7. Divorce: The Damage We Don’t Dare Name

The second essay in the series. A clear-eyed look at the invisible consequences we keep pretending aren’t there, from fractured families to fragmented communities.

May 16, 2025

I don’t know a single person who is better off because their parents divorced. Not one. And I’ve known many, they’re all around me. Parents, children, whole families. The idea that divorce offers a fresh start might comfort adults in crisis, but for most people, the damage is not just real, it’s lifelong. And I wonder if, in most cases, divorce isn’t a shared decision at all, but something forced by one person while the whole family bears the consequences. That damage is woven into relationships, holidays, finances, and identity. And the deeper truth is this: divorce never really ends. It just changes form.

We live in a culture that speaks endlessly about freedom, personal growth, and self-expression, but rarely addresses the deeper wounds left by broken families. Divorce is often seen as a solution, a path to self-renewal, a second chance. But its effects ripple far beyond the couple involved. Divorce is not simply the end of a marriage; it is the quiet unraveling of emotional, relational, and cultural threads that form the basis of stable lives and strong communities.

This is not a moral argument. It is a human one. If we want to build strong individuals, resilient families, and functioning communities, we have to stop pretending that divorce is a private decision with limited consequences. It never is.

1. Identity and Emotional Damage

Divorce tears at the core of identity, not just for children, but for the adults involved. Children appear to often internalise the event not as something that happened between their parents, but as something that happened to them. "The person who is supposed to love and protect me the most has chosen to leave." However loving the words, the absence speaks louder.

Adults are not immune. After divorce, many find themselves questioning their own worth, their ability to love or be loved, and their place in the world. A marriage is not just a contract. It is part of how we define ourselves. When it ends, so does a chapter of identity. People feel lost, adrift, uncertain of who they are without the structure and history of their relationship.

Worse still, the promise of emotional relief is often temporary. What follows is not always peace, but the long, slow process of reorientation. And for some, that process never fully completes.

2. Relational and Moral Damage

Children of divorce often grow up with a fragmented sense of love. Love, they learn, is fragile. It ends. It is conditional. Even children who go on to form healthy relationships carry this shadow with them, a hesitancy, a fear, a tendency to retreat when conflict arises.

But the impact is just as real for the couple. When people divorce, they often carry into their next relationships a quiet mistrust, a hesitancy to invest fully, and a readiness to withdraw. Divorce teaches us something, even when we don’t want it to: that breaking the bond is possible. And once we know that, it becomes harder to trust that anything is permanent.

Divorce can also introduce uncomfortable complexities into the family system. One of the quieter consequences is the presence of a new adult in the family, a step-parent or a parent's partner. Even when this person is kind or well-meaning, the dynamic changes. Children may no longer feel truly at home. The sense of belonging shifts. Holidays, birthdays, and milestones become emotionally fraught, especially when step-relationships are strained. It becomes harder to relax, to gather, to feel safe. What was once a family becomes a carefully negotiated truce.

These dynamics extend into adulthood. A grown child visiting their parent must now navigate an unfamiliar house and a different set of rules. They may feel unwelcome, or simply displaced. Family gatherings become logistical puzzles instead of joyful reunions. Everyone feels it, even when no one says it.

My own elder brother, now in his sixties, has lived most of his life this way, still feeling he must choose between mum and dad on visits from abroad. Decades after his parents' divorce, the conflict remains, quiet, polite, but deeply embedded. Now adult children of divorce say that what they most wish their parents had done was try harder. Not perfectly. Just more. I’ve observed that ache in my own extended family, and I know how enduring and disorienting that pain can be.

These tensions are not theoretical. They play out quietly, often invisibly, in the behaviour and body language of children. The hesitation to leave their space. The emotional weight they carry when moving between homes. The discomfort of forced phone calls that feel more like obligations than connections. The subtle withdrawal from one parent as a form of self-protection. The visible disappointment when an expected arrival doesn’t happen. The confusion when expressing care or frustration leads to defensiveness instead of understanding. The burden of trying to hold together what was once whole, often falling on the shoulders of the most sensitive among them.

What they begin to internalise is devastating in its subtlety: that love might not last, that their needs are secondary, that honesty leads to conflict, that safety is conditional. They learn that stability is fragile, that discomfort is to be avoided at all costs, and that one person's happiness outweighs the collective good. They begin to doubt whether family is something to lean on, or something to survive. And perhaps most tragically of all, they begin to wonder whether words mean anything at all if they are not backed by effort, consistency, and sacrifice.

3. Practical and Societal Damage

One of the most tangible ways divorce impacts society is through housing. Each separation effectively doubles the housing demand for that family unit. What was once a shared home now becomes two separate households, each requiring heating, maintenance, rent or mortgage, and council tax. This surge in demand places enormous strain on housing markets, particularly social and affordable housing. According to the Office for National Statistics (2023), single-person households make up 30% of all households in the UK, and lone-parent families account for around 16%. These structural shifts, heavily influenced by separation and divorce, compound pressure on already-stretched housing systems. It drives up rental prices, reduces availability, and puts added pressure on government services. The choice to separate may feel personal, but its effects ripple outward, influencing housing costs and availability for everyone in the community.

The material consequences of divorce are enormous. Two homes are more expensive than one. Two sets of utility bills, two fridges, two insurance policies, two everything. Most divorced families do not grow wealth. They lose it. Children lose access to financial resources that may have supported their education or first home. Retirement plans are disrupted. Inheritances get divided between step-families.

Divorce also doubles the caregiving burden later in life. Adult children must now look after two sets of aging parents, often without the support of a partner or siblings who share that emotional history. Every task is repeated. Every arrangement becomes more complicated. The time, money, and energy required grows, and so does the emotional cost.

Social isolation is another hidden consequence. Divorce often leads to the breakdown of community ties. Friends take sides. Neighbours become awkward. Support networks weaken. People retreat. What starts as a personal decision often results in the quiet dismantling of an entire web of relationships.

And the ripple effects extend to the next generation. Without stable modelling, children are less likely to form lasting relationships themselves. Without inherited wealth or a shared family home, they start behind. Without trust in permanence, they repeat the same cycle.

4. Cultural and Civilisational Damage

At a macro level, the normalisation of divorce contributes to the erosion of social trust. Relationships become seen as disposable. Self-fulfilment is elevated over commitment. Freedom is redefined not as responsibility, but as escape.

We begin to lose the deeper virtues that bind communities together: endurance, sacrifice, patience, long-term thinking. When divorce becomes common, these virtues are not passed down. What we inherit instead is uncertainty.

Families have historically been the bedrock of cultural and economic stability. Divorce, especially when repeated across generations, breaks this continuity. It reduces intergenerational wealth, diminishes caregiving capacity, and destabilises the emotional foundation of future families.

None of this is to say that every marriage must continue at all costs. Abuse, addiction, and serious dysfunction are real and must be addressed. But the majority of divorces today are not driven by danger. They are driven by dissatisfaction. And in those cases, we must ask: are we truly gaining more than we are losing?

5. The Illusion of a Second Chance

One of the most seductive promises of divorce is the idea of a second chance. A clean break. A chance to start over. But in truth, the only way to fully create that second chance would be to cut all ties with the past. And that is almost never possible.

In families with children, the past is present every day. Every school pickup, every shared decision, every family gathering becomes a meeting point of two worlds that used to be one. And even if parents strive to get along, the children are forced into impossible positions. They learn to filter what they say about one parent in front of the other. They tiptoe through conversations. They absorb tension they can’t name but feel constantly. They become peacekeepers, shape-shifters, conflict absorbers.

This is the real cost of the so-called second chance. You don’t get to start again. You start again while dragging behind you the emotional wreckage of what was. And your children feel it most of all.

Read the companion piece on cultural contradictions and the fear of commitment here.

A Closing Reflection

Divorce will always exist. There will always be cases where it is necessary. But we need to stop pretending that it is neutral. We need to stop telling ourselves and our children that it is easy, clean, or without cost. It is none of those things.

We must start telling the truth. Divorce is painful. It is disruptive. It has consequences that last far beyond the signing of papers. It reshapes identity, damages relationships, fragments communities, and weakens the culture as a whole.

The message from adult children of divorce, from research, and from common sense is the same: you should have tried harder. Not blindly, not stubbornly, but honestly. With humility. With patience. With help.

Because it turns out that the one thing more difficult than staying together is living with the consequences of not trying.

What do you think?

I know this isn’t a comfortable topic, but that’s exactly why we need to talk about it. Whether you’ve lived through divorce yourself, witnessed it in others, or carry questions about love, family, and responsibility — I’d really like to hear your thoughts. What have you seen? What have you learned? What do you still wonder?