What Divorce Did to My Childhood

My mom "came out" and both she and my dad went through a series of new romantic relationships while my sister and I were left to pick up the pieces of our family

Note from TBU: At Them Before Us, we share real stories because statistics alone can’t capture the cost when adult desires come before children’s rights. Blake’s account is raw, painful, and deeply important. His life shows how divorce and same-sex re-partnering ripple through a child’s world by fracturing security, trust, and, in his case, even the will to live.

Every child deserves stability and the daily presence of their mother and father. Blake’s words remind us what happens when that right is denied.

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My name is Blake, and I am a victim of adults putting their desires before their responsibilities as parents.

I was born into a middle-class family that looked secure. We had no financial struggles, my mother was deeply involved in raising my sister and me, and we both attended the best private school in the county.

My parents drove new cars, we belonged to the country club, and they were generous donors at community events. From the outside, it seemed like the perfect home.

But when I was seven, the desires of my parents, long hidden, came to the surface and derailed everything. What looked picture-perfect became a case study in how badly adults can harm children when they put their own fulfillment ahead of their obligations.

When my parents divorced, my mother sat my sister and me down. She told us she was no longer attracted to my dad, or to men at all. She had already started a relationship with a woman, and it was up to us, at ages seven and five, to be “comfortable with that.”

Even then, I felt instinctively that this would hurt my mother and devastate our family.

My father spiraled into alcoholism. I remember a week when he left an entire bin of empty beer bottles at the curb, all consumed in just a few days. He often directed his emotional abuse toward me.

Nights at his house were filled with fear. The only place I felt safe enough to fall asleep was under my bed.

That fear wasn’t unfounded. Not long after he moved out, my mother installed brackets and a beam across the front door because he had tried to kick it in during the night.

He also regularly told me, “You’re just like your mother.” If he was willing to hurt her, why not me?

Instability became constant. My mother went through two relationships with women and two with men during my childhood.

When she began dating men again, I was confused and hurt. Had she lied to us? Why was my father “not enough”?

When she eventually remarried, the pain deepened. Another man, someone who was not my father, was living in my childhood home, in my parents’ bedroom.

I couldn’t escape the thought: Why isn’t my dad here? Was it my fault?

The chaos took a toll. I was forced into counseling (though I didn’t know it was court-ordered). It didn’t help.

Friendships at school were nearly impossible. I couldn’t invite kids over, and I had to stay home to care for my younger sister.

By twelve, I couldn’t bear it anymore. I tried to end my life. I survived, but the scar remains.

In the end, my sister and I were mostly raised by our grandmothers. Both lived nearby, but the cost was heavy, physically, emotionally, and financially.

My maternal grandmother, never wealthy, quit her supermarket job to care for us. She lived on social security and food stamps, avoided medical care because she couldn’t afford it, and eventually died suddenly from an untreated aneurysm.

Losing her felt like losing my mother. She had stepped in where my real mom should have been. The burden of parenting in her daughter’s place cut her life short.

There are countless other stories I could share, but here is the message I want to leave with adults: it is not about you.

Children are fragile. They need protection, stability, and the daily presence of their mother and father.

No pursuit of happiness, no personal fulfillment, is worth sacrificing your child’s security.

In the end, loving your children enough to put their needs first will give you more joy than anything you’re chasing in the moment.

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If Blake’s story moved you, don’t let it stop here. Every time an adult’s desires are placed above a child’s needs, another Blake is left to carry the scars. At Them Before Us, we fight to make sure children’s rights come first: in law, culture, and everyday conversations. Share this story, subscribe for more, and join us in defending the most vulnerable. Because children should never pay the price for adult choices.

Them Before Us is a global movement committed to defending children’s right to their mother and father. We believe that adult desires should never come at the expense of a child’s fundamental needs.

We are not professional lobbyists or political insiders. We are ordinary people with an extraordinary conviction: children must come first in every conversation about marriage, family, and fertility.

We exist to make one thing clear: when adults sacrifice for children, society thrives. When children are forced to sacrifice for adults, everyone pays the price.

Learn more or support our mission: www.thembeforeus.com