Divorce can be a difficult time for everyone, with tensions running high, arguments causing stress and accusations flying around all over the place. Both partners can get very emotional during a stressful divorce, but the problems don’t just affect those directly involved. Divorce also affects your parents and immediate family, your friends (who end up getting drawn into taking sides) and of course your children.

Even pets can get caught up in the distress of a painful divorce, with partners arguing over custody of the family dog or (to a lesser extent) cat.

It’s the children who really suffer though as they don’t know why their parents are breaking up. They don’t understand the reasons for the arguments, the hatred; especially when there was love there before.

Try to remember the good times of being a family, especially the parts that involved the children, such as their birthdays, Christmases, the time when they were born, or even before they were born when you excited about having children for the first time, such as the baby shower.

Those were happier times, and the sorts of times that children should be exposed to, rather than the distress of their parents getting divorced.

Clive Bellmore