YOUR HAPPINESS OR THEIR HAPPINESS

Life seems unfair sometimes, especially when you are an adult who is responsible for the life of others. It can be overwhelming at times, especially when you find yourself in a position where you continually need to sacrifice your happiness for the good of others. When it comes to marriage and divorce you find out that a lot of the people who easily see divorce as an option to get out of the marriage do not have children in that marriage making them consider just their own happiness. Couples who have kids find it hard because every good parent would want to put the welfare of their child before theirs.

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A lot of people will prefer to endure abuse and neglect from their partner because they feel their child deserves a complete family. And the truth is they are not wrong. I once read a story of an 8 year old girl who took her fathers gun and shot him 17 times. Luckily the father survived, but after investigation was carried out, it was discovered that the little girl was only trying to protect her mother. She had watched her father abuse her mother countless times and watched her mother bear the pain while making excuses for her father. She saw an opportunity to relieve her mother of the pain and she took it. Now imagine the mental trauma an abusive marriage has caused that child.

When it comes to the matter of divorce, I don’t really know how to advise people. This is first because everyone does what they want to do at the end of the day, and secondly because no two marriages are the same. But then again I do not support the idea of staying in a marriage because of the children. I disagree with the ideology because those who do this have given up hope of ever loving each other. That kind of marriage will definitely hurt the child more than a divorce would. That kind of marriage will give the child a wrong ideology of what marriage should be, making them only witness pain and suffering. A lot of people were already broken as kids before they reached adulthood because they never knew what it means for parents to love each other. I feel great partners make great parents because their kids see how their parents treat each other and learn what a loving family is all about.

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It’s a matter of happiness, Happiness is not something one can continually pretend about, there is just so much that one can hold in. Children see and understand more than we think, they know things we don’t tell them and if you pretend to be fine, they know it too. This is why instead of trying to stay in the marriage because of the kids, they should try to find out what has gone sour in their marriage and try to fix it. As they grow up they will learn that life isn’t a bed of roses, but they will see that both parents tried and keep trying to make it work. If the parent can not love each other enough to stay in the marriage, then let the children know, and give them all the love a parent can also teach them that love sometimes isn’t enough, but that should not give them the wrong ideology about life.

THIS IS MY RESPONSE TO HIVE LEARNER'S PROMPT FOR WEEK 165 EPISODE 1