Dear Prudence,
I am 37 years old. I have a friend of many years, “Chrissy,” who is the same age, and she is still hung up on her parents divorcing when she was 12. I have tried my hardest to understand how difficult this was for her despite privately feeling like she is being histrionic. Chrissy was at a vulnerable age when she had to move 300 hundred miles away with her mom and suddenly not be with her father daily or even weekly, and it did come out of the blue, but Prudie, I am tired of it. She had two loving homes with three loving parents (her father remarried a lovely woman when she was 14) and never wanted for anything. Her mother moved for work and to be closer to family, and there was an amicable division of custody, with Chrissy at her father’s for winter, spring, and summer breaks and a few long weekends in between. Her parents, whom I know well, are great people, and when it came to her best interest, they always put aside their differences. But to hear Chrissy tell it, her “heart was irrevocably broken, and she lost all trust in relationships.” She “from the moment they split, never again had everyone she loved with her on important days” and “always had to choose who to be with and hurt someone” and she “spent her childhood as a sad kid in an airport, always missing someone.”
I am reaching the point of exasperation over hearing about things that happened almost 25 years ago. My annoyance is exacerbated by the fact that my parents also divorced, and it was under much worse circumstances, so hearing about how “hard” she had it makes my blood boil. My childhood household was abusive, there was an attempted murder and kidnap threats, social workers, brief homelessness, poverty, you name it. Chrissy’s childhood was a comparable idyll. Actually, not even comparably. I was there for most of this and saw with my own eyes that she had everything but two parents under the same roof. When I’ve told her it seems she needs to maybe talk to someone professionally about her lingering feelings, Chrissy says that I don’t understand because I didn’t lose a loving, unified home. She says that she’s right to feel sad because it’s a sad thing to have happened and that because her feelings are perfectly logical, it only proves how emotionally sound she actually is.
Prudie, this is a woman who regularly comes home from dates bawling because she “just can’t make herself trust.” We had a friend celebrate a 10-year anniversary recently, and Chrissy was off the whole week of it, snapping when people brought up the celebration. She managed to stay at the party, but was quiet and withdrawn the whole time. Later she asked if she could talk and ended up sobbing, talking about how it just wasn’t fair that she could never enjoy a long-term relationship like our friend because of what she’s been through. How can I convince her that her mindset needs adjusting or to gain some perspective? The issue is quickly becoming a deal breaker after decades of this. While I know it’s difficult, millions of people’s parents divorce, including mine, and they find a way through it.
— She Even Had Horses