Supporting Your Teenager Through Your Marriage Breakdown

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Even as adults, relationships ending can be devastating. For teenagers, a breakup is an opportunity to teach them how to deal with pain. If you can remember being a teenager, you can remember exactly what it feels like to be consumed by love.

First love is powerful, its world ending, and it’s heart-shattering. One minute, they are flying high on a sea of hormones disguised as the wings of love, and the next they have crashed and burned into a sea of heartache. 

How your teenager may feel

Your marriage is the one that’s breaking down, your teenager is going to be devastated by that.

Everything that they have ever seen or witnessed about love in relationships is going to feel false and difficult in their eyes. They are going to feel like they don’t know who you are as people. They’re going to feel like your relationship was as much of a lie as anything else in their life. They’re going to feel angry, and they’re going to blame themselves even when it’s not their fault. 

Of course, they’re going to think you have no insight into their pain or their feelings as if you haven’t been a teenager before and felt that flight of love.

However, when you are the person who’s going through a marriage breakdown and you are the one who is taking family law legal advice, you have to demonstrate patience, strength, and kindness to your teenagers who will be witnessing you going through all of this.

They’re going to feel like the world is falling apart, so here are some of the tips that you need to make sure you can help them through your marriage breakdown.

Helping your teenager through this

Validate their feelings

Teenagers may be feeling like their whole world is ending, but they also often feel like they know everything. There is a level of vulnerability and uncertainty that teenagers feel when their parents are going through a divorce. Resist the urge to minimize their emotions because it’s happening to you because this divorce is not just happening to you.

You, teenagers, have spent their entire lives with you and their parents together.

To see that relationship breakdown is very difficult, and they are going to go through their own grieving process. It’s a big deal, so validate their feelings by reminding them that it is hard and that you will still be there for them and their other parents will still be there for them because even though you can’t love each other anymore you both still love your teenager.

They will be crushed, and they will lash out. Be ready for that.

Support their decisions

If your teenager is scared that they may have to pick between a parent to live with and to see on weekends, it doesn’t matter how you feel about the situation, make sure that you support their decision.

If they don’t want to live with you, it will be painful, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t love you. They’re going to be confused, mad, and sad. Honor that emotion and support their choices. 

Don’t brush things under the carpet

If you’re going through a divorce, don’t wait to tell your teenagers. Be honest about it. As a family, sit down together and break the news to your teenagers together.

Regardless of how you feel about each other, your teenagers are going to feel the brunt of the loss of a family unit that they’ve been used to for all that time.

Criticizing the way they handle it is not going to help, and keeping her in the dark is not going to help either.

It is not protecting your teenager, because they’re going to feel like it. You need to be the adult in their life that is honest with them and treats them as the grown-up and mature person that you want them to be.

Listen

Stages of grief over your marriage breakdown are felt by your teenagers as much as you. Being there and listening to what they have to say without interjecting your opinions is not easy. While you are also handling their emotions you will be handling your own.

That can be a volatile combination, especially if you are not coping as well as you would hope you were. They need time and a safe space to vent their frustration and while you can hire a therapist to help, as a parent you have a duty to listen to your child.

Your team does not need you to take over and tell them how they should feel or share what you would have done, or talk about how you wish things were different.

They also don’t need you to sit there and insult their other parent, because your children are 50% the other parent.

Offer a distraction

There’s nothing like creating a distraction to give your children a break from thinking about your breakup. Take them out for a day or two, and make a point of being there for them. Also, make sure that you spend quality one-on-one time together.

They need to know that you still love them. You still want to spend time with them and they are going to feel insecure afterward.

It takes time for them to get through something like this, so you need to ensure that you are with them every step of the way. It’s going to be painful because you are also dealing with a breakup. However, you have to put your own feelings aside here and put your child first.

There’s nothing out there that says that that’s going to be easy, but once you do it you’ll realize just how much your child is more important than anything else.

Come back to their routine

It takes time for teenagers to get used to the idea of their parents not being together anymore. However, if you consider the fact that their routine is going to be key in helping them to manage it, you’ll be able to ensure that your teenager can manage through this time.

Be prepared

Your teenager is going to go through many ups and downs as they navigate this process with you. Be prepared for that and honor everything that they have to say and do through this process.

That doesn’t mean letting them get away with bad behavior. However, it means understanding that shouting doesn’t always mean that they are angry with you. They might just be afraid that people close to them will leave.