Making This Particular Lifestyle Decision for the Kids isn’t Wise

Making lifestyle choices for you is something that can affect your entire family. We’re not talking lifestyle choices such as whether or not to cut your hair in a trendy bob or paint your living room taupe or taupe-esque. We’re talking about lifestyle decisions that concern your marriage. If you have children, your marriage becomes even more important than it was prior to having kids. It is this idea that provides many men and women with the misconception that staying married for the kids’ sake is sometimes the right lifestyle choice to make. Here are three reasons it’s not.

Your Kids Suffer

You might think that your unhappy marriage is unknown to your children because you’re good at faking happy. It’s not true. Children are very perceptive and they know far more of what’s going on at home than you think. The underlying tension, no matter how good you are at hiding it, is going to be present in their lives, causing them to feel strange, unhappy or nervous at home. Their grades might suffer, they might become anxious and they might even lose their trust in you.

Your Kids Will Develop Unhealthy Views

Staying married for the kids is not a lifestyle choice you should make because you think it means giving your kids a “normal” childhood. Even if your house is a happy one in which you live together as great friends and pretend to be a happy couple, your kids will develop unhealthy views. They might grow up to believe that marriage means marrying someone with whom they have nothing in common, not spending time together as a family, not being intimate and not showing affection. This is not what you want your kids to learn.

Your Unhappiness Matters

Your kids know when you’re unhappy and that’s not what they want from you. They want their parents to be happy because your happiness means you’re a better parent. If you’re unhappy in your marriage and trying to decide whether or not to stay married for the sake of your children, take that off the table and consider that two parents in two happy homes is far better than two unhappy parents in one unhappy home.

Image via Thinkstock