Karen going through mediation this week has me reflecting again on my own mediation session a week ago. I feel that I was able to express my viewpoint effectively to the mediator, but because xW could not be rational, in the end, and decide for peace between us, and since we are thus still headed to litigation, I don't feel the mediation really had much use in our case. Sadly.
There was the briefest of moments where I thought xW might have been rethinking things... but then it faded away, like a puff of smoke.
On the other hand if xW could really be reasoned with then we might never have needed to D and she might never have filed a lawsuit seeking full custody in the first place.
But it is what it is.
For myself, at the time, I was really weighing whether it might be better if I just gave up and did as xW was demanding, which is to simply walk away from my obligations to S8 and S4. Certainly it presented the prospect of an easier path for me, to no longer have to put up with all the aggravation of dealing with xW on a semi-regular basis. All I would be liable for then would be to just slave away at work and tighten my budget to the bone to be able to afford the outrageous child support payment that would have been levied on me, but I could garner the relative peace in knowing I was no longer responsible nor have to answer to xW for anything but my wallet. I would be effectively buying part of my freedom back from her while subjugating myself to the whims of the court. At least the later party (the courts) acts out of impersonal bureaucratic mindlessness with far less of the heavy emotional (and added) cost imposed by a selfish and treacherous co-parent -- that would definitely be a plus.
But that is not why I became a father, not to have an "easy" relatively care-free life. No, I love my sons and I cannot lay aside my obligation to them, no matter how great the amount of pain and gray-hair their mother brings me. I cannot, in good conscience, abandon them. Much as one might try to rationalize the possibility of more peace and less strife in my S's life as a result of not having to be witness to the continuing conflicts between their parents, that strife is not the lessor of the possible evils. Nor would the evil of parental conflict be guaranteed to go away just because I made the sacrifice of Solomon's Test, to let the other party have their selfish way. Being left to xW alone, abandoned by their father , would be far worse. As such, I could never do that to them.
