At the tender age of 7yrs old, in junior school, my parents got divorced leaving so much a load for me to swallow. Caution and learning not to trust people is a lesson I learnt from a young age.
We are now living in a world where signing divorce papers has been the order of the day. It has become the most common thing to do for a couple in a rocky relationship. They exchange expensive rings, vows, make promises of till death do them apart only later to divorce after a very short time. It has become the easiest way out. People meet, date, fall in love, marry, get children, and then something is just not right. That is the modern trend in marriages, but where does this leave the children in that family the moment the divorce gets finalized? It could seem an easy thing for the parents, but what effect does it have on the children. On a behavioral perspective, as a child, this environment serves as a lesson to learn from (McLeod & Freud, 2007). Some parents will always worry about their children while the others worry less.
On a psychodynamic perspective, this was a childhood event where my parents divorced serving as a huge disappointment on my side. The incident is the reason I turned out into someone who has a difficult task when it comes to trusting people. My taking caution not to trust anybody is a behavior determined by my unconscious mind and the experience of divorce as a childhood.
After the divorce of my parents, life still had to continue, but only by taking a different path. I had to face life alone, and that meant deciding the best thing for me in certain situations. Life took a different path with no father or mother figure to go home to like other kids. At that very tender age, I had learned to place every single bit of trust I had on my parents. I trusted them, loved them, believed in them, and entirely dependent on them. They were the closest people I knew. All this changed the moment they divorced, each going their separate way; leaving me and my siblings to strangers. Ever since, I cannot trust anybody in my life; however close they get. The moment you trust and depend so much on somebody, you are definitely bound to be disappointed. That has since been my opinion, and it serves me right as it shields me from many heartbreaks and disappointments.
The divorce of my parents resulted in an operant learning though almost similar to a classical learning. My lesson from the event is a response of the hardship and lonely consequences that came naturally from the divorce (Charles, 2014). The moment somebody gets into my life and plays an important role, after the disappointment from my parents; it is always on my mind that nobody is worth my trust. It is a caution I apply on every single person in my life and with its repetition; it has grown in me and become part of me. The lesson best qualifies as an operant learning as it is a caution I take on the consequences that would accrue from trusting somebody (Charles, 2014). It happened in the past and likely to recur the instant I let my guard down.
The memory of my parent’s divorce is most likely accurate because that is what I have grown to believe. However, looking at all perspectives, it may or may not be completely accurate. When the divorce transpired, I was a young child without the slightest idea of what was happening nor what had caused and resulted from the events. I was very naïve and could not understand the story behind the event. All I knew and still hold on to is that my parents greatly disappointed me after trusting them so much. My account could be inaccurate as I have never thought of looking at the matter of the event and its outcome in a different perspective.
References
Charles, E. (2014, February 27). Explaining Behaviorism: Operant & Classical Conditioning. Psychology Today. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fixing-psychology/201402/explaining-behaviorism-operant-classical-conditioning
McLeod, S. A. & Freud, S. (2007), Psychology Perspectives. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/perspective.html
