That was when I decided my happiness was more important than my perceived selfishness: The tipping point that made me walk away from my marriage.
Walking away from any relationship is hard — how can it not be when you’ve invested all this time and emotion into another human being only to leave it all behind.
But walking away from a marriage, from the father of your children, and “break up” the family unit is harder than anything I’ve ever had to do.
When the realisation sank in that I had to, for the first time in a long time, put myself first, it opened a Pandora’s box of invading questions that permeated every inch of my mind.
“But think of your kids, how could you put your own happiness and sanity over their relationship with their father?”
“Don’t be selfish. Just stick it out.”
These thoughts, amongst their many variations, weighed heavily on my mind as the internal battle waged on.
I knew that the decision I was leaning towards would affect not just my life but my kids’ too.
While one side of me tried to persuade me to stay in my marriage for the kids, the other side of me kept telling me I had to walk away for my own sanity. The side of me that wanted to put myself first kept asking —“Where do you see things in 5…10…20…30 years time?”
I knew if the 5 years we were together were going to be the blueprint of my future, happiness would be an allusive thing that evaded me at every turn.
I also knew that my kids needed a happy mum. I needed to set an example for them; to show them we all deserve a certain level of respect and love, and that if something isn’t right it’s okay to walk away.
But despite all this the thought that “you must stay together for the kids” ran laps around my mind. It was something that was instilled in me for as a long as I can remember but what I didn’t realise was that this mentality doesn’t take into account one’s true happiness, nor does it take into account things that may happen in a marriage that cause irreparable damage.
As a parent we are our children’s first role model. We are their first example of how we should conduct ourselves in this world from showing them how to eat with the utensils of our culture to learning the language within our society, our children absorb all this from seeing how we interact with the world around us.
Research has shown that a parent can influence many areas of a child’s life by modelling the behaviour themselves. A paper published by QLD health in 2018 showed that children whose family were physically active tended to be more physically active than their peers whose family were not.
Similarly our relationship with our spouse becomes the type of romantic relationship our children will model in the future — think about it, have you ever dated someone whose characteristics reminded you of your parent’s? For me I definitely noticed that the way my parents fought was almost identical to the way my ex-husband and I used to fight.
So knowing full well that my behaviour, what I will tolerate and the relationship I had with their father was going to be what they modelled off, I knew as “selfish” as it was to put my happiness above keeping the family unit in tact, I was also showing them that our individual happiness is important and that sometimes we have to place our own happiness above other’s even if it means bringing a lot of temporary pain to those we love.
As a parent and a partner we are assumed this responsibility of managing those around us’ mental and physical wellbeing. When we move from singledom to coupledom there is this shift to caring for another human being; after all, isn’t that love? This shift comes tenfold when we become a parent where the mini humans we create rely on us to survive. We become no longer responsible just for ourselves but those we care about. But what happens when you encounter something that is right for you but not for anybody else? If anything, it may end up hurting those you care about?
This was the impossible battle I had.
I knew what I had to do to regain my happiness but I knew it would bring pain to those around me, not to mention disappointment — but that’s the people pleaser in me coming out to play. Eventually the unhappiness brewed enough inside of me that it began to bubble over; the pressure cooker environment that was lockdown definitely aided my decision to walk away.
A lot of you have asked “how did you get the courage to leave?” and the truth is, it was a combination of my utter unhappiness and knowing I wanted my kids to have a better model of what a healthy relationship should look like, whether that is with someone else or just a healthier relationship with myself.
A few months after my separation I was listening to the podcast We Don’t Have Time For This and one of their episodes touched on the concept of a mother’s happiness and its affects on children. They mentioned that the second worse thing emotionally for a child is an unhappy mother because children pick up on that energy, internalise it and blame themselves meanwhile an unhappy father is approximately 6th on the list.
Naturally, this hit home for me.
It’s funny how the universe works. Right before hearing that episode I had begun to wonder if the decision I made was the right one. Hayley was really struggling with the new routine and I was struggling to find my feet juggling two kids. When I heard this episode I knew I had to fact check this concept that a mother’s happiness was paramount to her children’s happiness.
As I began my deep dive of the internet to find something to back up the claim that a mother’s unhappiness is the second worst thing for a child emotionally I stumbled across a study done in 2019 by the University of Lincoln titled “Happy Wife, Happy Life” which revealed the importance of a mother’s happiness and its affects on the family unit. The four key take aways from this study were:
Happy mums were more likely to have teens with fewer high levels of mental health problems whilst a dad’s happiness only influenced their son’s mental health.
A mum’s happiness during the early days has more impact on how close she eventually becomes to her teenage son or daughter meanwhile a dad’s happiness only influenced the closeness between the mum and son.
A mum’s happiness in their marriage tended to lead to children who were more positive in their emotional expressiveness.
A happy mum influenced her children’s behaviour and well-being, more so than a happy dad.
This study also noted that a happy mother affected the whole family’s overall happiness, including the father’s hence the title “Happy Wife, Happy Life” — guess that saying is more true than we ever gave it credit for!
But as all good rabbit holes are, finding this study led me to dig further which eventually landed me on a paper by Harvard published in 2009 on the affects of maternal depression and how it can undermine the development of young children.
The paper goes on to say that —
“When caregivers are sensitive and responsive to a young child’s signals, they provide an environment rich in serve and return experiences, like a good game of tennis or Ping-Pong. However, if depression interferes with the caregiver’s ability to regularly provide such experiences, these connections in the child’s brain may not form as they should. The difference between a child who grows up in a responsive environment and one who does not can be the difference between the development of strong or weak brain architecture, which serves as a foundation for the learning, behaviour, and health that follow.”
The conclusion of the paper noted that children of depressed mothers showed patterns of brain activity similar to those found in adults with depression but it’s not all doom and gloom for those who experience maternal depression.
A study by Southern Methodist University in 2020 unpacks this idea further that the children most likely to develop depression or anxiety were those with higher levels of internalising and blamed themselves for their mother’s sadness. It was noted that it is critical for those who regularly interact with these children to pay attention to any comments the kids make about their mum’s sadness and incorrectly think it’s their fault.
These studies and papers aside, I knew long before I read these what had to be done — I had to, for the first time since becoming a mum, put myself and my happiness first. I quietened the thoughts that told me I was being selfish because I knew in the long run my kids will benefit from me being happier and having a healthier relationship with myself.
Our individual happiness is just as important as the friend you keep encouraging to follow their heart and do what’s right for them. It’s okay to want to be the rock for your loved one’s but don’t forget a person who is drowning can’t save others; like air-hostesses tell us (I know, it’s been a while since we’ve all heard the pre-flight speel) we must put our own mask on before helping others and our happiness shouldn’t be any different.