David Joyner’s parents finalized their divorce about two weeks ago. But Joyner only had one question for his older sister Jennifer when she told him the news.

“I asked her, ‘Well, Jennifer, have they decided who I’m going to live with?’,” Joyner said, wiping imaginary tears from his eyes.

Joyner, a senior in civil engineering, hasn’t really lived at home since starting college in 2003.

According to Joyner, humor has been his way of dealing with the divorce. He said he and his older sisters, both of whom also live on their own, would joke around and ask when daddy was coming home. However, he said he knew it was real the whole time.

“As an emotional catch I guess I would use humor and actually make it seem not real,” Joyner said.

His parents first told him they were separating the weekend before his senior year of high school started. According to Joyner, they gave him the usual spill, like “You know, David, you know we love you, it’s nothing that’s wrong with you, we’re not divorcing because of you.”

“It was kind of stupid because I was 18 years old, and I know that’s what you tell a 10 year old,” he said. “But I think they just didn’t know how to handle it because it was so… spontaneous, I guess.”

He said his parents went to counseling and tried to work things out, but that it just didn’t help.

According to Lee Salter, the director of counseling at the Counseling Center, while the process is hard, divorce can be the best thing for a family. He said constant fighting within the home can negatively affect more than just the parents.

“Students can be affected by that and even drawn in to that,” he said. “It creates stress above and beyond what they already have.”

While Salter stressed that every situation is different and dependent upon the people involved, he said the process of divorce can drain a student’s time and energy as well. He said parents will sometimes try to pull in the child as the middle person.

Joyner said his parents never really talk to him about their divorce, because they know he just doesn’t want to hear it. His parents did often pull his older sister into the arguments, though.

“I get more irritated by how my parents handle it sometimes than the whole process,” he said.

He said once while he and his father were on a trip to Nevada, about a year after the initial separation, his father tried to talk to him about it.

“We were coming back and we were waiting in the terminal building, and he was like ‘Now, none of the kids are making fun of you at school because of the whole thing?’,” Joyner said. “I was like ‘No, why would they make fun of me?!'”

He and his father don’t have good communication, but that question was his father’s way of trying to reach out to him, according to Joyner.

Joyner’s parents divorced because his mother found out his father was having an affair. He said he saw it coming, because his father would get a lot of phone calls he would take privately. He would also talk online to someone a lot, and quickly exit the conversation whenever anyone came around.

However, Joyner never told his mother. And he said sometimes now, he gets angry at her and can’t really put his finger on why.

“I guess it’s just a boy’s perspective, but I kind of side with my — not side with my dad, but feel bad for my dad — even though he was the one who did it,” Joyner said. “Sometimes I think that something’s wrong with me for doing that.”

Joyner said he has learned that placing blame doesn’t do any good, though.

“I know not to blame my mom. I know not to blame anybody,” he said. “I try not to blame anybody.”

According to Salter, it is important for students to have someone to talk to about the situation, because they are dealing with extra stress and may need to take better care of themselves. However, Salter said the effects of divorce are all relevant to not only the persons involved, but the time in which the changes take place. He said many times divorce will affect student’s grades and relationships with other people.

“The problems in relationships that may develop depend on a lot of areas,” Salter said. “Problems with trust and commitment are usually what you see.”

Joyner said he is glad the divorce came at a later stage in his life, because if he had been younger it would have hurt him more, having to deal with child custody and things like that.

He said he doesn’t feel his parents divorce really had much of a lasting effect on him, though, as far as grades are concerned. He also doesn’t feel like it has affected his relationships with others negatively.

According to Salter, “we are all products of our past experiences.”

For Joyner, the experience has taught him to be cautious and sure in his decisions.

“It would actually help me in a positive way,” Joyner said. “I would strive to have something that my parents didn’t have.”