Still Crazy After All These Years...

[25yearsmlc]

Beatrice, thank you for your post.

I was thinking about what you posted previously about your X being hurt that his children didn't acknowledge him on holidays, years later.

I do believe he has no idea how this has hurt D, but the sane part of me just can't wrap my head around it.

Something interesting about the ow's D. While on vacation back in April the ow's D took my D aside and told her that she felt what H and ow did was not right and was sorry for the pain that it caused my D.

That took some guts. The OW's D, is a heck of a decent girl. Is she the one who had the baby? I hope after all this crap, that They, the 2 d's, someday have a decent R together if they have to be in a blended schmended family schmamily...as for the fathers waking up. I can say that my h did but what if we had not reconciled?

When h was in his MLC and living 3000 miles away, he actually complained to me about our children not "ever calling" him...like he was "an outsider in his own family"...

I DID/COULD NOT give a DB answer to that. Instead, I gave a "brilliant retort" like "well DUH...You ARE an outsider...YOU LEFT. She's hurt"...H was clueless. He'd deny that he had "left" but said he was "just checking out a new job"...seriously...

So we reconciled and were in piecing, when we attended Retrovaille a few years back. (BTW, I think it's a great program).

On the last day of Retrovaille, h used a metaphor to say how he felt about the whole crisis in our m, or where we were headed, etc...The metaphor was a car crash. I was very surprised at what he said. And moved.

He said he felt "Like a well dressed man who had just wrecked the family car, The money's all gone. All the passengers in the car are on life support, and I don't know if they're going to live..."
My h is a tall, well built & strong man. He's a war veteran. At the end of his "story", He began to sob. We hugged & I felt a deep sadness for and from him.

SO yes, some of them do know they have hurt their loved ones and they feel like crap about it. But I suspect it is only in a very safe place (like Retrovaille) in which they'll ever express their remorse. It's too frightening to face otherwise.

Geez, I have regrets as a parent and believe me, I can't dwell on them for long. it hurts! it shames me.

So I think they (WASs) can only take small bits and pieces of feedback at a time, about how their actions are perceived by their own children.

Having a suggestion for positive action (such as them taking the child out to lunch or dinner one on one, or to the park on a or a regularly scheduled call, is also helpful and may diffuse while helping. The fully absent parent or the one who makes plans and is a NO SHOW is the worst I guess. AWOL...deserters...

We used to have a neighbor with 2 kids who'd wait on their front steps for their div dad to come pick them up for his day...and it was Texas in the summer and they'd wait and wait outside i the triple digit weather for that jerk to Not show up.

I also wanted to slap their mom for making them wait outside so SHE would not have to see her ex AND so if he didn't show up, she could make the kids hate him more...never knew which parent was the worst b/c I started to believe that the mom knew the dad wasn't coming on some of those days, but she didn't tell the kids. She wanted them to feel as hurt by the dad's choice of OW, as she was...sickening, but in her head, it made sense.

Finally, if I were ever dating again, an essential ingredient of ANY Relationship I had, would be that the man is kind to my kids.

How can someone MARRY a person who isn't good to their children? Any man I dated who wasn't generous and kind to my children, would be voted off the island in a heartbeat.