Golfmom - I think KML has a pretty good point, and if it stung you, it's probably one you need to think about.
Around here we try to remind ourselves and each other that the posts that sting are usually the posts we need most to reflect on. If someone says you are fat, and you are not, you know it's not true and you dont' take any notice of it. If someone says you are fat, and you are feeling fat, you take it to heart ... know what I mean?
Golfmom, I've actually been meaning to post to you to some time to suggest that it really is time to separate out your abandonment and anger from your children's experience. How our children experience life, is DIRECTLY related to how we encourage them to.
I have 3 step-children. Their mum and dad were divorced several years before I met their father, but to their credit, both parents had done a remarkable job of keeping the children out of their personal problems. Their mum had an affair and left them with their dad to live with her affair partner when they were 6, 10 and 13 respectively. It was a terribly difficult time for their dad, but to his immense credit, he NEVER said a bad word about their mother to them, and to this day, some 20 years later, still wouldn’t dream of it.
Her behavior was atrocious. He has only ever once expressed to me what he thought of her behavior and that was “If she was a horse and she abandoned her offspring like that, you’d shoot her .“. He was obviously very hurt, very betrayed and his personal values were horribly confronted by her decisions – but he’s a wise and careful man and he knew that regardless of what was going on between them, they were both their children’s parents and he knew the way he responded to her abandonment would be the difference between how they recovered … or not. Our children respond to life in the way we teach them. Children are imitators and they take those learned behaviors from their childhood into the rest of their lives … do you want them to reflect bitterness or love?
My step-children, are now some of the most well adjusted, successful, delightful adults I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. They love their mum and their dad. They carry very little baggage from the divorce and they live in healthy, loving, reality based relationships with gorgeous partners; and the eldest has 2 children of her own now who are also beautifully well adjusted, kind, clever perfect little people.
The alternative story. My best friends husband had an affair and left her about 2 years ago. Their children, both boys, are 12 and 15. Gorgeous boys. She is so angry. She is furious with him and she shares it all with the kids. In the period since he left, those boys have had to listen to her tell them how their dad has abandoned them (he hasn’t , he left her for a whole range of reasons, including some she admits were entirely her fault, but he hasn’t left the boys, she just makes it so difficult and uncomfortable for him to see them that he’s at the stage where it’s traumatic to talk to her – so he doesn’t); how he’s mentally ill, how he’s making all the wrong life choices … making this man, who is their father and most important role model into some sort of evil creature. Its very confusing for the boys because they love him. I’ve heard her do it and it’s painful for me to listen to, so I can’t imagine how painful it is for the boys, who absolutely adored their dad.
I had the weekend there last month and I took the 12 year old to the movies. He was talking to me about his mum and dad in the car on the way home. He said “I wish mum would get that just ‘cause we still love dad, doesn’t mean we love her less. She’s so pissed with him that every time we say something about him she makes it all about her.” It was a poignant moment for me and when we got home, I gave him a big hug and told him it’s going to take her some time, she’s very hurt and very angry and she doesn’t know how to deal with it, he said (all 12 years of him) “well she should get over it, and learn how to deal with her feelings. Life moves on and people make choices.”
What I worry about is that the boys have started resenting her inability to deal with the reality of the situation.
I understand you are angry. You have every right to be. BUT your children only have one dad, and given that you love them, and underneath all that anger you know that they need a strong relationship with their dad – boys need male role models, good and bad, so they can learn and make choices about the sort of men they will be – I think soon you will figure out that the healthiest thing you can do for your kids is to force your Hs hand and establish a permanent and reliable visitation arrangement – so they maintain their relationship with their father. He really is the only one they have.
I do know how difficult this is for you Golfmom. I really do and I have profound empathy, but please reflect on how you, as the grown-up, can lovingly guide your children through this difficult part of their lives – so that they come out as unscathed as possible and are able to develop healthy relationships, with emotionally healthy women, when they become men.
Blessings to you. V
V
Never make someone a priority, who makes you an option.
