The Daily Telegraph

The innocent casualties of ugly divorces

As Dr Foster has shown, feuding parents can cause their children damage that lasts for generation­s,

- says Lauren Libbert

It may have been derided as silly and over the top, but if Tuesday night’s much-awaited finale of Dr Foster did one thing, it shone a light on the ugliest side of divorce; the weaponisin­g of children caught in the crossfire between two warring parents. Each week viewers watched in horror as Dr Foster and her ex-husband Simon increasing­ly used their 15-year-old son as a pawn in their poisonous game. While his parents purported to want to do the right thing by him, they seemed to hardly notice as he grew more troubled and anxious. As viewers became increasing­ly fed up with the melodrama of his parents, he, in the end, was the only character to sustain any sympathy at all. “I want to stage an interventi­on and haul this child out of my television set” tweeted the author Jojo Moyes.

How, we asked ourselves, could parents be so blinded by rage and wrecked with revenge that they couldn’t see the damage they were inflicting on their child?

But this is something which Caron Burrow, a psychother­apist, sees all the time in her practice. “I’ve had children in my family therapy sessions asked to draw what is happening at home and they’ll draw a war scene with mum and dad shooting each other and them standing in the middle.

“Rage makes children invisible and the protective, parental instinct all too often comes second to the anger and hatred they are feeling for their partner.”

Sharon Court*, 52, a social media strategist from north London, understand­s this well. She won’t be going to her oldest son’s wedding in a week’s time because of the ongoing vitriol she feels towards his father, despite them divorcing almost 20 years ago. “I just can’t face seeing him as I know I’ll end up in an argument and I don’t want to ruin the wedding,” says Sharon, whose marriage lasted 10 years. “He had affairs and the final one ended up in a pregnancy – it was then I knew I’d never forgive him, even though I had stupidly before.

“Our children were four and six years old and when we parted. He said he would take my home, my pride, my job and my dignity. His nastiness towards me never stopped – even though he went on to marry someone else. I tried to protect the children along the way but our anger was spilling out everywhere and they were terribly hurt. I have my regrets about that.”

The latest figures from the Office of National Statistics show that 111,169 couples in England and Wales divorced in 2014. Around 42 per cent of marriages end in divorce – which affects more than half of all children by the age of 16. The damage this causes, says leading parenting guru Penelope Leach, author of forthcomin­g book Putting the Children First When You Divorce (Little Brown), is life changing and far-reaching.

“Parents often think teenage or older children are too old to care about their divorce and won’t be harmed by it because they’re caught up in their own lives,” says Penelope. “But nothing could be further from the truth. When a parents’ marriage breaks down with huge amounts of acrimony, it’s a betrayal of everything they’ve known – love, trust, the family unit. To them, it’s all been phoney and they become mistrustin­g of relationsh­ips in the future. It’s even been shown that children of angrily divorced parents are more likely to divorce themselves.”

June Brogan, trained counsellor and CEO at Relate West and Mid Kent, believes the repercussi­ons can have a knock-on effect for three generation­s unless profession­al help is sought.

“Children in these situations learn that adults are not a safe point of reference,” she says. “Parents should understand that by trashing your ex, you are, in effect, trashing your child because they are 50 per cent them.”

This is certainly something that resonates with Samantha French*, 51, a teacher from Nottingham. She says the feuding between her parents and being forced to act as a conduit between them when she was 17 – and an only child – are the reasons she is single now.

“So many times I just wanted to close my bedroom door and tell them to keep me out of it,” she says. “When my father left, my mother would alternate between bad-mouthing him and grilling me for informatio­n about his life and I didn’t know what to do. Their intense love had curdled into intense hate and stopped them from noticing I was their child.

“Now if I get close to someone, I don’t believe they will stay forever and I end it before it turns sour. I feel so sad that this has been their legacy.”

Suzy Miller, divorce strategist and founder of www.bestwaytod­ivorce. co.uk, urge parents to remember this: “When children watch their narcissist­ic mother or father play out their games of mutual destructio­n, they are learning that relationsh­ips are not about love, but about control and ‘winning’ whatever the cost. They learn that a moral misdeed by one parent can be the excuse for a litany of misdeeds by the other, justified as retaliatio­n. They learn that love has no place in their home, and therefore, to not trust love from anywhere.”

The key to conscious parenting post-divorce, all the experts agree, is to try not to let the emotion of the adult relationsh­ip crash into the parental one, which needs to be kept entirely separate.

“Gently talking to your child about the situation and trying to understand the fallout on them is essential,” says June Brogan. “Keep checking in with them. You can say, ‘It must be so scary to see us argue like that. We used to love each other so much but this is very hard.’ You should avoid putting down your ex too, however tempting it may be, because children should have no role in your break-up whatsoever.”

Caron Burrow adds that thinking of your children as victims of war should help with your conscious parenting. “Respect that a child needs a relationsh­ip with the other parent, whatever he or she has done,” she says. “Keep your anger contained to your side of fence, doing your best not to talk about your other partner in front of them at all, even if it’s on the phone to a friend. The focus should always be on the child’s feelings.”

If that doesn’t work, perhaps just keep Dr Foster on your Sky Planner so you can see for yourself what really can happen when obsession pulverises a family.

*Some names have been changed

‘Their intense hate stopped them from noticing I was their child’

 ??  ?? Family at war: The hatred that Dr Foster (Suranne Jones) and her ex-husband had for each other made them ignore the pain of their son Tom (Tom Taylor) caught in the crossfire
Family at war: The hatred that Dr Foster (Suranne Jones) and her ex-husband had for each other made them ignore the pain of their son Tom (Tom Taylor) caught in the crossfire

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