Same as Adina1968 – it’s really no fun when your parents badmouth eachother.
hossman – no, divorce was probably best, I think them staying together would have been terrible, especially while growing up, when you start to notice they really don’t get along. Also, it would have been terrible to see my self or one of my brothers or sister take advantage of the fact that they don’t get along well (I’ve seen my sister play my parents out against eachother already, that would have been even worse had they still been together).
On the other hand, a few years after the divorce, my mother had another friend who was really terrible, but she couldn’t send him away. He really was a nightmare with a lot of psychological problems and who used the divorce of my parents to try and promote himself. Luckily, my mother managed to send him away last year, after which half his familiy also refused contact with him, and I suppose the only one he can talk with now is his mother, which he is manipulating like hell so that she now doesn’t want to see us anymore too, even though she always really liked us.
Also, during the period in between when my parents had announced they would be divorcing and the actual divorce, my dad would always get sentimental (obviously) but then he sort of expected us to cry too… However, I was too young to really “feel” the loss, and at once deliberately delayed getting home because I knew only my father was there and he would want me to feel sorry again.