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Is it really such a big deal? What might be important things to consider before pursuing this?
Divorce is just a chemical imbalance.
The whole point in dating is to get to know the person, and you shouldn’t judge someone by who their parents were or what their parents did.
Parents’ relationship can affect their children.
And that’s exactly why people date, to find out what the other person is like, including how their circumstances affected them as an individual.
By refusing to consider someone because their parents are divorced, you are either saying that children of divorced parents shouldn’t get married, or that they’re inferior somehow and you deserve better.
By refusing to consider someone because their parents are divorced, you are either saying that children of divorced parents shouldn’t get married, or that they’re inferior somehow and you deserve better.
You can’t think of any other possibilities?
Having come from a family with divorced parents, I have this to say:
In my opinion, it is very important to find out if the prospective shidduch has another role model for a healthy relationship. If they are close to a mentor, i.e. a rav/maggid shiur/mechaneches etc. to the point where they spend time in the other home and have seen – not just learned about – what a healthy, beautiful relationship looks like, and that’s what they’re striving for, then I would feel much more relaxed.
If, on the other hand, they don’t have that kind of a relationship with anyone then while I wouldn’t say you should reject the idea out of hand, I would suggest having an open discussion about the subject, in addition to checking very carefully into the person’s middos and behavior patterns.
Omitting some possibilities from a list is a strategy that works most of the time. But there are no other possibilities here.
I think one should not exclude children from divorced families automatically, but one would need to be far more circumspect and cautious.
The crucial issue will boil down to whether the prospective shidduch understands why his/her parents divorced (for example the behaviour patterns and attitudes that lead to a broken marriage) and is motivated not to repeat the mistakes.
The research that was quoted by Lior only tells a part of the story. A far more important issue, which we are too quick to pass over, is to understand how those who manage to build successful functional homes (even though coming from broken homes themselves) manage to do so.
It seems that a motivated person (from a broken home) may be better than an unmotivated person from a dysfunctional unbroken home!
Also find out how she feels about the divorce and how it affects her outlook on marriage.
Based on this thread and another recent thread I would say lior is anti divorce.
DAK- It’s a Chesoron, but marrying s/o from a dysfunctional family is even worse! It takes a lot of Siytah D’smaiya to get and stay married.
RebYidd23, there certainly are other possibilities.
You are a bit of a scaredy cat.
Yes, that’s one.
I have met children from divorced parents that have resolved to invest in their marriage not to end up where their parents did, and it worked. IMHO there are no rules to classify kids of divorced parents
barlev, yes i agree. u have to c if they understand what a successful and happy marriage looks like and if they r striving to invest in making their own marriage what it should b. sometimes seeing whats so obviously not what it should b makes a child determined to do exactly the opposite. they want to finally create a peaceful and harmonious home for themselves.
Yet statistics clearly demonstrate that children of divorced parents have a significantly greater marriage failure rate themselves, at least double the average divorce rate. (Triple when both spouses come from broken homes.)
#Sketch and barlev, Very true!
And I also want to add that, sometimes, when children see their parents fighting the whole time, and they aren’t divorced, that can set the tone for their own unsuccessful marriages.
Just keep in mind that there are many couples out there who do not have good shalom bayis that are married to each other, and you wouldn’t necessarily know about it. How is that any better than someone who has divorced parents?
Not that you shouldn’t weigh divorced parents, but bear in mind that just because the parents are married – doesn’t mean they’re happily married.
so where did the first divorced person come from? if their parents were not divorced. i dont believe it to be genetic like health issues.
keep in mind there are plenty unhappily married people out there that dont get divorced.do you think its good for a child to grow up in a war zone?? sometimes divorce can be better than staying in a miserable marriage
Shidduch choices aren’t limited to between children from broken homes and children from homes with poor shalom bayis. You can avoid both if both have a negative impact on their children.
Amram was divorced.
Abaye was divorced.
Adam harishon(kind of) was divorced.
Avraham avinu (kind of) was divorced.
The Sridei Aish was divorced.
The Bais Halevi was divorced.
Moshe Rabeinu (also, kind of) was divorced.
Rav Tzadok Hakohen was divorced.
The Vilna Gaons daughter was divorced(on his orders).
Rav Malkiel Kotler(got the heter meah rabonim).
Just saying
It’s probably not genetic.
Both my wife and I are remarried (from divorces). Our kids b’h, are at the top of their respective classes and very happy.
That is the key.
Lior can quote statistics from today till tomorrow but the key to a good shidduch is marrying a well adjusted, happy person with a lev tov.Divorced parents can teach their kids how to be happy. They do this by remarrying, creating a happy home and by not fighting with their ex’s.
The reason why kids from divorced homes are more likely to divorce themselves is because they saw dysfunction and came to view it as normal.That creates an unhappy person and a vicious cycle. They never got help, they kept seeing their parents fight etc.
Unfortunately there is a lot of dysfunctional families even many that arent divorced.
Look into the shidduch and look into the parents. If the person has a lev tov, if the ex’s dont fight, if the new blended families are happy then take it to the next step. If he/she can talk about the divorce, his feelings about it, how he dealt with it then he is probably well adjusted and a good shidduch prospect.
My parents are divorced, and I have made it a point to be around people in good marriages to be able to observe first hand what can make a marriage work.
I have often found that girls from families where the parents are still married, can often not appreciate the hard work it takes to get to that point. Assuming their first memories of their parents are when they were around 3 years old, their parents were likely married for four years before they remember anything.
In my situation, I saw the flaws in my parents marriage from a young age. I have always had to reconcile how two people who I love and care about so much can make each other miserable. As a result, I recognize that divorce is a real possibility that can happen to anyone, and I have worked hard on myself and done a lot of introspection to make sure I don’t make the same mistakes they made.
Lior, why are you such a hater?
My apologies to those insulted/hurt by Lior’s posts. I did a better job deleting them (same ones) as they came up the last time we had this discussion.
#Yw mod-29, I would love to meet you in person, Each time you post, you show such a kind side of you..
Thank you for all your efforts and service!
My sincere apologies that my point came across harshly. I solely intended the point to make a general, and not a specific or individual, societal observation. There are rules and there are exceptions to the rule. I was focusing on the rule. I do certainly realize there are exceptions to the rule, and apologize for not being clearer about that fact. But the truth sometimes hurts and they say that statistics don’t lie. I just think it is important to consider all aspects of a shidduch, and divorce familial history is one of them. A number of other posters agreed that this is a factor that needs to be considered/evaluated. Extenuating factors relieving and mitigating some of the negatives of divorce is certainly important to look at. And each shidduch proposal must be individually considered and evaluated, not decided based on generalities. But generalities also need to be considered on a societal scale to at least bring awareness to that a familial divorce history has a propensity to negatively affect children. And again I apologize for not being clearer in what I was trying to convey.
P.S. secretagentyid: The inclusion of some names on your list is misleading. For example, the Vilna Gaon insisted on his daughter being divorced because she hadn’t had children for ten years of marriage.
Lior – your last post explaining how extremely scrutinizing a person must be when dating someone from a divorced home because of all the statistics sounds very seriously void of what we Jews call bitachon and emunah.
Do you really think that Avraham wasn’t affected by the astrology, but these young people should worry about statistics? Let them worry about the person’s yiras Shomayim, their ameilus baTorah, their middos toward self, family and Rabbeim and then let them daven their heads off that they have Shalom Bayis. Really? I’m surprised and disappointed.
Lior- I agree with you and some other posters that yea it is important to look into how the divorce affected the prospect shidduch.
The problem arises when you put too much emphasis on this thought. There are many statistics that also discuss how parents from together homes who are constantly at work and have no time for their kids also affect them. Or how bullying in school can have a long term affect on someone. Or how expectations of parents on their kid can have a huge negative impact on them.
I am not discharging the stats you have posted as yes many stats are correct. But I disagree that this is a rule.
When looking at the prospective shidduch, look at the person first and foremost and see how their life events have shaped them. Get to know them, it is unfair to judge people like that. Just because divorce is painful and people know it is a terrible thing doesnt make it a better target than what people could be suffering inside.
One must take into account the person as a whole. We would have a lot more shidduchim if people didn’t judge so much…
My parents are divorced. As I am looking for my shidduch, I have had to seriously think about what I need in a marriage as opposed to what my mother would want. Part of the hishtadlus was that since I have been entertaining the idea of shidduchim for over a year that I made sure to find a family that I could get close with. What I saw in their home as time went on is that they were not happily married but felt stuck together.
Although I no longer really speak to this family, I discovered that issues that will come up in the home like hashkafic differences, mental health issues/other medical issues such as asthma (there are certain types of illnesses that I can’t have a spouse with, but for most other cases, he really needs to be someone who is committed to working through them), differing backgrounds, upbringing, how you raise your own children and even how you form relationships with other people should be factors used to determine who you end up getting set up with.
After I realized that, I ended up really changing my hashkafic and pretty much my entire shidduch criteria because I realized that in real life, making the initiative is always more important than the end result.
Lior–Your point is? Yes, she was childless, and that was the reason for the divorce. That is a totally valid reason for a divorce, that is not an inherent fault in the person. There are many other totally valid reasons for divorce thaf are not because if an inherent fault in either side. You would turn someone down for a shidduch because there parents are divirced, without even knowing why?
There are many divorced people who still maintain a civil and cordial relationship, and are therefore able to bring their child(ren) up better than if they were married. Yes, better, because this way the child sees their parents having a goid relationship.
I agree that if the divorce wrecked the child, but that is now a problem in the child (whatever caused it set aside, this is a problem for marriage). The factt that the parents are divorced is immaterial. How the parent’s relationship affected the child is not immaterial, but to turn someone down simply based on their parents’ being divorced is disgusting.
What I’m trying to say is it’s based on how the kid is now, not base on the parents’ marital status. There are couples who constantly fight and een have physical abuse, and this affetcs a child terribly, while their are divorced couples whose children learnt the good lessons from their parents.
And people moan and weep about the shidduch crisis.
I think it’s foolish to automatically turn away such a shidduch. I do think it to be very prudent, and your right, to find out PERTINENT (not nosey) information about the divorce. Was either spouse abusive to the other or to the children, are both parents on the same page regarding their children, how involved is the non-custodial parent in the lives of the children, will the parents contribute towards the wedding and/or some support of the couple (if that is their mehalach), etc. These are all factors that can affect the child of that family, and thus affect the person coming INTO that family dynamic.
oomis: Whether “will the parents contribute towards the wedding” is a valid factor in considering whether to proceed with a potential marriage?
secretagentyid: If the divorce was due to childlessness, then by definition there are no children of divorce resulting from that marriage. The point here isn’t about “fault” between the divorcing parents but rather about the resulting effects on the children of that terminated marriage.
Lior: Why on earth is who will pay for the wedding a factor in getting married? If (s)he is the right person for someone, you agree to get married and figure out how much money you can afford to spend on the wedding after.
Someone very close to me married a guy whose parents were divorced. She always talks about how lucky she was that he was divorced- everyone was so nervous to marry the child of divorcees that he wasn’t snapped up before she came along.
He actually grew up with a lot of issues that came along with the divorce (such as a nonreligious parent, stepmom, etc) and, as he says, you can either get completely thrown off by that or make a special effort to overcome the setback that you grew up with. So he focused on finding healthy families to stay with and emulate, developed a good relationship with (all three of) his parents, and really worked on himself to become a really amazing person with the cutest family :).
This isn’t “oh, so he lived through a trying situation so naturally he’s some amazing guy”- he worked long and hard to get to where he is today, and unfortunately, some of his siblings haven’t gotten there yet. It isn’t either “oh, it’s really not a big deal to be (married to) a child of divorcees”- there’s a lot of politics and his wife does have some issues with the whole two mothers in law thing (it sounds like a Jewish joke…). The point is that you have to look at the quality of the potential spouse and the way that they work on themselves- and really, that applies whether their parents are divorced or not.
Sam: You are echoing my question to oomis (who seemed to say it’s a factor.)
Lior: Ah. I thought the question mark at the end of your sentence was a typo. My bad.
Lior, I guess I still don’t understand why a child whose life is molded by dysfunctional parents who happen to stay married is preferable
Lesschumras, who says that’s preferable?
Who said it is? What’s preferable is a child molded by two parents demonstrating a proper loving marriage by living it and showing by example.
Lesschumras,
Is that your sad reality? Either married and dysfunctional or divorced?
And getting divorced ends dysfunction?
With that attitude, why get married at all?
Nisht what must your sad reality be that you must always get personal? No, that is not my reality but Lior appears to focusing on children whose parents are divorced, as opposed to children with married, dysfunctional, parents.
LC, the topic is titled “dating someone whose parents are divorced”.
Certainly, growing up in a dysfunctional home of any sort is, probably rightfully, considered a negative in shidduchim. The biggest difference is that you can’t hide a divorce, but can sometimes hide marital discord.
The topic was about divorced parents. That is why that is the topic. When your response is that the alternative is dysfunctional married parents, then there is something wrong with you. Because everyone else knows that that dysfunctional married are far from the only alternative.
It’s similar to the responses in the threads about appropriate dress for davening. Where the brilliant posters say that “aren’t neat jeans better than dirty ripped dress pants”. It’s not either or.
Same over here.
And who says there aren’t dysfunctional divorced parents? I would say that the likelihood is certainly not lower. And there is as a starting point an incomplete family unit. Which is sad and can have serious impact on the psyche of the children.
I never said that married dysfunctional parents were the only alternative and I do understand the topic. The reason for bringing up the married dysfunctional couple could be a greater problem than the divorced couple. As DY correctly pointed out, the divorce is out there on the open for all to investigate while not so with a married couple. How many times have you heard, when told of a divorce, that people thought they were s perfect couple. In addition, people are very telunvtant to ruin a shidduch by answering a question honestly
I think that the key to being effective in shidduchim is knowing yourself. I know that my husband, whoever he is is not a perfect man. The other thing to really consider is that while in-laws matter a little bit, everyone has awkward in-law relationships and you are looking to possibly marry their child- not them.
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