I am currently in a very difficult relationship but we both stay for the sake of the "family". I think lot of my views are don to my parents staying together when I was growing up.

I have younger siblings the same age as I was when I became aware of my parents' difficulties. They seem so carefree in comparison with how I was at that age. I wonder if I am doing a bad thing for my son by staying with his father.

In my case, my parents' marriage was a toxic mess. It consisted of my dad bullying my mom, myself and my siblings, and my mom passive-aggressively retaliating and blaming everything on him. In fact my parents did not function as partners in any sense other than domestic. They postponed, accused, blamed, made excuses. One of my therapist told me that all a person really needs is one good parent. Both my parents were and are depressed, one of them still doesn't admit it. My choice of role models was bully or victim. As horrible as it is to be a victim, I couldn't play the part of the bully, it makes me feel like a monster. I lived in fear of being a bad person already and there was no way I could reconcile being a bully with seeing myself as more or less "good".

My youngest sister seems to have a happier, more stable life than myself or my brother. She was the only one of us who was young enough to still live at home when my parents split up, so her experience was different from ours. She spent her teen years living with my father most of the time. I think that he is more abusive and more selfish than my mother, but I am convinced he is saner than my mom. (Doesn't that sound crazy). On the other hand, my younger sister self-medicates with drugs far more than I do. I don't think he was a very good parent either, but my parents approach to child-raising as a couple was too filled with dangerous contradictions.

Hey Spiky
This may sound bad, but I like reading this, only because my sister currently has 3 young children under the age of 7, all 3 years apart. She is married to an abuser, who does things such as pinning her against a wall by the throat in front of the children, and the list goes on.....I'm sure you have seen it all before too.

After many years & many tears she has finally kicked him out. She cries all of the time and asks "is what I'm doing right?". I have always re-assured her that it is. He still comes over after baby sitting & leaves all four of them crying themselves to sleep. my nieces and nephews have now started to tell him to leave because they realise themselves they don't like him there. Whereas before they would ask where daddy was, especially the littlest one who looks up to his daddy so so much, has now always told him to go away daddy!

My parents here are the biggest issue, telling my sister the "effects on children and divorce"..... Which is messing with her head. I keep telling her "The effects on children with domestic violence is FAR" worse. I would love to show her these posts, from someone who has grown up and has said he wished they divorce so they didn't have to go through this.

Anyway, I'd just like to thank you for sharing your story.

No problem. I think the ironic thing is that each of my parents admits their marriage damaged me -- by blaming the other parent.