Keep Moving Forward

[flowmom]

I disagree with some of the advice that you're getting about how/what to communicate to the children.

Ideally I think that you and your W would be able to talk to the children and together focus on communicating the following:

- W is making a choice to move out
- we will all have difficult feelings about this, but time will take care of everything
- we love you and nothing will change that
- GIMA loves W (and vice versa if applicable)
- this is not your fault - sometimes grownups have problems, but they are not YOUR problems
- we are still a family even if W lives somewhere else

IMO, a six year old cannot be made responsible for understanding adult marriage problems, adultery, etc. They equate the love between parents to the love between a parent and child because "we are a family". Talking about love/relationships being broken introduces the possibility of a parent "not getting along" with the child and abandoning the child. They are not sophisticated enough to understand the nuances and unfortunately will extrapolate what they learn about the marriage breakup into their relationships with their parents. That's why H and I emphasized H moving out for his own good, to take care of his own needs.

Don't make your children into a consequence for your W...protect your children from the crap that is going on, and wrap them in a warm, safe blanket of love. It is very hard for them to process inappropriate information and they will internalize things in ways that you have no control over.

It's hard enough to see how much this is hurting my children, but I'm glad that H and I have united on protecting our children from our M problems and from info that they don't understand. That may change in the future, but even making the changes as gradual as possible helps them to cope.