[bos314489]

Hi, I am single and have no children so I can't relate to this, but I have a friend who has been married for 20 years with a 5 year old daughter. His marriage has been falling apart for awhile and he and his wife separated about 6 months ago. He was the one taking care of his daughter and he saw how much she missed her mom, only getting to see her on occaision, etc. He was also having a hard time with doing all of the parenting on top of running 2 businesses. Recently his wife has been spending time back at his place to be more involved in the child's life and help with the parenting, etc. The problem is the marriage is dead, so to speak, but they are living together for the sake of their child. So my question is can this work? Has anyone had this experience? Can two people live together and go through the motions of being married when the marriage has died years ago?

[seeker1950]

That doesn't sound promising for your friend and his wife.
I stayed in a marriage for 20 years mainly for our daughter. There was never any separation during that time, but I was extremely unhappy all the while. It affected our daughter, who witnessed it.
I would say this couple would be better off working out a separation/divorce agreement.

[HealingTimes]

I am the child of parents who stayed together 'for the children' and it was a miserable existence. They finally separated and it was best all round.

[tinyrabbit]

This is never a good idea. Everyone I know who had this experience, they were all miserable and the couple divorced in the end anyway.

[hamster-bamster]

"staying together for the sake of the child" is an oxymoron since the child's needs are not best served by witnessing his or her parents go through the motion of a dead marriage, nor does it help the matters that the parents might subconsciously resent the child for causing their distress, even though it was not the child's doing but the parents' poor decision-making.

It is much better to work out a good co-parenting agreement.

[eskielover]

In our situation....it was constant fighting....so it was definitely NOT good for our daughter.....we would have been better off divorced....but H was not into getting a divorce & would continually talk me out of it when I tried to push it.......

Come to find out from a comment he made when I finally did leave him...he said that ending up with a divorce would make him look like a failure......there's lot of different emotions that are wrapped up in a marriage relationship....not all about the marriage but incorrect concepts that also seem to exist.......

I wish I had been insistent enough to get out of the marriage long before I did....but I got out as soon as it was reasonably possible...also after my mother died.....she kept pushing me to stay also....for the last 13 years of marriage, I lived in my own room of the house & had nothing to do with my H other than the constant fighting which got worse not better.