When the Teacher Becomes the Student

[AlexEN]

Puppy (&DQ)...

First of all, DQ I was not in any way trying to bash Mrs. Puppy not by any stretch of the imagination (my thoughts more aligned with Karen's on this topic). My wife shares many characteristics with Mrs. P, not the least of which are some narcissitic tendencies and the inability to be empathetic.

That being said, I still love my wife (sometimes for reasons that still escape me) and OUR children. Intellectually, I think I should be much angrier with her than I am. But, it is precisely the compassion of which you (DQ) spoke that keeps me from going there. I DO feel badly for her because I think she does need help (just as I think, whether it's my place to say so or not, that Mrs. Puppy does) or I believe she will eventually become estranged from her children, too (just as she has, emotionally, from her mother, and as she is choosing to do with respect to our relationship) if she does not. My comments were really meant to echo Puppy's sentiment:

"It's the typical wayward script of "normalization" and everything's going to be OK"

I see the same thing with my W. And I do NOT think everything is going to be normal, especially for the kids, who ARE my focus, too.

Puppy, I couldn't agree with what you say more:

Well, to me, we WOULD still be a family -- just a broken one. And I think it's in my kids' best interests to keep up as many family traditions, customs, mores, and structures as I can (so long as they don't violate my own boundaries of personal integrity) -- isn't it?

... If doing what's in my kids' best interests makes things slightly more comfortable for her, is it a given then that I shouldn't do it? Methinks not.

Perhaps in my haste to get my son to his guitar lesson, my brevity led to interpretations different than what I intended. I LOVE family traditions and think we should do whatever we can to uphold them. Puppy, I think you and I exchanged e-mails on this before. The holidays were among the hardest times for me, knowing that W wants a D made many of those family traditions seem surreal and unnatural. My visions of Christmas future haunted me because I don't think those traditions CAN ever truly be the same or have the same meaning for ANY of us. I remember looking at the Christams ornaments as we took them down and thinking my children deserve to have these ornaments be with each other on one tree, not split up with some on Mommy's tree and some on Daddy's tree.

Maybe I'm parsing too finely, but that is what I mean when I say the traditions, as important and sentimental and central in meaning to our intact family as they are, will be forever changed. That's not to say that new, meaningful traditions cannot be built, but that the old traditions, customs, and mores will never quite be the same.

So, yes, while I do think "it's in my kids' best interests to keep up as many family traditions, customs, mores, and structures as I can (so long as they don't violate my own boundaries of personal integrity)", I don't know that I believe that is an achievable end in a "broken" family.

Puppy, I believe what others have written about you finding a woman (or that she will find you) who will meet your emotional needs and with whom you will have a wonderful, fulfilling relationship. When that happens, or when a hopefully healthy Mrs. P is in new relationship, do you think your new significant others will embrace your "broken" family's traditions? Perhaps that can happen; but, I have a tough time seeing it. There will be melded and new traditions, but I (and maybe it is splitting hairs) think the old traditions (in their totality) will forever be lost except in our memories. As a sentimental guy, that saddens me.

This is all a long way of saying, I agree that a "broken" family is still a family, but that that family, especially from the childrens' perspective, will never be normal.

If I was "picking on" Mrs. P, it was only to the extent I agree with the premise that her e-mail line that I cited evidences to me the wayward script of normalization...

-AlexEN