftermath of essentially losing my father, I never talked about my feelings of loss to anyone. I was afraid others would just brush it off as me being needy, saying something like You’ll get over it, or worse, reassure me of what I no longer knew to be true: Your daddy still loves you.

Due to our ever changing custody arrangement, my three sisters and I never shared the same residence for more than a year after our parents divorced. I didn’t dare tell my classmates or teacher that I was thrust into such a chaotic lifestyle, or that I was dealing with a succession of my mother’s boyfriends, her second husband, and multiple moves—never living in the same dwelling for more than one entire school year.

My father’s lifestyle was unpredictable as well. An artist who made his living traveling to various art shows, he helped my stepmother—whom he married when I was eight—pursue her own art career and catering business. While they enjoyed a successful long-term marriage—lasting thirty-five years until my father died—their beachfront home wasn’t my permanent residence while growing up. For a period of five years after my parents’ divorce, my visits with my father were sporadic mostly due to his schedule and continual conflict between my mother and stepmother. The absence of my father in my life on a regular basis caused a breach of trust between us. I felt left behind and unloved. Worse, since I couldn’t make sense of it, I assumed my dad’s lack of contact was because of a flaw within myself.

Although I wasn’t aware of it at that time, my experience of feeling betrayed by my father, coupled with my mother’s persistent bad-mouthing of him, created a major fear of abandonment in me as well. Truth be told, I lacked a sense of control in my life but had no way to understand or translate it. Like many daughters of divorce, I lived between my parents’ two desperate worlds for many years and learned to adapt fairly well—at least on the outside. Although I didn’t attribute it at the time to the absence of my father, I did experience an intrinsic mistrust of men, and oddly enough a strong craving for their attention and approval at the same time.

As I entered high school, my parents decided to give me a say in where I lived, and I chose to live with my father and stepmother. It was during these years that I developed more confidence in myself as a student and made solid friendships. With the onslaught of new people and transitions, I figured out that school was a place where I could shine. I finally found the predictability I craved, and my hard work paid off.

For the first time, my life felt fairly secure because my father stopped traveling and opened a restaurant. During my adolescence, my dad and I strengthened our bond, my self-esteem improved, and I formed a positive relationship with my stepmother and stepbrother. But while I didn’t miss living in Los Angeles, living apart from my mother and my three older sisters was a significant loss that caused a strain in our relationships later on.

The absence of my three sisters from my daily life was perhaps the worst fallout of my parents’ divorce. My sisters and I don’t have much in common, and interestingly, we have vastly different takes on our parents’ split. Perhaps this is because of our dissimilar alliances to our parents and loyalty conflicts. Parental divorce often puts children in a position of feeling they must choose between their parents and take sides. This feeling that we needed to choose sides was amplified by the way that our mother’s and father’s lifestyles became so different after the divorce that it was akin to being raised in two different families. Additionally, we were subjected to intense rivalries between our mother and stepmother—intensifying our experience of divided loyalties. However, the one thing we do share is the legacy of divorce—we have all seen our own marriages end in divorce.

While my parents’ divorce was certainly not the worst, it was the most defining experience of my life. Throughout my childhood, I recall thinking that I wanted to avoid my own divorce at all costs. I never imagined passing on the legacy of divorce to two of my children (who are now adults) and truly believe that I wasn’t prepared for the inevitable ups and downs of marriage. Looking for security, I married young and didn’t realize how clueless I was about all the challenges that come with commitment. I rushed into marriage because I was fearful of being alone. As my marriage progressed, I walked on eggshells to avoid confrontations with my former husband. In The Love They Lost: Living with the Legacy of Our Parents’ Divorce, author Stephanie Staal identifies several relationship patterns among adult children of divorce, one of which is the nester. This type exemplifies adult children of divorce (ACODs as we refer to them) who eagerly enter into a committed relationship with high hopes of finding the security they didn’t receive as a child. This profile certainly describes me. But what I didn’t understand is that in order to have a successful, secure relationship, I had to find that security in myself first!

Like many daughters of divorce, I was also faithful to an idealized image of my father due to a loss of daily access to him, and this led to unrealistic expectations of men in my life. I naively entered marriage with an idealized mind-set of what it would be, never stopping to consider what I deserved and needed from a partner. At the time, I lacked the insight to realize that I was reenacting the painful pattern of my parents’ marriage by selecting a spouse who I wasn’t compatible with—just like my parents did. After dating for only a year, I leaped headlong into my first marriage without considering that our backgrounds, values, personalities, interests, and needs for intimacy were drastically different.

Another lesson I learned growing up was to be skeptical of relationships and not to put my trust in a romantic partner. After all, being able to trust others is based on experiences of counting on people in our past, particularly our mom and dad. And even though I had overcome many challenges prior to marrying my former husband, being married brought me face-to-face with how many more there were left to conquer.

For better or worse, most couples follow the marriage example set by their parents. In my family, I learned early on that when people have difficulties resolving conflicts, it leads to the demise of a relationship. As a result, I gave up easily on love and perhaps considered divorce an option too quickly when love in my marriage morphed into mutual unhappiness and ongoing conflicts after sixteen years. In hindsight, I’ve come to realize the importance of taking time to pick a partner with whom you are compatible.

In whatever form it exists, your parents’ relationship creates a template about love and relating. It is your first and greatest teacher about love. However, your parents’ divorce doesn’t have to determine the outcome of your relationships. Instead of repeating the past, you can create a new story for your life and build partnerships based on love, trust, and intimacy.

WHY WE WROTE THIS BOOK

My daughter Tracy and I wrote this book for all of the women raised in divorced homes who continuously feel that there is something wrong with them, something missing, and who are eager to build healthy, long-lasting relationships but struggle to do so. As children, they may have done their best to be good girls and play well the hand that divorce dealt them. But as young women, many daughters of divorce have trouble with trust and intimacy. When they fall in love, it reawakens long-hidden emotions they buried in childhood, such as the fear that no matter what they do to ensure a successful relationship, they’ll be left anyway. This fear of abandonment can translate into fear of commitment to romantic partners. They long for love and lasting partnerships but feel utterly powerless to sustain a relationship. In addition, many daughters of divorce have also endured damage in their relationships with their fathers, which can leave a lasting imprint. Studies show that a girl stands a better chance of becoming a self-confident woman if she has a close bond with her father.

As a therapist, college instructor, and nonfiction writer, I have specialized in studying divorce and helping people impacted by it. Although my work includes all individuals affected by divorce, I’m especially interested in helping adult children of divorce address their challenges because they often suffer silently and needlessly. I began researching the long-term impact of parental divorce in the mid-1990s because I was going through my own breakup and wanted to avoid passing the legacy of divorce on to my children.

After publishing two studies on adult children of divorce in 1995 and 1996, I remarried and settled into a blended family life (with three children) and my clinical practice. Then in 2009, my daughter Tracy, now a young woman, stunned me by expressing a keen interest in processing her experience of my divorce years ago. Though her father and I had worked so hard to protect her, it was clear she still suffered wounds from our breakup regardless, and I wanted to do everything to help her mend those. Astounded by the lack of information available to help daughters of divorce heal from their parents’ breakup, I decided to pursue a third research study. This time, with Tracy’s assistance, I began to address how we could help other daughters of divorce resolve and integrate issues related to their parents’ split in concrete ways, and the idea for this book began to emerge. We supplemented our personal experience with research from experts as well as interviews of more than three hundred women who had been raised in divorced families.

Research studies show that adult children of divorce have double the risk of getting divorced themselves compared to their counterparts from intact homes. So it’s time to discover the root of the divorce bug and figure out how to shake it.

We learned that childhood experiences, including our parents’ divorce, create the framework for how we experience love as adults. In my case, my parents split when I was a young child, and I longed to recapture the love they lost, even though it was a fantasy. But since I didn’t grow up with a healthy template for how couples achieve intimacy and resolve conflicts, I was more prone to reenact unhealthy relationship patterns. Although I desperately wanted to build a rewarding, long-lasting, intimate relationship, I didn’t know how to go about it.

As we began to interview women who volunteered for our study on daughters of divorce, similar themes emerged over and over again. When the volunteers spoke about the impact of their parents’ split on their romantic relationships, we realized that we view love and commitment with a similar lens—one which was colored by fear of loss and a reluctance to commit. One respondent, Abby, age thirty-eight, reflects: I’ve built up walls and rarely let anyone in. It’s like I’m testing them, trying to force guys into proving their love. I’m always wondering when it’s going to end. The worst part of it is that I’m waiting for the rug to be pulled out from underneath me—so I can’t relax and just be me.

While parental divorce can certainly be problematic for all children, it appears to pose unique challenges for girls. As adults these women may feel pessimistic about love, mistrust their romantic partners, and live with constant fear that their relationships will fail. Or if they pick a partner who might be a good fit for them, they might engage in self-sabotaging behaviors because they are accustomed to living with chaos and uncertainty.

Why is the father-daughter relationship so vulnerable to disruption after parental divorce? In A Generation at Risk, Paul Amato, PhD, and Alan Booth, PhD, conclude that the disruptive effects of parental divorce persist for daughters into adulthood and are associated with lowered feelings of closeness with their fathers. They noted fathers generally give more attention to sons than daughters post-divorce—a tendency that grows more pronounced as children get older. In Between Fathers and Daughters, Linda Nielsen, EdD, a nationally recognized expert on father-daughter relationships, observes that daughters often compete with stepmothers after divorce and that mothers don’t always encourage a close bond between their daughters and their former spouse. She writes, Sadly, divorce usually damages a daughter’s relationship with her father more than a son’s. Her research findings indicate that the father-daughter relationship is the one that changes the most post-divorce and that only 10 to 15 percent of dads and daughters enjoy the benefits of shared custody. Since many daughters perceive limited contact with their fathers as a personal rejection, this can lead to lowered self-esteem and trouble trusting romantic partners during adolescence and adulthood.

WHY STUDY ONLY DAUGHTERS OF DIVORCE?

The leading researchers in the field of divorce who inspired our research are E. Mavis Hetherington, PhD, Paul Amato, PhD, and the late Judith Wallerstein, PhD. They all agree that parental divorce has a lifelong impact upon children and that the legacy of divorce is often passed down in families. These scholars concur that the effect of parental divorce upon ACODs deserves special examination. However, only Wallerstein studied women separately from men. She concluded that females raised in divided homes are particularly vulnerable to self-doubt and fears about commitment because they identify with their mothers after divorce and view her to have failed at love and marriage. This vulnerability makes sense because girls are socialized to be nurturers and caregivers from an early age and tend to be more focused on relationships than men are.

In Daughters of Divorce: Report From a Ten-Year Follow-Up, Wallerstein discovered that daughters of divorce show a distinct pathway that includes a delayed emergence of the powerful effects of parental divorce. She coined the term Sleeper Effect to describe how daughters often experience fear of conflict with their partners and shaken faith in love when they venture out on their own and make decisions about love and commitment. Over a decade later, in The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, Wallerstein detailed the struggle that ACODs face in adulthood because they worry about following in their parents’ footsteps. A unique aspect of Wallerstein’s research is that she conducted a longitudinal study—interviewing the same families over a period of twenty-five years—at different stages in their development. But even she wasn’t expecting to find that the greatest effects of divorce on children don’t emerge until adulthood.

In her highly acclaimed book, For Better or For Worse: Divorce Reconsidered, Hetherington describes her findings from a sample of fourteen hundred families whom she interviewed over the course of thirty years at the University of Virginia. She reveals that although divorce presents children with many challenges, which make them more at risk to have problems, the vast majority (or 75 percent) have adjusted reasonably well six years after their parents’ breakup. Several protective factors that foster resilience in children emerged from her research, such as low parental conflict after divorce and having competent parents with a warm, authoritative style. Like Wallerstein, Hetherington posits that daughters are more likely to have vulnerabilities that emerge during adulthood in intimate relationships when compared to sons, primarily due to their altered relationship with their fathers after divorce.

Building on the work of Hetherington and Wallerstein, we sought to examine the impact of parental divorce on women specifically. We conducted 326 in-depth interviews, over a period of five years, in which we asked respondents to describe their experiences growing up in a divided home and to identify their most prominent memories—such as their belief about why their parents divorced and whose fault it was. They were also asked to answer questions such as: what is the most difficult part of a romantic relationship for you?

From these interviews and other research, we were able to identify key emotional challenges faced by daughters of divorce that are nearly universal, such as trouble trusting romantic partners, reluctance to commit, damaged self-esteem, intimacy issues, extreme self-reliance to an almost harmful degree, and mistrust in the permanence of relationships. Most of the women we interviewed also experienced a damaged father-daughter connection due to spending less time with their fathers after their parents’ breakups. In chapter 5, we offer steps to deal with a broken father-daughter relationship since it was the most common theme that was explored during our interviews.

A NEW STUDY OF DAUGHTERS OF DIVORCE