Actually I wasn't singling any one person out in particular but responding to a sentiment that I hear from time to time here in these forums.
OT, I get part of what you're driving at, but your arguments do indeed support embracing the OP. You want to believe that the OP is just another ordinary person, just an innocent bystander who happened to be there when the former spouse bailed on the M. I don't think even you really believe that, do you?
And Kerry, that's where your own father's logic falls down. If he were to have taken up with a new W post D then that new woman would not be an OP and was thus not an accomplice to breaking up your family. I too anticipate the possibility of remarrying some day, but that lady will in no way have had anything to do with wrecking my children's family -- so very unlike their mother's OP.
Quote:
You put your children in between the parents in a harmful way for the sake of an R that no longer exists.
I think you're projecting your own misconceptions onto me here. You imply that my stance is borne out of a desire to recover a R that no longer exists -- you couldn't be further off mark. No, this is borne out of my love as a father for my children. It is precisely for the welfare of the children that I argue. I can understand sacrificing or at least attenuating one's stance for the sake of peace for the children, which I do. But sometimes burying one's head in the sand about what kind of person is being foisted upon your children is a far greater harm. Sometimes "peace" at any cost comes at too high a price. By gilding the t*rd, so to speak, excusing the unrepentant offender, what message about morality are you really demonstrating to these children here?
Neither I nor my children can help the fact that either one or both parents have proven to have fallen short in preserving and securing their family. They have to accept the hand they've been dealt and make the most of it. But expecting them to embrace some stranger who was instrumental to the dissolution of their family and thus jeopardizing their security is just wrong -- and that is what the WAS has done.
As for the OP being no worse than the other parent, while that might be true, I've got news for ya' -- the parents are a given in the children's lives, the OP is not. The supposition that the OP is "important" to the children, simply because they are important to the wayward parent, is a false premise. The OP is wholly unnecessary for the proper healthy raising of the children, and it is my contention that they are a detriment.
You see, forgiveness is one thing, but moral complacency is another.
