Sometimes I worry. Ok, most of the time I worry, but this is a specific worry. What am I, a divorced woman, teaching my daughter about marriage.
I’ve been divorced since my daughter was ten. My ex husband and I made a point to never argue in front of our daughter, so she never got the chance to see us work things out either.
I want my daughter to have a marriage that we all dream about so I trot out all the tired cliches:
Marriage is a life long commitment.
Anything worth having, including marriage, is worth working for.
Marriage is the hardest work you’ll ever do, but also the most rewarding.
Who am I to give advice on her future marriage when I haven’t been able to sustain one? I was married, briefly, after divorcing her father. The divorce came quickly, for a myriad of reasons, the biggest one being that we were both searching for the security and comfort of marriage without taking a good, hard look at who we were marrying.
Once I became a single parent I knew that the most important thing I needed to do was give my daughter the love and attention she needed while she was growing up. My focus needed to be on her, but in doing that, have I failed to show her how to be married?
Who are her role models? I’m divorced, my sisters are divorced, her grandparents are divorced, her friends parents are divorced and at 17, she has friends who are already single parents. Who is setting a good example for this generation? Certainly not the media or in most cases, their families.
I hope that she will take the time to learn what it takes to make a marriage successful. I hope that she will have realistic expectations and I hope she will fight for her marriage.All marriages, just like all people, are different. They are even different month to month, year to year. I hope I have taught her, in other areas of her life, to be resilient, to be persistent and to love with everything she has.