When the bubble bursts in our favor !

[ACJ]

Cinders I can't offer any first hand experiences BUT about your father and mother. If they have recently retired they will be spending time together that they have not experienced before. A bit like when you first move in with someone/get married it takes a lot of adjusting too. I'm sure all will come good in the end.

My father is also very bitter about my H but for different reasons. His own father left when he was 3 and he never saw him again. So he knows what it is like to grow up without a father (although being the 3rd youngest of 18 children he certainly had older brothers in his life). He is hurting for my children b/c he knows what it feels like. They have been more fortunate than him in a way b/c the youngest was 10 when H left and they still see him (S16 lives with him) but the flip side of that is that the hurt my dad feels is not necessarily from direct memories of his father b/c he was so young but b/c he didn't have what other children had when he was growing up. My grandmother more than made up for the absent father and all of her children respected her enormously (my dad even had to obey her wishes to pick up his youngest sister from dances even after he was married and did so willingly). Maybe it's time we started DBing our fathers as well as our Hs and kids b/c we forget that they too need that support.