Last week I was on GB News again. Host Alex Phillips was doing a segment on divorce and whether or not we should have quite such a cavalier attitude towards it.
While I may have moved right on some things (or have I??), I have not moved away on my fundamentally liberal positions on social/family issues like divorce. Like legal abortion, I see divorce as necessary evil and an almost inevitable part of live.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t cost big. To individuals, to families, and to all of society. (For more on that, I recommend Nancy McDermott’s book, The Problem with Parenting.)
Because it costs a lot. In fact, in some ways, it costs everything.
And the problem with an overly permissive societal mindset is that it fails to acknowledge that these freedoms (see also, legal abortion) come at such a high cost.
In my experience with divorce, the scariest part of the whole, terrible process was how vulnerable it made me, and then by extension, my little son. I was emotionally destabilised, with limited family and friend support, having moved to escape my failed marriage, to a city I had not lived in in three decades. I was fundamentally lonely. Life could have put any number of predators in my way at that moment, whispering promises of fixing all my problems, of rescuing me.
Why that did not happen is a mystery, but life instead put in my path a very decent man. A fixer-upper, to be sure (sorry if you are reading this, love! 🤣) and we had our ups and downs; but a man whose intentions and heart were pure, and who has spent the last 8 years helping me raise my son. And, aside from all the good he has done me, my son has benefitted immeasurably from that partnership.
That is the best outcome possible when parents must split up a family. And I am grateful for it every day.
In case there is anyone reading this who is going through that loneliness, that fear, I can only say that I got to a point where I could recognise the benefit of being alone, over living with the chaos and toxicity of a bad relationship. There is beauty in the calm that comes when you finally can leave that behind.
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I was on TV again! This time talking about divorce
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Happy Friday! 🥳
Last week I was on GB News again. Host Alex Phillips was doing a segment on divorce and whether or not we should have quite such a cavalier attitude towards it.
While I may have moved right on some things (or have I??), I have not moved away on my fundamentally liberal positions on social/family issues like divorce. Like legal abortion, I see divorce as necessary evil and an almost inevitable part of live.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t cost big. To individuals, to families, and to all of society. (For more on that, I recommend Nancy McDermott’s book, The Problem with Parenting.)
Because it costs a lot. In fact, in some ways, it costs everything.
And the problem with an overly permissive societal mindset is that it fails to acknowledge that these freedoms (see also, legal abortion) come at such a high cost.
In my experience with divorce, the scariest part of the whole, terrible process was how vulnerable it made me, and then by extension, my little son. I was emotionally destabilised, with limited family and friend support, having moved to escape my failed marriage, to a city I had not lived in in three decades. I was fundamentally lonely. Life could have put any number of predators in my way at that moment, whispering promises of fixing all my problems, of rescuing me.
Why that did not happen is a mystery, but life instead put in my path a very decent man. A fixer-upper, to be sure (sorry if you are reading this, love! 🤣) and we had our ups and downs; but a man whose intentions and heart were pure, and who has spent the last 8 years helping me raise my son. And, aside from all the good he has done me, my son has benefitted immeasurably from that partnership.
That is the best outcome possible when parents must split up a family. And I am grateful for it every day.
In case there is anyone reading this who is going through that loneliness, that fear, I can only say that I got to a point where I could recognise the benefit of being alone, over living with the chaos and toxicity of a bad relationship. There is beauty in the calm that comes when you finally can leave that behind.
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