The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study

trauma-and-survival

• From a merry, outgoing ten-year-old, she soon became a somber young woman… I have to set them a good example so they'll be good.

  ULOD-RC-006

• Many of these youngsters believe it's their duty to keep their parent alive… an overburdening that seriously inhibits the child's freedom to separate normally.

  ULOD-RC-035

self-and-identity

• The child often takes responsibility for the one or both parents… out of compassion and often out of unrealistic guilt. This is one way divorce profoundly changes childhood.

  ULOD-RC-039

• I spent a lot of my childhood thinking, When will I be old enough… I knew that I was trapped with them forever.

  ULOD-RC-125

intimacy

• Many of these thirty-somethings have been through the hard school of failed relationships before finding a partner they could trust.

  ULOD-RC-083

• The men sought calm and kindness rather than passion… they worried they might lose their wives' love and fidelity—an ongoing, subsurface tension.

  ULOD-RC-086