I was about 11 years old when my parents got divorced. At the time, I didn't know what to think. I was pretty young, at least to the point where I hadn't yet really wrapped my mind around dating, marriage or love itself. All I knew was what I saw in the movies. When I first heard my parents were getting divorced, I was prepared for plates to be thrown, for me and my sister would be torn apart by choosing sides, for me to have to choose a parent and leave the other one behind forever. In my mind, as an 11 year old, I had skipped to the worst-case scenario, what it seems the world has depicted most divorce to be like.
I found out my parents were getting divorced in a car ride with my dad. We were simply driving through town, he looked out the window at an apartment complex, pointed, and said "That's where I'm going to be living now." There was no sit-down talk about my new life or any sort of big deal made. It seemed, that my parents were doing everything they could to make it seem like it was not a big deal.
Contrary to the plate throwing I had in mind, all there was was one fight, in their bedroom, that I heard little of. The next day, my dad was in a new apartment and my mom was the only one in our house. Of course there was clear tension, but for the most part, it was a clean cut.
My biggest fear was getting torn apart from my sister, or never seeing one of my parents again. That was never even a question. Wherever my sister went, I went, and my parents agreed to split even time without much conflict at all.
See, for those who have never experienced having their parents getting divorced, or have been divorced themselves, the struggle does not happen with the big things. It seems the real struggle was always with the small things. Who would pay for my school trips? Who was I spending valentines day with? Who would throw my birthday party?
When I was 11, the divorce confused me more than anything, but as I've grown up I begun to understand it more. The most interesting thing I've noticed is how many other people I know with divorced parents. Statistically, every few years the amount of divorce goes up. Why this is? I don't know.
In my opinion, the reason divorce is not like the movies, is because the common kind of divorce that happens is simply a situation where the feelings have left, so the motivation to have a relationship with your partner is gone. In the movies you usually see the big divorces where someone was caught cheating or some other major scandal causes an earthquake in a families life.
My parents divorce, and any of my friends, was not a scandal, it was just a lack of motivation to continue a relationship. And we experienced an extremely delayed break up that got complicated because of children. Today, divorce is nothing like the movies, it seems more like an inevitable end to marriage.
