Divorce and Marriage, That Stuff Doesn’t Rub Off

Geplaatst op 11-12-2025

I always joke that I come from a proud tradition of divorce. It's kind of my way of laughing at what is honestly a very painful part of my personal history.

Even before I was born, members of my family were getting divorced. My grandparents are divorced. My mom and dad are divorced. My uncles got divorces.

For better or worse, the loving, broken home, is not an exception in my family, but the norm. So the question is, what's that mean for me?

Well, I'm no psychologist, but I'm going to go out on a limb and just say it. My last breakup, or any other breakup prior to, has absolutely nothing to do with the divorce of my parents or anyone else in my family.

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Breaking Free From An Inherited Legacy

I used to have a tendency to believe that because I never grew up under the stability of a two-parent home, my chances of doing the same were diminished. Then I took a shot at living with a woman and instead of losing her to the same mistakes I saw the people who raised me make, I lost her to my own mistakes, ones I created. Sure, it crossed my mind that somehow, not seeing an example of a successful relationship in my own home may had played a part in me not maintaining one, but at some point, I had to just keep it real with myself and say it really had nothing to do with my shortcomings at all. Relationships that are doomed to fail often stem from patterns we unconsciously repeat.

When I was growing up, I saw women cry way more than they should. I saw men cry way more than they should. I saw women break the hearts of men, and men break the hearts of women. But no matter what I saw, and how ugly some of it was, I was raised not to repeat it. The lessons preached to me were to be a good man and to love the right way. Only problem was, when I was old enough to actually apply the words of wisdom the adults in my life put upon me, I chose to do something else.

Learning To Create Your Own Path Forward

All of us grow up with a wide variety of examples of love, but it's amazing to me how much weight we give them. We want to be considered grown, yet we will enslave ourselves to some things we saw when we were 6, 10, and 12 years old. This also extends to people who don't come from broken homes, the types of folks come from stable families. They too want to act like they've been born into a certain type of privilege, as though a good marriage rubs off on them, when in actuality, they're no better off than I. People change after marriage sometimes because they bring forth their own inherited relationship patterns.

I understand the lasting effects of things like abandonment because my father didn't want me. I understand how seeing our mothers or fathers get their hearts broken by our mothers or fathers, because I have seen my mother and father cry over love lost. We also know the lasting effects of good strong couples who remain together for as long as we see; to see parents who stay the course and remain married till death do they part. But the truth is, good or bad, we are all probably given only a partial glimpse into what makes them work and not work; 20 percent at best. Marriages require balance and prioritization to prevent partners from seeking what they feel is missing.

Divorce and marriage do not rub off. They are not meals with recipes we can pass down from one generation to the next, no matter what our history tells us. And the sooner we can let go of a past that wasn't even ours to begin with, the sooner we can have a much clearer focus on the future that is always ours. Make our own mistakes and make our own victories so one day when we have kids we can tell them everything we did wrong and everything we did right, we did it our own way, and they will too.